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I played
my first hand of no-limit Texas holdem in Las Vegas in
1978. It was love at first sight. I had an excellent hot
streak starting out, winning 20 sessions in a row. I am
fortunate to be able to pick up new poker forms very
quickly.
For
the first couple of years after I learned how to play
no-limit, I was living in Detroit, which did not offer
the kind of poker I wanted to play. It was only natural
that I wanted to move someplace where I could play
regularly. After taking a road trip to Houston, I
decided that was the place I wanted to be full time.
Accordingly, I took another trip to Texas shortly
afterward, in the fall of 1980, in order to locate a
place to live. I stopped in Dallas to check out that
city — and never got to Houston.
The
person mainly responsible for my deciding to move to
Dallas was Bill Smith, who later won the world
championship. Bill told me he had moved from Houston to
Dallas because the games were better and the rake was
cheaper, and he generously took me to various games in
the Dallas area. I decided to respect his judgment, left
Detroit, and rented an apartment near Central Expressway
and Meadow Lane.
Dallas is a nice city. It has winters that are much more
mild than Michigan’s, and lots of friendly people. We
had a no-limit
Texas
holdem
game someplace just about every day. The action was at
the Amvets Club for a while, but then it shifted to
private games at someone’s home. Delbert Chambers had a
game a couple of times a week, but the biggest and best
games were at Louisiana Charlie’s. His wife, Lydia, was
a superb cook, and there are few things better than
eating steak and playing in a jam-up no-limit game.
The
regular lineup at Charlie’s was pretty awesome (although
we had some donating drop-ins). Here is a glimpse of the
regulars: Charlie himself put a lot of action in the
game. He was a bulldozer, and when he got hot, he won
big — and sometimes he lost big. Bill Smith hardly ever
missed a session. Except for a month when he was on the
wagon, he was downing beers. He was a lamb at the
slaughter when he got real drunk, but before he got to
that point, he was a very dangerous player. Bob Brooks
was a man who had made a lot of money booking in Alaska,
then wisely invested it during the ‘40s in Caesars
Palace stock. He was a solid player. “Point” had moved
from a town of that name to Dallas. He was an excellent
player, solid and tricky. Ken Smith was a businessman
with a pipeline company and a bookstore. I had known him
as a chess player before ever dueling with him in poker.
When he was in his prime, he was the best chess player
in Texas. We sometimes played speed chess at five
minutes a game while waiting for the poker game to
start. Ken laid me 2-to-1 odds, and we were pretty even
at that spot. He knew poker very well and was a fine
tournament player, but his lack of discipline stopped
him from being a winner in the money games. The biggest
winner in the game was Bill Bond, who owned an insurance
company but spent most of his time playing poker. When
he entered a pot and checked to you, that often meant he
had a bigger hand than when Bill Smith bet you!
One
of the players in our game has had more stories told
about him than practically anyone else in poker. He was
Everett Goolsby, one of poker’s great personalities.
Everett was capable of playing very good poker when he
wasn’t angry. When he was hot, he could do anything. One
time, in Las Vegas, he lost a big pot to Rusty, a wild
player from Washington. He went to the cage and came
back with 10 grand. The first time Rusty raised a pot a
hundred bucks and Everett was heads up, he moved in with
the whole 10 grand. Rusty thought a long time and
folded. Everett showed him two tens — a bigger hand than
I thought he had. A few years later, Everett turned to
booking, and made some real big money very fast. By the
time the law caught up with him, he had bathroom
fixtures made of solid gold — or so he said.
From
time to time, people from other places came to Charlie’s
game and joined us. Buck Buchanan and Speedy Myers were
frequent guests. Bob Hooks dropped in from Lafayette on
occasion — but never during football season. Hugh
Briscoe of Denton was a very welcome guest. A couple of
years after I had been in Dallas, T.J. Cloutier and
Manning Briggs moved to town. By that time, I had taken
up pot-limit Omaha, so I did not play that many sessions
with the new arrivals.
I
still have lots of poker hands from back then etched
into my memory. The luckiest hand I ever held was
against Bob Brooks. I was in the big blind with the K 6,
and flopped a flush. I do not remember how the betting
went, but Bob and I got all in on the flop for about a
grand apiece. I did not have the best hand, but by the
time I woke up to this, nearly all of my money was in.
The dealer burned and turned twice, and it came
club-club. Lo and behold, after all the cards were
dealt, my 6 gave me the winning hand with a straight
flush!
One
hand I remember well, I was not even in the pot at all.
Some fumble-finger was dealing and the second card to
Ken Smith flashed. “That’s an exposed card,” I said.
“It’s a queen, and it flashed.”
“No,
it didn’t,” said Kenny, “and it’s not a queen.” No one
else said anything.
I
knew that Kenny had a pair of queens, or he would have
turned the card in. The flop came with a queen as the
high card on board. “Now, he’s got top set,” I said,
disgusted at the ethical breach, and not wanting it to
be rewarded.
There was a new guy in the game, and he had flopped a
set on this deal. He wasn’t going to let Bob Ciaffone
talk him out of playing the best hand he’d had all day.
He raised Kenny back all in, failed to buy the caser,
and lost all of his money. That’s what I call a very
stubborn poker player.
I
moved to Vegas in late 1983 to play in the delicious
pot-limit Omaha games with “The Little Doc,” who did
more to popularize the game by simply sitting down at
the table than I did by writing a book about it.
Despite moving away from Dallas, I had warm feelings
about the place — and still have them. It would be hard
to find a better education about how to play no-limit
Texas
holdem
than could be found in that city — just ask Mr. Cloutier.
Editor’s note: Bob Ciaffone’s new book, Middle Limit
Texas
Holdem
Poker, co-authored with Jim Brier, is available now (332
pages, $25 plus $5 shipping and handling). This work and
his other poker books, Pot-limit and No-limit Poker,
Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Holdem Poker, can be
ordered through Card Player. Ciaffone is available for
poker lessons. E-mail thecoach@diamondcs.net or call
(989) 792-0884. His website is www.diamondcs.net/~thecoach,
where you can download Robert’s Rules of Poker for free. |
