Table of Contents:

Billy Walters
Chip Reese
Tommy Hyland
Mike Svobodny
Stan Tomchin
Cathy Hulbert
Alan Woods
Doyle Brunson

Index of Notes

Glossary

Excerpt:

     David “Chip” Reese is considered by many to be the best all-around poker player in the world. He was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 1991 at the age of forty—the youngest Hall of Famer ever. Though he’s semi-retired, when the really big guns come out to play $2,000-$4,000 or $3,000-$6,000 limits, he finds that it’s worth his time to ante up.
     Beyond poker, Chip is a big-money sports bettor. He bets football and basketball, but it’s baseball that has made him millions. Using a computer program that simulates games, he and his partners can plug in two teams and have them play each other thousands of times. Analyzing the results gives them a better line than the bookmakers put out, which has translated into enormous profits.
     Chip grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and started gambling at five. When a neighbor boy came to Chip’s mother to tell her that he’d been playing poker with the older kids, she thought he would learn a lesson by losing all his baseball cards. Instead, Chip won them all (the boy wanted to broker a settlement to get them back). In high school he won his state debate championship. At Dartmouth he won so much money playing poker that his fraternity game room was dedicated the David E. Reese Memorial Card Room. He says he “was programmed” to go to law school. But after being accepted to Harvard, he didn’t go.
     After migrating to Las Vegas in 1974, Chip promptly went broke playing blackjack and craps. Then he discovered poker and everything changed. He entered a poker tournament at the Sahara Hotel and won it. “I had a hundred grand and I was twenty-three years old, having the time of my life. I had no intention of going anywhere.”
     According to Chip, there’s no politics in gambling. “You control your destiny.” There is nothing to keep you from the top if you have talent, character, and a strong work ethic. “If you’re the best, you’ll get there.”

When did you start gambling?

     I started gambling when I was a little kid. I learned how to play poker when I was in kindergarten. The fifth and sixth graders who lived in my neighborhood used to have a big game on one kid’s front porch. They played for baseball cards. My mother later told me about one of the older kids next door, named Sherman. He came over to the house one day and knocked on the front door. He said, “Mrs. Reese, there’s something you need to know. All the fifth and sixth graders are playing poker for baseball cards and Chip has been playing with them.” She said, “I’m glad you told me that. You go teach him a lesson and win all his baseball cards.” He said, “That’s not why I’m here. He won all the baseball cards and we want to get them back!” That was my first score.

score—A big win.

     I had rheumatic fever when I was a kid. Now, I think, if you have rheumatic fever they make you exercise like crazy. But back then, they worried that you might have heart damage, so they made you lie still without any activity for about a year. I missed the whole first grade. I did it from my house, but I was stir crazy. I was an active kid, and my mom stayed home to try to keep me down. The only two things I did for a year were eat, which I love still and has caused my weight problem, and play games. Monopoly, every board game there was, she taught me. I got highly competitive in the first grade with cards and everything. As I look back on it, I’m really a product of that year. In my life, I’m like a little kid. I get up every day and say, “What am I going to play today?” It’s not like I’m going to work. I’ve never gone to work. The hardest thing I ever did in my life was school because I didn’t really want to do it.
     My grandfather was a big figure in the sports world. He started the Mid-American conference with Miami of Ohio, Ohio University, and all those schools. He loved to play gin rummy. When I was in grade school, he’d play gin rummy with his friends, and I’d watch him play and he taught me.
     In high school I played football. I was also in theater and debate, but I still found time to play poker. When I went to Dartmouth I wasn’t wealthy, but there were a lot of wealthy kids there. My fraternity brothers played poker all the time. That’s where I really started playing. It wasn’t a lot of money, but I won all kinds of privileges. Guys owed me money, and maybe they owned a car, so I got to use it. I’d have people go for pizza runs and things like that. It was almost a barter system from playing poker. That’s where I learned that I really liked it.

Where did you grow up?

