Thanks for all the e mail concerning my story called "Stuey and The Wolf." I hope there are lessons to be learned from it. Thanks also to Ken Churilla who asked me for permission to put the story on his web page: A Tribute to Stu Ungar.

It started to make me think about all the little stories about Vegas and poker in the early eighties. I think that it is a history that is not at all written about, and it's value as a history will serve to better people's understanding and appreciation of the game we love and the true beginnings as a public pastime.

If you weren't there, you don't know, but it was a time. It was a time of cocaine at the table and all night sessions. A time of impossible bets from the poker table to the sports bets to the golf course. Drinking, drugs and no sleep and of course poker and in particular, Texas hold'em.

It was a better time than now. The games were easier. There was more camaraderie and the dealers were not being blamed for everything in sight. There was also a fascination with who was the best and who was getting better and who would get the money. If you sat and played at the Sands and then the Nugget and the Stardust, you would eventually play with all the stars in the poker universe. Not read about them in card player. The ones that were admired were the live money players. Tournaments outside of the world series were mostly small time, players on the rail trying to get a stake.

The fascination with tournaments and the players who dominate them mystifies me. I have constantly been amazed at how badly the tournament players play in live games. I understand that it is a completely different game. It is just not poker. Put your money on the table and play, later we will count up and see who wins. When I read about the tourneys and their deals at the final table, their fears of losing makes me wish they were sitting at my table in a live game. Fear is the destroyer. Read over the world series and read who didn't make deals. I am sorry to rant about tournaments but it my feeling that it is not doing poker any good in the short run. There is less live money going around. And a lot of that money is lost from the poker world for good. I just wish there were far less tournaments and more players in live games to move up and down and keep the live game, the back bone of poker, alive.

It was a time of personalities also. From the ever dangerous and outrageous Jack Strauss, to Bill Boyd who people would travel across the world to play five card stud with, to Johnny Moss who regularly would fire dealers who gave him bad beats. There is so much more. And I plan to write about it. Not about strategy or bankroll requirements, or the dissecting of loose and solid games, but of the times and the personalities, both famous and anonymous. I feel that it is a part of poker, a most important part, that should not be forgotten.

I will post parts of what I write in the news group. I hope that you find it thoughtful and thought provoking and downright amusing. Like I said, it was a time.

Published with the permission of the author.
Reproduction without the author's permission prohibited.