By
seal |
Published
Apr 08 2008, 01:58 PM
Usually nothing noteworthy happens on my annual spring break trip to Florida with my family. We all spent a day at the V.A. Nursing Home visiting old Ironsides, but Hy wasn’t really with us that much this time. So we wheeled him out to the recreation room where the kids and I played pool as Hy watched and smiled. After a while an old man in a scooter wheeled over and asked if anyone wanted to play checkers. Sometimes a little kindness to a stranger pays strange dividends. I sat with him and as we started to set up the board he shook my hand and said with a lilting southern accent, “Pleased to meetcha, my name’s Paul.”
I introduced myself and told Paul not to expect much from me at checkers. Then I jokingly asked if he wanted to play poker instead. Paul’s voice got low and he winked at me conspiratorially, “You don’t want to play poker with me son,” he said gently. “I’ve played with all the greats and I still do. You couldn’t afford my game.”
I figured the odds of a high-stakes poker player living in a south Florida retirement home were pretty slim, but a good writer knows how to listen, so I kept my mouth shut as Paul continued. “Doyle, that Slim fella, Howard Federer, and lots more. I played in the World Series of Poker before you were born too. But I don’t want to bore you with old stories.”
Hy was still smiling and watching my kids play and I had nothing better to do anyway, so I smiled at Paul and told him I’d love to hear some stories. I didn’t even correct him about my age or Howard Lederer’s name.
Paul told me it was my move and then continued. “Many years ago I was a businessman in Atlanta. There was a private club there that a lot of the well-to-do men belonged to. They had golf, tennis and they also had a poker game. It wasn’t a big game, only fifteen and thirty, but it was the only regular game in town. We played mostly seven card stud, sometimes five card stud and maybe draw, but mostly seven card.”
Paul moved a checker to force me to jump him and then double jumped me and got another king. “In that game I noticed something interesting. There were about fifty guys who played the game. Out of the fifty, myself and maybe seven of the other guys were always winners at the end of the month. Maybe I’d lose one or two days, but never a month. It was the same with the other guys. Most of the rest were up and down a bit and then there were ten or more guys who were always losers. These guys weren’t stupid – they knew they were losers, but for them it was entertainment. And they could afford it.”
“One day one of the winning players, George Somebody, I forget, came back from a trip and we got to talking. He told me he had been to Las Vegas and said I had to go. He claimed to have won over $20,000 in less than a week and he said they were just giving money away. So I got on a plane and I went. Just like that.”
Paul started coughing pretty badly so I got up and got him some water. He thanked me and told me I had nice manners. “I may be an old-fashioned southern gentleman, but I believe manners are important. So anyway I got into a 15/30 stud game and let me tell you, it was the toughest game I had ever played. There wasn’t a weak player in the game and I lost a couple hundred and got up and called George. Well, George said I was in the wrong game and those 15/30 players all had come up from 2/4 or 3/6 and the money was real important to them. He said the 30/60 or the 50/100 were the games to play. And, you know, he was right. I made all the money I lost at 15/30 back in one session and finished the trip up a nice bundle.”
I leaned forward with interest. I still wasn’t sure what to believe about Paul, but he was talking about poker and even if he missed a few things here and there, I wanted to hear more.
He thought for a moment and then said, “Almost all those guys who were winners in Atlanta ended up living in Vegas and a few of us also played in the big tournaments once they got started. Doyle, Slim and Johnny Moss were all the real deal and would win in the big cash games a lot, but that old Atlanta group could hold their own with anyone.”
His watch alarm went off. “I have to go,” he said.
“Before you go,” I said, “can I ask you one question? What do you think is the most important thing for a poker player to know?”
“That’s easy,” Paul began, “Don’t let the money matter too much to you. I’ll tell you what I mean. I was also a good amateur bowler, almost at the professional level. One day in Atlanta a well known pro bowler was in my alley and wanted a money match. He was twenty pins better than me on his worst day and offered me a ten pin spot. I took a thousand dollar bet on the condition that he put up his own money. See, I happen to know that he was sponsored and never played with his own money. Sure enough he choked so bad I didn’t even need the ten pin spot. The money mattered too much to him.”
With that, he manipulated the joystick on his scooter and wheeled away. The kids and I brought him back to his room and said our goodbyes. As we signed out I said to the nurse on duty that I enjoyed talking with the old vet in the scooter named Paul and asked her to give him my card. She laughed at me, “I can see how you would think he was one of ours,” she said still chuckling. “He comes here to visit sometimes and plays checkers all day with two men from his old unit who are here.” She pointed out the glass door at a gleaming silver Rolls Royce Corniche pulling away from the driveway. “He’s like a billionaire or something. That’s him leaving now.”