love that part “pay dat man his money” Wish i met you when i was much younger, your knowledge and wisdom could have saved me lots of bad learning experiences in the sports and gambling life lol. I honestly think Stu Ungar was the best ALL around player in cards ( hold-em, gin rummy, and even blackjack) and so sad that after his mom died, he turned to drugs and i think was only 45 in the late 90"s when he died, he was amazing and probably had the IQ of a genius… I met a couple of good players and kid poker honestly was the nicest and maybe best out there now.
Bill888
I will agree that Stu might have had the highest IQ of any player I ever met in Las Vegas. I used to enjoy going over to where Chip Reese and Danny Robinson lived and watched Chip and Stu play backgammon in their wreck room all night long at $5,000 a game.
Unfortunately, by the year I first met Stu in the mid 70s, he was heavily into drugs and had the personality of a cockroach. Too bad I did not get to meet him earlier in his life.
As for Daniel Negreanu, I first met him on poker cruises going up and down both sides of the US and into the Carribean before he turned pro, and you could not have met a nicer human being back then. I also enjoyed his personality back when we were on sightseeing trips on the islands during the days in port.
Bet wisely,
David
Hi bill8888,
You mentioned playing 7 card stud.
People have often asked me what type of poker do I play as my personal favorite. My answer is kind of complicated.
If I am feeling intellectual, I play 7 card stud, because there are so many different variables going on during each hand being dealt.
If I am feeling aggressive, I play Texas Hold’em.
But if I want to play for enjoyment, I play Omaha high/low split and call for cocktails.
Have a nice day,
David
You are very funny with a great personality and i see why you get along so well with the sports people etc. As a kid my mom said i had the gift of gab and i guess it helped when i was a salesman but liked sports and poker more even though i made less money but so much fun. Very sad about Stu, many friends from my childhood were lost to drugs and dead or in jail:( drugs changes people for the worst of course), i read a little on Stu and amazed at such a young age so much talent but wasted and gone 2 early. Yep, kid poker VERY nice to everyone and i watch him now on Tv and hard not to like and root for him…Take care and thank you for taking time to chat with me…
A post was merged into an existing topic: The Totally Topic-less Anything Except Complaining Thread
Oh, my last 2 years playing for awww real money lol i learned hi-lo 7 stud and loved it and was kind of lucky, got the steel wheel ( A-5 suited as u know lol ) 3 times the first week i played it but NEVER had it since lol…It is sad that the casino where i live (Pittsburgh, Pa. ) and many others do not have much 7 stud ( and never 7-stud-hi-lo ). I actually come on this site as the money sites i play on (small fun stuff now) do not offer any stud games at all. I was forced to learn hold-em to play online and at casinos so that’s why i watched Rounders so much lol ( a good movie 2 ), tried Omah (both hi-lo and regular) and they are harder and you need to think more as first time i played Omaha i had A and 3 other cards and the flop came up A-A-A and i dropped because i thought u had to use 2 of your cards but forgot i had quad A’s with a kicker lol.
bill8888
Thanks for making me laugh.
David
Hi,
Here is a poker story you might enjoy.
Back around the early 80s we had a player that used to come into the Dunes poker room to play $40 $80 hold’em on weekends from who knows where. A real piece of work.
Every time he won a large or medium pot, at the show down, he would turn his cards face up and often the losing players would throw their hands away face down. With out exemption, he would make the dealer turn all the losing hands face up and show the losing cards to the whole table. It did not make any difference how the hand played out, he made the dealer show all the losing cards and he would have a big grin on his face while the dealer showed all the losing cards as asked.
This player was not the most popular person in the room.
One day one of the other players had had enough of that BS.
The local player finally got his opportunity at the end of a really, really big pot. Just the two of them at the show down.
The a-hole turned his cards face up showing a queen-ten of clubs as his hole cards, with three lower clubs on the board for a Queen high club flush.
The local player tossed his cards in face down, but not far enough away so that he could not reach them before the dealer could in order for the dealer to kill his hand.
