Johnny Moss is the grand old man of poker. He was voted the winner of the first tournament in 1970 by his peers and won the tournament in 1971 and again in 1974. Today, at 82, he`s still a contender.
”I`ve won a lot of tournaments,” Moss says from his hotel room at Binion`s Horseshoe. ”I think I may win the tournament this year.”
Johnny Chan agrees. ”Moss has been playing-what-60 years? It`s hard to compete with that.`
Doyle Brunson came to national attention when he won back-to-back World Series titles in 1976 and `77. There were 22-some players one year and 34 players the next. From those two tournaments he took home more than half a million dollars. Brunson is also the author of ”How I Made a Million Dollars Playing Poker,” considered the definitive poker book.
A college basketball star in Abilene, Tex., in the 1950s, Brunson found his career cut short when a ton of sheetrock fell on his leg during a summer job. At that point, he says, ”I changed from an athlete to a student.”
During his study breaks, he also realized he was ”a little bit better than most” at poker. After getting a master`s in business administration and a short stint with Burroughs Corp., Brunson started on the poker circuit.
”When I started out playing, it was illegal. . . . It wasn`t anything major, you understand, but the local authorities felt like they had to do something. In those days, the Eagles, the Elks Clubs, open games and such, that`s where the circuit was. Today the games have shifted more to country clubs.
”It used to be (on the circuit) a player that could play all the games had a distinct advantage because when a stranger came to town, you had to play his game. Now it`s more specialized.”
Brunson, at 55, is often looked to for advice by the steady stream of young players. The best players in a given town win all the money in town and come to Vegas, he says. ”It`s always been that professionals make their living off hometown champions,” Brunson says, evoking the image of a type of poker Darwinism.
Brunson continues to play poker, he says, because it`s a way of competing when you get too old to do athletics. ”It`s the modern man`s way of hunting.”
And the best advice he can give a novice? Play with novices.
Poker has become a business for many players. Renegades from the 9-to-5 world find they can make a comfortable living setting their own schedule and playing poker. Writers have attempted to categorize this new phenomenon of entrepreneurs as ”new style.” Champions such as Moss, ”the grand old man” who came up as circuit players who drove town to town, game to game, were labeled ”intuitive” or ”old style.”
The old style was to play the player as much as the cards. Find the weakness and go for the jugular. Moss can be seen apparently dozing in tournaments and side games (private games held during the days of the tournaments), particularly when a new player, or a shaky competitor, is trying to postulate odds. For all intents, a spectator assumes Moss has had a late night at cards and needs a wink or two more of sleep-until it`s Moss` turn, that is. Showing the acumen of six decades on the circuit, Moss then moves
”all in”-betting all his chips on his two hole cards-with the sense that the man across the table has fallen into his trap.
Amarillo Slim Preston provides another textbook example of old-style play. Preston is particularly fond of plying his quarry with chatter, table talk, throwing the unwary and unruly off target, breaking the player`s concentration and thus his game.
”They (players) get to talking to me, and if they do, they`re a dead stinking fish,” Slim says, fresh from a poker tournament win in Morocco.
Although known on the circuit more for his bluster than his bite, this former world champion is still a formidable opponent. Although he continues to play at every tournament on the circuit, by his own admission, Preston says with a sigh, ”I just don`t care as much anymore.” The loss of desire cripples any endeavor, and the ”been there, done that” syndrome can cull the thrills of victory from a poker player`s life. The agony of defeat and boredom are just around the corner.
THE WOMEN
Women came to the forefront of poker, more or less through the back door. A seven-card stud tournament with a low ”buy-in” was started, more or less as a diversion for the wives and girlfriends of the players. But when the women started walking away with more than $10,000 for a one-day tournament, the men started to notice.
Barbara Freer, a tavern owner from El Cajon, Calif., was one of the first women to parlay her winnings in 1979 in the women`s tournament to a stake in the Big One. Freer is now a familiar figure on the circuit, but when she first arrived on the scene, not everyone was happy.
