Poker News

Johnny Moss

Johnny Moss was THE man… the “Grand Old Man of Poker.”

Poker’s answer to Babe Ruth, the winner of three World Series championships. He might have had a fourth, but Puggy Pearson’s ace-high in the 1973 no limit hold ‘em event left Moss in second place.

During his best years, no one cast a longer shadow than Moss.

He was already a member of the Poker Hall of Fame when he died in Las Vegas in 1995 at the age of 89.

During his best year’s Moss was poker’s equivalent of the fastest gun in town that every new comer with big goals and a bankroll to match wanted to take a shot at. You had to beat Moss to get a reputation that would stick.

Which is how he and Doyle Brunson met. It was a 1960 game in Brenham, Texas, one of the many road games that kept the best poker players on the move in the years before it was possible to settle down in locales such as Las Vegas or Atlantic City.

“Moss was THE man then,” Brunson says. “I was the young challenger to people like him.”

Winning a reputation meant beating Moss at games such as no limit low ball and hold “em Poker pro Eric Drache who ran the Horseshoe’s World Series of Poker for 16 years, remembers showing up in 1972 to play in the WSOP’s seven-card stud tournament.

“They told me the tournament had been rescheduled for another day because Johnny Moss had played late in a side game the night before and had to get his sleep.”

Drache laughs about that now. “I had no idea who Moss was, but that’s how big an impact he had on poker then.”

The game would be rescheduled until the “Grand Old Man” could get there.

“I had never heard of any such thing.”

Wasn’t much that Horseshoe founder Benny Binion wouldn’t do for his life-long buddy. Moving one event didn’t seem like a big deal. . . the natural thing to do when it involved Moss.

Of course poker, was a far smaller piece of the casino business during those early years. Many of the best known players, the characters, the personalities are now in the Poker Hall of Fame: Red Winn, Pearson, Murph Harrold, Tommy Abdo, “Puggy” Pearson. And, of course, Moss.

“Those guys,” Pearson says, “They was the head scufflers back in those days.” Thinking about that, adding, “Yes sir, it’s a fact that poker’s changed a whole lot since then.” Harrold’s son Dean, a veteran Las Vegas gaming executive, remembers Moss as a regular in some of the games thatg consumed so much of Murph’s time. “Johnny was one of the best,” Dean says, “A man who had a certain instinct you don’t get from reading books about how to come away a winner.”

By the time, Brunson first sat down at a Brenham, Texas, poker table with Moss in 1960, “The Grand Old Man” had already taken on and beaten Nick “The Greek” Dandolos in the marathon Las Vegas poker sessions, that adsded to the reputations of everyone involved.

Most of them were played at the Flamingo, says Jack Binion. But some of the best known ones were played at the Horseshoe, where Jack’s dad and Horseshoe founder Benny, had decided a good high stakes poker game featuring a couple of solid personalities, might attract people to the new Fremont gambling hall the elder Binion had opened in 1951.

“Johnny was a much better player,” Jack Binion remembers, “but that’s the game Nick wanted to play. The two of them played over a number of years, back into the 1940s. Most of their sessions were at the Flamingo.”

Did they play in Texas?

Binion grins at that. “No . . . no, Nick never went down to Texas.”

The passage of years and the astounding nature of Moss’ larger than life achievedments in the world of poker a half century and more ago have tended to soften recollections of his approach to poker and life in general.

But no one pretends that there was anything gentle to the Moss approach. “The man had a sense of humor but he could also show you all the sharp edges, like a bundle of barbed wire,” says a Moss acquaintance who did not want to be identified. “He could be so cantankerous it was hard to be in the same room with him.”

Drache says, “I remember Johnny saying one day that anyone over the age of about 60 should be taken out and shot. What made this funny was at the time he said this he was more than 70.”

A Las Vegas reporter remembering his first interview with Moss says, “I asked the guy what it takes to be successful at the poker table. He looked at me like I had just asked him the stupidest question he had ever heard. He taps a finger against his wrist, says, “You’ve gotta have ice water in your veins. You cut me right here and now, that’s what you’re gonna get. Isn’t gonna be blood, it’s gonna be ice water.’” More than four decades after their first games on the Texas poker circuit, Brunson says of Moss, “We were friendly but we never really friends. We were friendly adversaries. Johnny was too much the rattlesnake for me.”

Was Moss as good as the legend has painted him? “He was very, very good,” Brunson says, “the big man of poker back then. Me? I was the young challenger.” Moss’ death closed the book on a period when poker players accomplished big things, as much through the force of personality as the use of skill.

“I played in games with Johnny maybe 30 times,” says former Poker Player editor Gary Thompson. It was mostly the middle limit games because in the later years his skills had slipped some. Everyone knew that, but I could still see flashes of the player he had been. What really stand out was those piercing eyes, like he could look right through you.”

Drache remembers Moss for some of the “good advice” he got from him. “When I got out to Las Vegas about all I played was seven-card stud. That was my game, but Johnny was the one who told me I should learn as many as I could. He said you never knows where you’re gonna find a good opportunity and you hate to miss it because it’s not your game.”

“The thing about Johnny,” Binion says, “Poker was his life. He played it till he died.”

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