     Dayton, Ohio. I was going to go to law school when I got out of Dartmouth. I’d never been to Las Vegas, but a friend of mine had moved out here with his family. I came out to visit him and had four hundred dollars. I lost the four hundred playing blackjack the first night. His father worked at some land company, so I went to work in the phone room to schedule leads for the salesmen.

Like a boiler room?

     Yeah. I needed money so I could go play. At first I didn’t even think about poker. Then I started playing. When it came time for me to go to school, I entered a little poker tournament at the Sahara Hotel and won it. So I had over $100,000.

Wow, so it wasn’t that little a tournament.

     I won about $40,000 in that off a five hundred dollar buy-in. I started out playing $5-$10 7-card stud, which was my game at the time. It was the only game I really knew how to play. I played a lot in college, and in the summer I played in rake games in Dayton. I didn’t know it at the time, but they played very good 7-card stud1 back in Ohio, and very poor 7-card stud here in Las Vegas. They didn’t know how to play at all, because most of the big players here were Texans. They played no-limit hold ’em.

rake—A fee charged by the house for dealing the game.
The house rakes a specified amount, often a percentage, from each pot.

     I had $100,000 and I was twenty-three years old, having the time of my life, and I had no intention of going anywhere right away. I never left. I got broke a few times. Between the ages of twenty-three and thirty I was probably a millionaire and broke four times. This was back in the ’70s.
     I had a partner, a guy from Dayton named Danny Robeson. He’s a very good 7-card stud player and a very good gin rummy player. Danny and I had moved up to the $30-$60 level. We had a bankroll of about $40,000. Johnny Moss2 had the poker room in the Flamingo Hotel. He only had about six tables, but the biggest game in town was there. I was playing in a $10-$20 stud game waiting for the $30-$60 game to start. Danny and I used to play in shifts and we only played 7-card stud. I looked over and there was a game going on, all black chips.3 It’s Doyle Brunson, Johnny Moss, Puggy Pearson, Nick Vachiano, who was a big player at that time, and a few others [Doyle Brunson is interviewed and Puggy Pearson is profiled in Chapter 8]. These were all the top players in the world. They wouldn’t let you very close to the table, but I looked and they were playing high-low split. I played high-low split all the time in college. I was playing in my game but I was watching them and they were playing terribly. The buy-in for the game was $10,000, which is nothing for a game like that. In $400-$800 high-low split, it might last you two hands.
     I called up Danny and he was asleep. I said, “This is the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen. Here are all these world champions and they’re the worst players I ever saw at this game.” Danny said, “These are the best players in the world. What are you talking about?” And I said, “Danny, believe me. I know what I’m talking about.” I convinced him to let me take $15,000 and get into this game. So I get into the game and nobody knew at all who I was. I was just some kid. It was true. They were awful players at this particular game. In high-low split you just can’t play high hands and get away with it. They’re playing two kings, and raising. The first day I played about ten hours and won $66,000. It was like stealing. Unbelievable. I started on a Thursday and I played the whole weekend and won about $350,000. That’s really where things sort of took off.

Was that the first time you had played for those stakes?

     Oh yeah.

What was that like, going from $10-$20 to $400-$800?

     It was almost like the jitters I got before a big debate or a football game. But I’m a game player and I never had a problem thinking about what those chips were worth. Once I got in the game I was just playing. It never hit me until I was done how much I’d won. Plus, it was so easy. I’m not one who goes back and rehashes hands—I’ve played so many of them in my life—but there was one hand I’ll never forget, because it was so exciting. I had an A2346 made for low. A wheel is the best hand. In my low I had A234 of hearts and then an off-suit 6. Nick Vachiano had a 6 and 5 and a couple of big cards up. Puggy might have had an 87 low made. No one could beat me for low. Johnny Moss had a flush and Doyle had three of a kind. It was an unbelievable hand. I wasn’t even the aggressor in the pot. I was just calling. They’re jamming these pots and trying to jam me out. Puggy is jamming with his 87 because he thinks Nicky is drawing to a 6. I’m just a stranger in the game and when you’re the stranger, they don’t give you credit for anything. I put my money in and the last card I caught the 5 of hearts. I made a straight flush wheel and scooped everybody. I remember counting the pot down and my profit on that hand was $29,000. It’s like playing in a $40-$80 game and winning $2,900 on a hand. It’s almost impossible to do. That was one hand I always remembered because it sent me over the top.