”I`ll shoot myself if a woman ever wins the World Series of Poker,”
says Amarillo Slim when asked about women and poker some years ago. ”I hope he does,” Freer jokes. Both are still alive and well.
Betty Carey, for years touted as ”the best woman poker player alive,”
won much money and acclaim in the early 1980s. Carey, who is in her mid-30s, has snared her share of poker pots with a smile and a slight crinkle around her blue eyes. Although her tournament winnings at Binion`s are listed at $35,000, the onetime protege of Jack Strauss has been rumored to have won and lost more than half a million dollars in side games. ”She plays like a man” is the men`s highest compliment, but Carey just shrugs and says, ”I don`t care what they say about me, as long as I get their money.”
Barbara Gold is one of the few Las Vegas women players who can risk the $10,000 to play in the world championship. That`s because at 31, Gold, a native of Wisconsin, is currently one of the winningest women in poker. She burst into tournament play at the Golden Nugget Grand Prix of Poker in 1986. She won two tournaments, earning several thousand dollars.
She has entered the final tournament at Binion`s Horseshoe three times since then and never won. ”I`ve come close,” she says, ”16th or 17th.”
The newest star is Wendeen Eolis. A legal consultant who travels the world finding lawyers for specialized cases, she is a heavy hitter in the business world with offices in New York, Paris and London and is one of the picks to watch in the early days of the tournament this year. Some says she`s got a shot at it.
”She`s triple-smart in the business world. I have the utmost respect for her,” says 1984 champ Jack Keller. ”She may look like a kitty cat,” he says, ”but there`s a saber-toothed tiger in there.”
THE NEW WAVE
New-style players came to prominence when Bobby ”The Owl” Baldwin won the 1978 World Series, which was televised on CBS.
Baldwin typifies the New Wave, a school characterized as odds players, college graduates who calculate poker as one would an algebraic equation. They find poker not so much a lifestyle as a business. Baldwin, who continues to play tournament poker, has risen to corporate president of the Golden Nugget Inc.
David Sklansky, a player with a reputation as an incredible mathematician, is held as a prime example of how someone who is strictly an odds player may eke out a living at poker but will always somehow miss the gold. Although he has written extensively, including some of the best poker books ever published, he remains relegated to the ranks of the also-rans. In a limit game (one with a maximum placed on bets), playing the odds is a way of making an average living. In a no-limit game, such as in the World Series, in which a player can go ”all in”-bet all his money any time-the odds take a second seat to judging the situation and whom you`re playing.
THE AMATEURS
And then there are the amateurs-players who can dominate their home games and take their money and their luck to Vegas. And, make no mistake, there are unbelievable runs of luck.
London freelance writer Tony Holden, the official biographer of Prince Charles, became fascinated with poker after playing Tuesday nights with his London cronies. He came to Las Vegas and Binion`s Horseshoe to cover the tournament in the early 1980s and last year realized his dream to play with the big boys.
Holden got up from a $1- and $3-low-limit press game and won $10,000 in a satellite game to buy into the big tournament. Holden lasted for two days in the four-day event, finishing respectably, but nowhere near the money. ”It`s the only time I got lousy cards and was happy about it,” Holden chirps. ”I didn`t want to be tempted to do anything (stupid). My goal was to get into the double digits and to beat Johnny Moss-and I did that.”
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Even as you read this, they`re lining up at Binion`s. The field consists of hundreds-maybe a thousand-now. As the smaller tournaments progress and side games make and break fragile fortunes, the ”horses”-players who have the bankroll to make it to the final table-will emerge. During the final days, odds change direction as fast as the desert winds. Who`s got a chance this year?
Players pick the former champs: Johnny Chan, Stu ”the Kid” Ungar, Jack Keller, Doyle Brunson.
Who`s in the field? Always: Dewey Tomko, Chip Reese, Johnny Moss. . . .
On the outside? Well, there`s Wendeen Eolis, Amarillo Slim. . . .
And then there`s always the stranger, riding a streak of luck into town, trying, and sometimes making it, as a star.
