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No I did not deal that famous hand to Wild Bill Hickok, (what WAS that 5^th card ??) but I did deal in the first World Series of Poker. However not in 1970 when they awarded the trophy to Johnny Moss because they did not have enough players to put up $10,000 to spread a no-limit hold-em game (In the 1970 event they; Blonde Forbes, Shoeshine Nick, N….r Nate, Nick the Greek, Sid Wyman, Joe Bernstein, Bill Boyd, Red Winn, Johnny and a few other legendary gamblers ( Where are they now ? Probably in that great No-Limit Poker game "in the sky" were there is no rake or time collected and the game never gets shut down) so they just sat around, told bad beat stories and engaged each other in other forms of poker or short card games for a couple of days, then gave the trophy to Johnny, I guess because he had the best stories to tell or because he beat them a few times in the “other” poker games. Coincidently Johnny did win in 1971, the first actual $10,000 buy-in World Series of Poker.( Johnny won one more WSOP after that, a total of 3. That ties a record still held today. I dealt 6 or 7 WSOP in the 70s but more on that in future columns…

I began playing poker in the late 50s in California at Artichoke Joes outside of San Francisco (I believe Nevada and California were the only states that had legal poker at that time) I also played in Gardena when I was in the Navy. I’d like to think I’m a better player now than I was back then. (We should all be better at what ever we do after 50 or so years) I remember the second or third time I played at Artichokes ( I must have had a “tell” because I was playing in a pretty “live” $5 limit draw high (they could only play draw high or Low Ball in California in those days) game were at least 3 players drew on every deal.) I was dealt 4 Kings before the draw, opened for only $3 and everyone threw their hand away…….“Oh well”

I usually blew $40 or $50 (sometimes the whole buy-in, ($100) every time I played, which was 2 or 3 Fridays or Saturday nights a month. After the poker game I took whatever money I had left and went into the bar (Artichoke Joes bar was just as famous as their poker in those days , what with the saw dust floors and the harnesses and other farm implements on the wall) to try to “pick up a chick”. When I did happen to “get lucky” it sometimes cost me more than it did in the card room…….. Oh Well ….. but back to poker

In those days Nevada poker were the only poker games that had dealers. In California every game was a “round table” game i.e. the players dealt, in turn and the dealer became the “button” or last to act. The house collected “time” from games in California. In Nevada time was collected for the higher games and the smaller games were “raked” (a percentage of the pot taken by the dealer during the play of each hand) The amount taken varied anywhere from 10% to 60% Yes, you read right! Those high percentage raked games were called “snatch games” because the dealer had to incorporate a snatching motion in order to not allow the players to see the exorbitant amount taken out each pot and it was all perfectly legal until the middle 70s when the Nevada Gaming Comm. made each card room post a sign stating what percentage was taken. Ironically it was the above mentioned Johnny Moss who ran the Flamingo card room in the middle 70s, that posted a sigh that read “up to 33% taken from each pot” (people still played…….) since then , the signs posted on the wall and/or on each table state that 5% or 10% up to a certain amount plus $1 for the “bad beat jackpot” (if applicable ) is taken. Boy how times have changed and in many other ways too,….. but, more on that in my next column