jam—As used here, to bet aggressively. Also known as “ramming and jamming,”
it often means big or fast action, as in “a jam-up game.”

wheel—In poker, a hand of A2345. The best hand when playing for low; also called a “bicycle.”

What about making the transition to playing no-limit? Is no-limit really a different game?

     It’s a totally different game. In the beginning it was a big transition. Now, I’ve played so much of it that I really don’t care what I play anymore.

Did they beat you up in the beginning? Was there a big learning curve?

     There was a learning curve, but I didn’t get beat up because I was very careful. I picked my spots and at no-limit I didn’t jump in and play with everybody. We started introducing other things. We’d negotiate; like, we’d play one game for a half hour then a half hour of something else. In the big games you don’t have eighty billion players waiting for a seat. I’d won all this money playing 7-card stud and high-low split, and now everybody wanted to play with me. It’s hard to explain, but when you’re young in this town, no one views you as a talent until you’ve paid your dues. Now I see it happening with other young players who are very good.
     There was Doyle, Johnny Moss, Sarge Ferris. They were all established guys in town and anybody who was young and a stranger wasn’t given any credit. It was really great because I got hustled to do everything. I’d walk in the room and get attacked. Let’s play this or that. My partner and I were nicknamed the “gold-dust twins.” We were the talk of the town. I always got mobbed, because all Danny ever played was gin rummy and stud, but I was willing to play anything. So everybody was just attacking me to match up and play something. It was fun.
     Getting back to your question, I got to the point where somebody would hustle me to play no-limit or something, and I would say, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll play a half hour of no-limit hold ’em and a half hour of high-low split.” I knew I was a tremendous favorite in the high-low split, so the no-limit learning curve didn’t really cost me much.

Nick Vachiano—was he a pool player?

     Yeah. Nick was one of the few guys that never got broke. He was a tremendous game maker. He wasn’t the best pool player in the world, but they always talked about how Nicky knew how to take care of himself in a pool room or a poker room. He could make a game and he could handicap a game. The only downside he had was that when he was winning, he was a hit-and-run guy. He’d win a little bit and if he lost he’d go for a number. Most of the time he won, because usually, during the course of a session you get ahead a little bit. So he booked a lot of winners and very few losers playing cards, but when he did book a loser, it was a big one.

game maker—A player who arranges a proposition. A good “game maker” is skilled at
arranging favorable bets. To set up a favorable wager in a contest is to “make a good game.”

go for a number—To take a big loss.

     I remember one time we were playing $300-$600 at the Flamingo and Nick was losing about $40,000. Danny and I were still young and getting started. The game had been going on a long time and I quit. There were a couple other guys who didn’t want to play short-handed, so the game was going to break up. Nick says, “Hold it.” This is the kind of guy he was, and you had to love him for it. He gets up and takes me down to the cage. He goes to his safe deposit box, and he’s got a big box. I only had a little safe deposit box—I had about $300,000 in it and I was proud as hell. He’s got all these rubber bands around his wrist from packages of money he’s gone through. He had these little fingers that were very well manicured. You could tell he hadn’t worked a day in his life. He opens this big box and he probably had a million dollars in it. He says, “See this here. You know me. I always win and I leave. This is the only time you got a shot at this money—when I’m going off.” He says, “Are you sure you want to quit?” You can tell when a guy is in heat from gambling. I smiled and said, “You know, you’re right, Nick. Let’s go back and play.” He went off for about $200,000 in that game. He talked me into staying and winning a bunch of money.

I’ve heard that back in the ’70s there was a lot of cheating going on in the poker rooms. How did they cheat?

