Guru's "Outlaw Era of Poker"

Posts: 2913 · Posted: 28.08.2007, 03:08

Outlaw Era of Poker

Hello to my poker stars!

I don't know if you get the King Features Syndicated columns in your newspaper, but I just read one by Chuck Blount in my paper that I thought you would like.

Blount says that now that poker has become so popular and more mainstream, it's a good thing for the players and for poker's image BUT.....He thinks it's a shame we are missing the great stories from the old days when the game had more of a lawless feel.

For example, some of the best stories center around the great Johnny Moss. Johnny died at age 99 in 1995, but many players still believe he was the greatest poker player ever born.

However, he always lost a lot of his poker winnings because he would gamble on ANYTHING and was known to keep the company of outlaw types who also liked to gamble on absolutely anything.

Johnny Moss was a consistent poker winner well into his 90's; was known as "The Grand Old Man of poker" and he was one of only two players to win the Main Event of the WSOP (for our beginners, WSOP = World Series of Poker), three times......and eight bracelets total.

Also for our beginners, the gold bracelet of poker is like the gold ring of football's Super Bowl winners.

Many great stories have been told of Johnny Moss's poker adventures. Here is one that he, himself, told when he said that in his era you had to be prepared to deal with the cheats and act accordingly:

"One night I'm playing in some small town, and I see they got the room set up as a peep joint with a confederate spying on the players' cards through a peephole in the ceiling. So I pull out a gun. I always carried my gun with me. I said: "Now fellas, do I have to go and shoot a bullet in the ceiling? Or are you going to send your boy down without any harm?"

"They all thought I was bluffing," Moss said. "I ended up shooting the guy in the ass."

Blount says it would be challenging to find another story like that in the modern poker world. I agree. But I'm not sure we're missing anything we wouldn't want to miss. We have plenty excitement of our own brand these days.

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