Guest Writer

During my poker career I have gambled with and gotten to know a great many people. Some of them, unfortunately, are not around any more. I would like to dedicate this column to some of the better-known players that are now departed, and will try to give you a close-up of both the poker player and the person.

Stu Ungar is the most recent top player to leave us. He was called by one of my good friends, himself one of the great ones, "The toughest guy I ever had to play against at the final table." One of my other top-player friends called him, "The last person you would want to have to play heads-up against for your life." My own experience playing against Stewie was quite limited; I think only once or twice in a money game, and only once in World Championship play. Here is my opinion. Stu was not a flexible person who suited his play to the circumstances. He only knew how to play poker one way; in fast forward. For those delicate situations where patiently waiting for a good hand was the favored method, Stewie was simply the wrong guy. But for those situations where relentless pressure was needed, Ungar thrived. I cannot think of anyone tougher playing a big stack in shorthanded play at the last day of a World Championship.

Here is a personal story of mine about Ungar occurring about a dozen years ago that I think gives a good peek at what type of guy he was. I was on my way home from a poker game in Vegas late one night and stopped into a convenience store near my home. Stewie was in there, and he was in the process of paying for at least five large bags of groceries. I have never seen as large a purchase in this type of store and never expect to again. It was especially surprising in Vegas because all the big supermarkets there are open all night. I said, "Stewie, what the heck are you doing?" He said, "I got hungry and didn't have anything smaller than a hundred on me. They can't break a bill this big so I had to buy a c-note worth of stuff." A man of discipline he wasn't.

Of all the top players that have passed on over the years, the one closest to me was Seymour Leibowitz. I first met Seymour in Petey's lowball game in Miami Beach in the late seventies. Seymour was a rotund man who smoked a big cigar and loved poker like no man before or since. Lowball was his best game, and he was a top player. He was especially devastating in shorthanded play. Later on, when he took up pot-limit Omaha, although he was good, he did not do quite as well––mainly because his constant opponents were all the best Omaha players in the world. I'll tell you one thing about Seymour; he had the heart of a lion, and was not afraid to put all his money in on a drawing hand. He was so aggressive with a draw that we used to be more afraid when Seymour only called instead of raised, as there was a good chance he was trapping with a set.

Leibowitz was a person of the utmost personal integrity. His word was his bond, and he never broke it. Every once in a while he would say, "If I tell you a cockroach is about to pull a train, and you're the conductor, you better yell 'all aboard,' because that train is leaving the station."

John Jenkins—"Austin Squatty" to the poker world—was a Texas rare book dealer who I got to know very well both at the poker table and on the golf course. Squatty had a brilliant mind and a sparkling personality, one of those people it would be impossible not to like. He was a skillful player who was pretty careful to have a decent hand when he entered a pot. He did not make that much money from poker because he preferred to play poker with those whose company he enjoyed rather than those he could destroy, but even in tough fields Squatty held his own. And Squatty really enjoyed the company of topflight players. His tragic death deprived the poker world of a man among men.        

Squatty could not hit a golf ball very far, but he was deceptively good around the greens. He sure had more of my money than I of his in our golfing duels. Here is an amazing golf story that Squatty told me the day after it happened. He had finished up a round of golf at the old Sahara Golf Course when it was almost pitch black out (little things like night descending do not stop an inveterate golfer). The next morning he arose early and realized that a couple of five thousand dollar bundles of cash were missing from his pants pocket, and had likely fallen out while he was golfing in the semi-darkness. He went back to the golf course to look for the money. Daylight had already come and the course was full of people, so the prospect of recovering the ten grand was remote. Squatty went down to the eighteenth green after about half a dozen groups had already played the hole. Miracle of miracles, he found his ten grand lying in plain view on the grass, and only a short distance off the green! This is easily the luckiest story by a poker player I have ever heard   

Johnny Moss was well past his prime when I knew him, but still had a number of successes in tournament play as an octogenarian. My favorite story of his is another golf tale. I heard this from Moss himself, although I believe it was mentioned in a book about him. John was a good golfer in his younger days, and would gamble real high if he thought he had the best of it. One day he was involved in a very tough big-money match and it all came down to a putt on the final hole. Moss had to sink about a twelve-footer, with 55 grand riding on the outcome. (I hope my memory is accurate here, as the tendency is to have the putt get longer and the money bigger as the years pass by.) There was a number of gamblers watching the match with great interest from just off the green. John gave the ball a good stroke and it rolled into the hole. Nobody said anything for a few seconds; then one of the spectators shook his head and said, "What a lucky son of a bitch." Moss looked at the man with a hard stare, pointed his finger, and said, "If you think that was just luck I'll bet you another 55 grand I can do it again." The man clamed up.     

Gary "Bones" Berland was an excellent Vegas tournament and money player during the seventies and eighties. He was one of the most deceptive players of that time. It seemed to me that the betting on most of his strong hands started with a check and most of his weak hands started with a bet. Bones suffered most of his life from bad health, and he was still a relatively young man when he died. He needed to get regular medical treatments to stay alive and had to raise the funds to pay for them, and the lengths he would go to when desperate for money gave him a bad reputation. But despite my knowing all about this character weakness he and I were pretty good friends, and I was also friendly with his parents, who were both poker players. Bones was enjoyable company, and he taught me some things to improve my game. In particular, he explained to me when to overbet the pot size before the flop in a no-limit hold'em game, and how your play needed to be more aggressive when antes were used to supplement the blinds in tournament play. His favorite poker expression was, "You can't leave the money out there in the middle to rot." Bones certainly did more than his share to bring poker deals to a speedy end.

Jack Straus was a big man in every sense of the word. He usually had a big bankroll, played for high stakes, was noted as an African big game hunter—and stood about six foot seven. Naturally, such a person had to be from Texas. I was at a number of final tables with Jack, and he surely was one of the toughest. In my first experience at World Championship play, back in 1982, we were down to three remaining tables. Jack was on my right, and had a huge chip lead. He knew how to apply the pressure, and was running over the table. This was in the days before they used a lot of higher-denomination chips, so he not only had a lot of money, but it was quite bulky. Jack liked to stack his money only ten chips to a column, so his whole area of the table was covered. Nobody ever saw any green felt in his corner until the tournament was over and Straus was the World Champion.

Straus was a great story-teller. One day I sat with him for a while in one of the sports books, and he told me about a con job he had pulled once on a person he did not care for. It seems in a group that Jack sometimes hung around with there was an unpopular guy who had an opinion on everything, but seldom was right. One day the group went to a stadium to watch a football game, and Straus made arrangements with everyone in the group to play a trick on Mr. Know-it-all. There was an obscure college game at another place scheduled that day which was a total mismatch. One of the teams was a three touchdown favorite. All the while they were watching the one college game, they talked about the possibilities in the mismatch game, discussing the game speaking as if the line were pick 'em instead of totally lopsided. Sure enough, Mr. Know-it-all, who had no idea of the real betting line, fell for the patter and bet Jack even money on the three touchdown underdog. The dog lost. Jack chuckled when he told me that the man quit playing the role of the knowledgable sports bettor after paying off the bet and then finding out what the real line had been.

After Straus won the World Championship he and his fellow Texan, Crandall Addington, went over to England. They did about half a dozen appearances on British television talk shows, and drew some high ratings. Jack told me he had been nervous at first, but really warmed up to the camera after a while. Jack would have been a great asset to anyone wanting to promote poker through the medium of television. Poker lost a lot when the long tall story-teller from Texas passed on.