     A bunch of ways. There was a mob influence back then. Most of the top players had trouble with that along the way.

You mean the mob wanted a piece of their action?

     Yeah, and if you didn’t give it to them, there was extortion. There were a lot of problems in the ’70s for me and for a lot of the guys. There was an element around that was bad. The card rooms weren’t safe. They didn’t have the cameras back then that they have now to protect the games. The shift bosses sometimes would put marked cards into the games. I was totally naïve to that when I first came to town.

How was it that they didn’t bust you? Or did they a few times?

     They did many times. But you hear things; people come and tell you things about what happened to you. The way I learned to protect myself back in those days was to be a tremendous manager. I’d sit down in a game with people that I knew I was supposed to beat, and if I didn’t beat them, I set a number for myself and that was all I would lose. If I didn’t beat them, chances were something was wrong in the game. As I got more experienced I could feel it. It’s very difficult, if you’re playing with marked cards, to see the marks. You have to train your eyes for hours and hours to see marked cards, and some people can never see them. So the way you learn to protect yourself is to feel it. If a guy is playing and you never get to see his hand, there might be a good reason for that: You’re folding because he’s raising you when you have nothing, and whenever you have a good hand, he folds.
     Some of the cheaters were colorful figures who gambled, too. They wanted to cheat you, but if they couldn’t they’d play you anyway. They were guys that everybody liked. If you got cheated you didn’t get that mad, because when they weren’t cheating, it was like you were cheating them—you were so much better than they were. What happened with guys who were cheaters is they never learned how to play. They only learned how to cheat and they were bad players. It was a double-edged sword. You’d sit in the poker room saying, I know I could be getting cheated here but if I’m not … this guy is pumped up right now and I can break him. There were many instances where guys were cheaters and I would break them. When they got me, they would break me. But every time you got it put to you, you kind of learned over time what it was [that they did]. Somebody always told you later on or something like that. The only way you could really protect yourself was to set a number and quit the game no matter how great it looked.
     That kind of all went away after it got to a point where it got kind of bad.

So that all ended when?

     About 1979 or 1980. When I had the poker room at the Dunes, I had run-ins with a lot of guys. A bunch of us decided enough was enough. We made a pact to clean it up. Meanwhile, big players who were cheats were older guys and they died off or drifted away. Now it’s totally clean in the casinos. In the casinos here and in California the camera systems are good. Guys can’t hold out. Occasionally you have to worry about your shift bosses putting marked cards in or something like that, but most of the established places are squeaky clean. Then you have to worry about teams and playing partners in the game. But if you have any experience at all you’ll notice that right away. In the big games we police ourselves. At that level it’s very easy to feel it when something’s not right. It doesn’t really happen anymore.

holding out—Palming cards and taking them out of the game.
The cheat then brings those cards back into his hand when they’ll help him.

It seems that a lot of people play in games that are too tough for them.

     The Peter Principle—everyone rises to the level of his own incompetence.

Wouldn’t a lot of these players do better if they dropped down one level?

     It’s the nature of the beast. It’s hard to do. Once you’ve tasted the grape, you can’t go back.

Where is the big game now?

     Bellagio, that’s where all the big action is.

I used to hear these stories about guys winning hundreds of thousands of dollars and then being broke a week later.

     That’s the way it was back in the ’70s. The ’70s were the most fun times for me out here. I was naïve, I was a kid, and so much was happening. It was exciting. It was like being in the Wild West and going into the Dunes every day with your gun on. You were either going to win a lot of money or you were going to get broke.

But your reputation is that you aren’t one of those guys who get broke all the time.