The a-hole immediately started yelling, I mean yelling, for the dealer to turn the losing cards face up for all to see before they were placed in the muck. Remember, this was a really big pot.
The dealer reached over with an apologetic look on his face, and turned the two cards face up on the felt for everyone to see.
And see they did.
The ACE and Five of clubs for a new winner with an Ace high club flush.
The whole table started laughing while the a-hole started shoving his remaining chips on the table into his pockets and left the room. I never saw him again.
That was a nice day to work, because I was the dealer at the table.
Have a nice weekend,
David
How much are you getting paid here to answer questions all night:).
Minimum wage in Nigeria.
Beautifull place if Nigeria falls, went there on my honeymoon.
In memory of the great Doyle Brunson, can you share some experiences dealing for the Godfather of poker?
Absolutely love your blog; fun and informative reading! My question: In a live poker game, how important are “tells” and a couple of examples, please.
Hi, thanks for the question.
As to Doyle, he was the real deal. What you saw on TV was what he was like in real life. He was a serious gambler.
At a real table, he was all business during a hand in play, not like on TV when he was acting a part to be televised.
I dealt to him for about 8 years until I got out of dealing high stakes poker, and I always enjoyed watching him play.
This was when at home video recording machines (VHS & Beta) were just coming on the market. This was before Blockbuster stores were even thought about. I had access to Walt Disney movies like Cinderella and Snow White. When Doyle found out, he just had to get copies for his kids. After a couple of months, I was making copies for over a dozen high limit players. I even got a copy of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” two months before it hit the theaters. The high limit players were now paying me to get copies of movies for their families because there was no internet in the early 80s.
I used to go over to Doyle’s house every few weeks to bring him copies of movies for his kids.
Thinking back, I have very few stories that I remember about Doyle playing poker. Just a good solid player and an all-around nice guy.
It is 6 in the morning, and I cannot get sleepy so I might as well write something. This is an oddity of table games in Las Vegas. You have the world - then you have the United States - then you have Nevada - Then you have Las Vegas - see the pattern forming here? Then you have the strip - then you have the casinos on the strip. Then you have the table games inside the casinos. We will define a table game as a table with a live person dealing at that table. So, when you think about it, table game dealers are a very, very small percentage of the total amount of people that you mingle with every day. Here is the kicker. They are extremely easy to spot in their civilian clothes if you know what to look for. Anytime they have to pay for something you can spot them, because professional dealers are trained, and over trained, to clear their hands before they reach for a pocket in the clothes that they are wearing. We find ourselves smiling all the time when we are out about town, at a movie or at a restaurant. We will watch a person in line in front of us buying a ticket at a theater and watch his automatic clearing of his or her hands before they reach for a wallet for cash. Even in a restaurant, we will see a patron, at another table sitting down, clear both hands before reaching for a wallet in the back pocket to pay the check. This always makes us smile. We have noticed a brother in arms among the rest of the ordinary people around us, because we consider ourselves different, separate from the rest of humanity. We are part of a world of our own that the people around us know nothing about. In the casinos where we work, we are separate from everyone else, I guess mostly because we get paid more than most of the other employees.
I am writing this because two days ago I was in a grocery store in Las Vegas, and I saw a patron clear his hands before he reached for his wallet to pay for his groceries, and it put the biggest grin on my face. Old, ingrained habits die hard.
In fact, I can still tell you my M1 rifle serial number from the Vietnam War, circa 1966. 1210269
Anyway, I just yawned so maybe there is hope for sleep yet.
Good night and stay safe, David.
Superbowl is coming up and I just remembered a sports book story from Vegas that happened about 40 years ago.
I was dealing poker at the Palace Station at the time. The Sports book in the casino near my poker room had a special event going that year. As I recall, any player who wanted to join in this contest could put up $20 for a guaranteed prize pool of $20,000 dollars. What the players had to do was come in each week during the regular season and pick the winning team from one game being played that week. At the end of the season, the player who had guessed right the most times would win the $20,000 dollars. In case of a tie the prize pool would be split.
