Poker News

Susie Isaacs

How much do you know about our favorite game? I’m going to tell you all you never knew that you wanted to know about the sport that is sweeping the nation, indeed the world.

Jonathan H. Green made one of the earliest written referencesto “poker” in 1834. Although poker has always been considered a man’s game, today women are coming on strong. Don Jarchow, owner of the Gambler’s General Store in Las Vegas, which houses the largest collection of gaming books and paraphernalia in the world states, “Women buy over 50% of the cars in this country and they control 68% of the wealth. If you think they can’t play poker, you better sit down and buckle up.”

History suggests that card sharks developed the card game in France. New Orleans, once controlled by the French, was a gateway to America and it was in New Orleans that poker was first played in this country. It is believed that Americans derived the actual name “poker” from the French word “poke” which came from “hocus-pocus” a term widely used in reference to magic. In the early days cheating was rampart as were the murders of the cheaters, if they were caught.

The Old West was a gambler’s circuit. Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickock were the first known professional poker players. Poker Alice was the first known female professional poker player. Hickock was shot in the back and died in a poker game in 1876 holding what became known as the “Dead Man’s Hand”, aces and eights.

Riverboats and paddle wheelers were prominent along the Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri coasts in the mid 1800s. By 1850 steamboats had gambling and commerce on the move and it was a gambling and poker-playing Mecca. With the offerings of luxurious passenger cabins, elaborate decor with grand staircases and carpeted lounges, the rich and famous men and women played poker in fancy parlors. Playing poker on riverboats was actually considered a fashion statement and the participants dressed accordingly.

This acceptability phase did not last long. Steamboats quickly became relics in an era gone by with the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. At the turn of the century poker was considered an illegal activity in the majority of America. Men still played poker, but they did so secretively. Females did not play, unless they were rebels.

One such rebel, the most famous female poker player of the time was Poker Alice, born Alice Ivers on February 17, 1853, in Devonshire, England. As a girl she moved with her family to Colorado. She married a gambler, Frank Duffield who taught her how to play poker. After being widowed as a young woman, she spent time in gambling halls and became a professional poker dealer. Her second marriage was to a gambler named Tubbs. History reports that Tubbs usually lost at poker and annoyed Alice with his lack of luck and ability at the poker table. Alice was the winning player. She supported their family of four boys and three girls with poker winnings, which could total as much as $6,000 on a good night. A fortune in the late 1800’s! She always carried a .38 revolver and used it when necessary.

In the 1920’s only five games were legal in Las Vegas, and three of those games were poker; stud, draw poker and lowball, the other two games played were a game called “500″ and bridge. Legalization of gambling began in 1931 and the first lawful casino license was issued to a woman, Mayme Stocker. When she first arrived in Las Vegas in 1911 she referred to her new environment as the “doorstop to hell.” The Stocker family moved to Las Vegas because the men folk, her husband and two sons worked for the railroad. The railroad had made it clear that anyone entering the business of gambling in Las Vegas would be fired. In order to keep her husband and sons respectable, she agreed to have the license put in her name. It was a good gamble and Mayme Stocker and her family eventually became leaders of the communities.

Prohibition did not hinder freethinking adults from drinking or from playing poker. By the mid-thirties prohibition had come to an end although drinking and playing poker did not become acceptable overnight. By themid-fifties, men played illegal poker in basements, backrooms, barns and other non-mainstream locations. Their games were often raided or robbed. If they couldn’t pay off the law, they often jumped out of windows to avoid the raids. Men who were upstanding citizens began to have regular “private” poker games. These games were considered acceptable and respectable but the law disagreed. These games also were victim to robberies and raids. Doyle Brunson recalls one huge game in which the stakes were so high that they had their own armed-guards on rooftops surrounding the building that housed the game.

In the summer of 1949, in Las Vegas, the famous gambler Nicholas “Nick the Greek” Dandolos approached Benny Binion, poker player and owner of the famous Binion’s Horseshoe Casino with an unusual request. He wanted to challenge the best poker players in the world to a poker marathon. Binion agreed to host the match with one stipulation, the poker match had to be played in public view. The poker game ultimately lasted five months with the players taking only bathroom and sleep breaks. Johnny Moss won the “biggest game in town” and an estimated two million dollars. Binion later noted that the public had gathered each day to watch the poker match with the “fervor of dedicated sports fans.”

In the fifties three Texas Rounders (road gamblers), Doyle Brunson, Sailor Roberts and Amarillo Slim Preston played highstakes poker all over the state of Texas. They went from town to town to find new marks (if you don’t know what a “mark” is, you may be one) and to avoid the law. According to Slim, “We went through Texas like a vacuum cleaner, sucking up all the money.” During the fifties, being a professional poker player was not a profession to be proud of.” Slim continues, “Folks treated us like we had just crawled out from under a rock. One thing for sure, Doyle never got broke. If we got short, we’d get us a ladder! I never did really look for suckers, I wanted to find the ones who thought they were champions and make a sucker out of em.”

Doyle, one of the original Rounders and highly loved and respected today, agrees with the bad reputation of years gone by. “I remember one time back in the fifties,” he shook his head as he reminisced, “I saw an old college buddy walking down the street, coming toward me. He crossed the street so he wouldn’t have to talk to me.” Doyle’s opinion was that he and his poker buddies weren’t the bad guys, the bad guys were the robbers or highjackers, as the Rounders called them. “If one man can take credit for taking poker out of the slums and making it a respectable business, it would be Doyle Brunson. In the sixties, after they had bled Texasdry, they looked for “greener” pastures and found them 1,400 miles west, first in Reno, Nevada, and then in Las Vegas. In Vegas they hooked up with a Tennessee Rounder, Puggy Pearson and the infamous Benny Binion.

It was during this time that Bill Boyd came to Las Vegas and brought poker with him. He leased out space at the Golden Nugget Casino and opened a poker room. In these days, poker was not regulated and the house could take as much rake as they pleased. An average rake would be ten percent with no cap. Today it is ten percent with a $3.00 to $5.00 maximum. In some poker rooms, one low-limit, high-volume table would be designated as a “snatch” table.

We will have more on snatch games and our historical poker journey in the next edition of Chip Chatter.

Susie Isaacs has written about poker and poker players since 1985. She is the first woman to win back-to-back titles at the World Series of Poker. Her latest venture is a line of “Designer Gaming Jewelry.” Visit www.susieisaacs.com.

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