     I matured. Seven-card stud was my game. I was a decent gin rummy player, but at that time not nearly good enough to play at the very top level. Now I’m not afraid to play anybody in the world at gin rummy. But back then I was so young and reckless that I felt like I could conquer the world in every game. I would sit down in games that I really didn’t know how to play. They’d play deuce-to-seven lowball, they’d play razz … they played all these games I’d never played before and I’d just hop in. There was that cheating going on back in the early ’70s. So I’d get broke from that.
     But I learned to play all the games, because I wasn’t afraid to play. A lot of guys who were specialists back then, really good players, and had money, are broke now. The nature of the games changed over the years. Sometimes you’re playing stud, sometimes deuce-to-seven lowball; the popularity at the top changes, and the guys who know how to play only one game can play only when that game is being spread. The knife-and-fork eats them up.

The knife-and-fork?

     That’s your nut. Your rent and everything come due and you’re out of action, because they aren’t playing your game. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise that I learned how to play all those games. Of course, when you’re twenty-three years old, getting broke is no big deal.

Right. You don’t have kids. You don’t have responsibilities.

     I ran the Dunes poker room. I went in to Morris Shenker at the Dunes and introduced myself. I was twenty-eight at the time. I gave him a sales pitch and told him I wanted to run the poker room. I asked him what the poker room was doing in terms of figures and I gave him all these guarantees that I would do this, this, and this. If I did, he would have to give me more money. I did it and he liked me, so for four years I ran the poker room. From that I started playing big poker again and winning.
     By that time I’d learned some of the traps of the town. This is a town of traps. Back then, if you ever got hold of any money, people were just gunning for you. Not just playing, but trying to figure out ways to cheat you. If you didn’t really know what you were doing, you couldn’t avoid the traps. I probably have a reputation for not being one of those guys, because I matured quickly. But there was a period of five or six years where I was as nutty as everybody else was.

It seems that a lot of guys would make money at one form of gambling, then blow it at another, like craps or sports betting. They have to know they can’t beat craps.

     It still happens. A perfect example is this kid Archie (Karas). Here’s a guy who had no money, ran it into $30 million, and went completely broke. It sounds crazy. You say to yourself: When he got to $20 million, why didn’t he put some of it aside? But who’s crazy enough to take all his money and run it into $30 million at the crap table? Who’s crazy enough to just keep betting it all, betting it all, every chance he gets? I asked him one time, “What’s your goal?” He wanted to win the Horseshoe Casino. The mentality that’s nutty enough to get hold of that kind of money doesn’t have enough sense to hold on to the money. It’s amazing to watch. A lot of these guys have self-destructive tendencies. It’s interesting to see how some guys can handle having money and some guys can’t. Some guys that never had it before, they get hold of money and they just don’t know what to do. It’s almost like they can’t sleep at night until they get rid of it.

I heard that Archie was playing all the best poker players in the world heads-up, and beating everybody.

heads-up—To play against only one opponent.

     I’ll tell you what he did. You heard the whole story about the pool game?

No, I didn’t hear anything about pool.

     He had $2,000 to his name and was sleeping in a 1978 van. He went to the pool hall one day and saw a guy who used to be a very good pool player. Archie said, “I’ll play you a game of pool for $2,000.” Now they knew each other from poker and pool. The guy said, “No, I’ll play you a game for $5,000.” Now Archie didn’t have $5,000, so he went to a guy and borrowed the additional $3,000, and they went partners. The guy he was playing used to be a good pool player, but he hadn’t played in years, so he was rusty. Archie started beating him. They went up to $10,000, $20,000, and when Archie got up about $200,000 the partner cut out and took his profit, leaving Archie with $100,000.
     Archie starts playing $25,000 a game and beats the guy for about $1.8 million. The guy didn’t quit because he knew he wasn’t playing up to his game. Now the guy started playing better and won about $800,000 back, and Archie quit.
     Archie went down to the Horseshoe and immediately took the million dollars to the crap table. The Horseshoe had the biggest limits in the world at the time, and he was betting $20,000 on the line and taking full odds. He started firing from the hip and won about $3 or $4 million in the course of about a week. He wanted them to raise their limits and he was playing every day. He was nuts. He ran that into about $10 million. Now there was a poker tournament going on, and he came around hustling everybody to play poker.

Did anybody know him before this?

