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The
first games I played that amounted to anything were down
on Exchange Street in Fort Worth, Texas. I'd be surprised
if you could find a tougher street in the whole world. There
were shootings, muggings, robberies, and just about every
kind of violence imaginable. The stuff we see on TV today
is tame compared to what Exchange Street was like almost
any hour of the day.
But at the card table, amidst all that violence, everything
was as gentlemanly as could be. They were two different
worlds. My buddy Dwayne Hamilton and I frequented a card
room run by a gangster named Tincy whose main claim to fame
was having killed half a dozen people. He ran an honest
game, though, and Dwayne and I did fairly well. No-limit
hold'em was our main game. After we accumulated a good-sized
stake we moved uptown to the three hundred and five hundred
buyin games where we played with doctors, lawyers, and other
professional people.
For the next five or six years we made the Texas circuit,
playing bigger and bigger games throughout the state. Occasionally
we'd drop into the big games in Oklahoma and Louisiana.
During this period, I met Amarillo Slim and Sailor Roberts,
a couple of the finest poker hustlers I've ever met. We
hit it off from the start and after Dwayne moved back to
Fort Worth, Sailor, Slim, and I decided to go into business
together. We must have hit every town in Texas, relieving
the locals of their money.
It was a sight to see, the three of us taking on all comers.
And not just at poker. We got to the point where we were
gambling on just about every game there was-golf, tennis,
basketball, pool, sports betting. Just about everything.
As long as we thought we had some sort of an edge, we'd
bet. And we made money. Pretty soon we got to know most
everybody in the games no matter where we played. We kept
running into the same guys all the time-Jack Straus, Johnny
Moss, Bob Hooks, and a lot of others.
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