James Packer knows the odds. Bravo that he’s rolling the dice again

Yay. In a time of dead birds and dispiriting politics and kids who can’t read or write, finally some bonzer news. James Packer, married. For the third time, on a Sardinian island. If that doesn’t make you smile, you have a harder heart than I do.

Details: the billionaire exchanged vows this week with former model Kylie Lim. Fingers crossed that for James it’s the final roll of the dice in a romantic history that includes not just two previous Mrs Packers but also two fiancées, including Mariah Carey.

Photos from that era still give me life: Mariah on the deck of the Packer boat in open toed sandals and fishnets, James beaming away in his summer best.

But back to current day, and here’s my favourite detail. James has reportedly proposed to Kylie five times since their on-again, off-again romance began when they met in Aspen in 2017.

Five times. You can read that one of two ways. Either he’s stalkerish and hopelessly co-dependent, or hopelessly romantic. Given Kylie said yes, I’ll go with romantic, and the reason I love it so much is we all know what the man knows about odds.

James has been enmeshed in gambling his whole life. First at the knee of his dad Kerry, a mega punter and high-risk mogul, then as the bloke who himself bet the family media empire on gaming palaces from Melbourne to Macau.

His survival depends on him knowing the house always wins, that the odds are engineered against the hopeful. And yet the biggest gamble he kept making – five engagements’ worth – was on love.

Twice-married, twice divorced, publicly heartbroken, and still he pushed the chips back onto the table and went all in.

The thing about optimism is that it isn’t naivety. Naivety is not knowing the odds. Optimism is absolutely knowing them – knowing in this case that marriage is a counterintuitive high-risk gamble that depends on the vagaries of human nature – and betting anyway.

I rate it. Pessimists are never disappointed, but they’re never anything else either. They can avoid heartbreak the way you can avoid sunburn by staying inside. James can afford every insulation money can buy, and he chooses instead to keep exposing himself to the one risk that can wound a billionaire.

Against this, there is no cushion. A broken heart costs a deckhand and a high roller exactly the same.

And optimism pays out in a wonderful currency. Hope! Adventure. It buys you fifth proposals. It buys you, at 58, after a bipolar diagnosis, after a stint in a mental health clinic, the chance to stand on an island and mean your vows all over again.

“I’m lucky she’s in my life,” James wrote of Kylie in his memoir, The Price of Fortune. She was by his side during his 2018 clinic stay. She knows his vulnerabilities, his challenges. Knows accepting the non-shiny parts of someone gives you insight that happy times just can’t. Maybe knows just placing a bet on love improves your life, win or lose.

I wonder what it is about James Packer that keeps attracting fiancées and brides, obvious answer aside. The money explains a first date. It doesn’t explain the rest.

His first wife Jodhi Meares still talks to him regularly, decades on. A couple of weeks ago his second wife Erica and their three children were at the wedding party of James’ niece Francesca Barham.– also in the Med.

Even Mariah gets nothing but grace. There seems zero scorched earth with any ex. Quite the personal life record for a lump of a lad whose company copped damning casino inquiries in three states. It suggests the possibility James Packer is a gentleman in matters of the heart. That women keep saying yes, not to the yacht but to the man, and keep liking the man long after the yacht sails on.

I’m possibly drunk on the smell of wedding cake, but it seems James learns from mistakes and knows what matters. His biggest regret, he once said, is “that I let my marriage to Erica fail”. Not a lost business deal, a human relationship.

So congrats, lovebird James. Let’s hope for once the house lost. May you play your cards right this time.

Kate Halfpenny is an author and the founder of Bad Mother Media.

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