At the end of the season there was only one player who had picked every game correctly - every game. When a local tv station heard that the winner was the proverbial little old lady from Pasadena, they decided to put the cash award on the air. The camera was rolling when she showed up for her cash prize and she did a live presentation with questions from the reporter as she was handed one of those big four feet long two-foot-wide checks. The reporter asked her how she did it. Was she a long-time football fan with the knowledge that went with so many years watching the game being played during the football season?. Her answer was to say, at the least, unexpected. She was not really a big fan of football, her husband was, but she picked the winning teams out all by herself. When asked what her secret strategy was for picking so many winners in a row, this was her reply.
She said, “She looked at the name of the city that the teams represented, and picked the teams city that she would most enjoy shopping in that week”.
You would think that there would be laughter at that reply, but you could have heard a pin drop. The die-hard betters in the room were all waking away slowly with their heads hung low.
I just posted this in another collum, but this is too good a memory for all of you not to enjoy. Years ago if you were playing low limit poker at the Bike in Los Angeles, the bad beat cash prize was split 75% - 25% between the winner and loser with no share going to the rest of the table. This happened to me over 30 years ago. I hope you enjoy reading it.
My best remembered Valentines day was in about 1990.
My wife and I took a few days off from living in Las Vegas and went to Los Angeles to play some poker at the Bicycle poker room. There was a motel just next door to the “Bike” where we booked a room for our stay. Linda got tired about one in the morning, and I walked her to the room, and I went back to play some more 5 and 10 Texas Hold’em. About an hour later I won the large part of a bad beat jackpot for a little over $12,000 dollars. After I collected my winnings, I was ready to call it a night myself. When I got back to our room, I held the $12,000 dollars (in one hundred dollar bills) up in the air and let it fall all over our bed while my wife was still sleeping. I then went to sleep myself and was awakened by a loud scream several hours later when my wife woke up on Valentines morning.
A most enjoyable memory from Valintine’s days past.
It’s been a while since your post, but I wanted to offer some insight. You must have seen and experienced so much in the world of gambling.
I bet you’ve got some amazing stories to tell! It’s cool that you’re sharing your experiences online. Have you ever thought about writing them down? A platform like plainenglish.io could be a great place to share your insights and memories with others who are interested in the industry. I imagine working in the casino industry for so long has given you a unique perspective on the games and the people who play them. It’s a world that’s full of excitement and drama, that’s for sure!
Ok, I just remembered a story about David "Chip’ Reese.
Chip Reese and Danny Robinson were two of the greatest poker players to ever hit Las Vegas. As a team, they were allowed, by high limit poker rooms in Las Vegas to “share” a seat at tables that were playing for very high stakes. By this, I mean that one of them would play until he got tired, call his partner, and then get up from the chair leaving the checks in place and his partner would sit down and start playing as if he was playing in that seat from the beginning. Believe me, this was definitely not normal practice in Las Vegas Poker Rooms where there was usually a waiting list for new players to sit down. This was only allowed during extremely high limit poker games in action with prior permission from management.
Anyway, Chip was always a little overweight with a large appetite when playing for high limits. There was a stand-alone restaurant in the middle of the strip that served quality food for those who could afford the price. Chip would frequently call in for a takeout order and give a dealer going on break a $50 tip to drive down the strip and pick it up for him. I was chosen many times for this task. Chip’s favorite takeout was a full roast of lamb ribs, with all the side dishes, that he would eat at the table while playing.
The sticker pickup price was $170 plus tax for this one-person meal. Chip would pick up $250 from his chips on the table and say," leave the change for whoever gives it to you"
(minus my $50 delivery fee).
As you can tell, high limit poker players do not think of money the way normal people do. They would often loan 10s of thousands of dollars to other players at the table who they knew were good for it, mostly so that there would be no paper trail for the IRS to follow. This was not a loan shark type of operation. Just a quick loan to stay in the game and not lose their seat, to be paid back within the week. (I think it was also loaned out by players who could tell the recipient was having a bad night and they could probably win the cash back at the table and still be owed the full amount.)
Anyway, just a memory that just hit me.
Stay safe, David