     Everybody knew him. I’ve known him for twenty-five years. He was a player who was always in and out of money. When he was eighteen, he got off the boat from Greece. He’s actually made some big scores. He’s had two or three hundred thousand many times in his life. He’s one of those guys who will take advantage of you if possible, but he’s great to play with.
     He and I played [during his run], and probably no one has ever played this high. I’ll never forget it. We started at one o’clock in the afternoon playing $10,000-$20,000 7-card stud for half an hour and $10,000-$20,000 Razz for half an hour. He thinks Razz is his game. He had a run of cards like I’ve never faced before. We played from one o’clock in the afternoon until five the next morning and he beat me out of $2 million. Eventually I got the $2 million back and I beat him and he quit me, and then he went back to the crap table.
     He played a few other guys and won, but nothing that big. One time I was playing him at the Mirage. Archie was not a guy that you really gave credit to when he was broke. I had him stuck about a million and he ran out of money. I’ve got him completely on tilt, and he’s firing off his money. Then he tells me his money is in the bank. This was on a Friday morning and we’d been playing all night. He said, “Will you loan me some money?” Now I have to think to myself, am I doing the right thing? I know I’m going to win, but am I going to lose a customer because he might not pay me? I made the judgment that he would pay me. I decided to loan him up to a million. So I loaned him the million and beat him out of that.

stuck—Losing money. Usually used in the context of a single session.

tilt—Playing badly or wildly when losing.

firing off—Playing badly and with such reckless disregard that the player loses all his money.

     He called me at my house and said he was going to pay me. My son had a soccer game, and I never miss his games. I said, “Why don’t you meet me at nine o’clock at such and such a spot?” And he said, “Okay.” I got there early. I didn’t mistrust him in this way, but I just wanted to make sure there were no cars around and that I wasn’t going to get robbed. I got there about thirty minutes early and sat back by some bushes and looked around. Here he comes, driving really slowly like a little old man. It made me laugh. I’m sitting in my car and I see him coming down the road like he’s out for a Saturday-morning drive. I pull out and he sees me and comes over. He opens his trunk and he’s got a million in cash. I take the money and shake his hand and say, “See you Monday” or whatever.
     Now, my son’s soccer game is going to start and I don’t want to miss the game. I think to myself, what am I going to do with this money? I figure, what’s the price on someone robbing your trunk at nine in the morning at a kid’s soccer game? I just put it in my trunk and went and watched the game.

price—The odds or line on a proposition.

Archie ended up playing other guys too, right?

     He did for a while. Everybody beat him. After his roll, there was a story about him in Cigar Aficionado magazine saying that he beat everybody and he beat my brains in. I never disputed the story. “You’re the best,” I told him. It was good for me, actually. I’m used to taking heat the other way. Everybody knew I slaughtered him after that.

It must be a big problem dealing with that much cash.

     It isn’t for me because I’ve always paid huge taxes. I learned at a very early age that if you ever want to own anything or have anything, you have to pay income tax. You can’t have a house like this unless you pay the taxes on what you earn. If you’re a gambler living out of your pocket, you only have to pay for what they can prove you spend. I’m very happy that for the last fifteen years I’ve paid a tremendous amount of income tax.

Description:
     Get into the minds of the greatest gamblers of all time with Gambling Wizards by Richard W. Munchkin. Read in-depth interviews with eight masters of the games. Learn how they think, how they play, and what made them successful.
     The interview subjects include: Billy Walters (sports betting), Chip Reese (poker), Doyle Brunson (poker), Mike Svobodny (backgammon), Stan Tomchin (backgammon and sports betting), Cathy Hulbert (blackjack and poker), Alan Woods (blackjack and horse racing), and Tommy Hyland (blackjack).

Reviews/Media Mentions:
Casino Player, Fun N Games, Midwest Gaming and Travel, Las Vegas Life, Las Vegas Mercury, Las Vegas Life, Houston Chronicle, Star Ledger, Las Vegas Review Journal, Los Angeles Times