When I Was Young
- From: "RussGeorgiev@xxxxxxx" <RussGeorgiev@xxxxxxx>
- Date: 23 Apr 2007 18:56:48 -0700
What you will be reading is an autobiography of my life, the life of a
professional poker player, a cheat and a scammer. I didn't start out
this way in life, I just found the money too easy to make playing
cards, honestly or dishonesty. This is a long story dealing with poker
for the last forty years. Poker at the highest stakes in the largest
card rooms in the United States.
I was born June 16, 1947, in New York City. I came from a middle class
family with an abusive alcoholic father and a weak selfish mother.
Whatever the case, my father was a compulsive gambler who lost drank
like a fish and lost everything gambling. I grew up playing cards from
the age of five.
There were three children in our family, I was the oldest, followed by
a brother a year and a half younger and a sister three years younger.
As nature dictates, both my brother and I went into gambling as a
business.
While other kids played with toys while young, my family played cards
all the time. We would get our allowances and gamble with it, usually
my mother was my partner and my father was my brothers partner.
Needless to say, none wanted to be my fathers partner playing cards.
My brother and I excelled at most card games when young and as we grew
older we started bowling as well as playing cards. The edge we
achieved playing cards and competing in bowling made all of us
excellent students. No one liked losing at anything.
By sixteen I was determined to be a professional bowler and practiced
by bowling 200 games a week. At this age I was already carrying a 200
average and was beginning my rise as a professional gambler.
By seventeen my life had already been determined as far as I was
concerned, I was going to be a professional bowler. Things changed as
I realized where the big money really was.
In those days in the sixties, they had pot games every night in some
bowling alley in town. Pot games are when bowlers all contribute a
dollar or two, sometimes more and bowl for the money, highest score
winning be it one game, two or three. I was now living in Seattle,
Washington and was gambling everyday. Early in life older bowlers
wouldn't accept the fact that such a young kid could beat them bowling
and this gave me a great edge, since I was so far superior to these
people, that ego wouldn't let them quit me.
In the next three years I dominated much of the semipro bowling action
in Seattle and the Northwest, winning many tournaments and setting
many scores that were world records at that time. On January 6th,
1965, I bowled my first sanctioned 300 game in a semi pro tournament
at West Park Lanes in Bremerton, WA. Things were never the same
afterwards.
I was always playing cards when I wasn't bowling, but bowling was my
cup of tea. By nineteen I had a big reputation bowling pot games and
the money stopped coming in so easily from bowling, as the players
knew I had graduated and they couldn't win.
We used to play poker in high school about once a month. My brother
and I always won most of the money. We were smarter, sharper and far
better players than the kids we played against. One day a college kid
came over to play. Cheating never even occurred to any of us, until
that fateful day when I caught my first poker cheat. It would not be
my last and it was the start of my life.
The game was usually a friendly game with kids who had some money.
Some partied and drank while my brother and I were always straight. On
this night the college kid won all the money, except for mine, for I
happened to notice him always looking at the cards and placing them in
order. We only played a few games, and five card stud was one of them.
Time after time I watched the college kid stack the deck and give
himself two Aces. We always played roll your own, meaning we turned
the cards up at our discretion. This made things easier for him to say
he caught an Ace on the last card.
That night the college kid won about six hundred from us, all by
cheating. I never said a word as I just absorbed what he was doing. I
looked at things rationally, if I accused him of cheating, it was my
word against his. Who is going to believe that a high school game was
being cheated? Besides, how would this get the money back?
A couple of weeks later we had another game, the college kid was
invited again, but things were different this time. I had told the
guys we had been cheated, though most didn't believe it. I told them I
had a plan to get the money back, when they realized the kid was
cheating. I told them what to look for and how he cheated.
The plans were made and signals were given if the people believed the
guy was cheating. It didn't take longer than the first hand before
everyone knew I was right and our plan went into action. We had
adopted a strategy where we were all partners and would cheat the
cheat. I was the banker and it was easy to know how much he was in. We
started by giving less action on the hands he dealt, but not stopping
him. The main thing we did was fix the cards to give him great hands,
but not good enough to win, causing him to lose quite a bit of money
on them. We created diversions and every time he looked somewhere
else, we would change decks on him. When the night was up, he lost
seven hundred, two hundred he borrowed and has never paid back. He
still ended up ahead of the game. The six of us then split the 500 and
the game was basically done for.
Washington state was one of five western states that allowed card
rooms to operate at this time, though the only legitimate states were
California and Nevada. Oregon, Washington and Montana all had a
tolerance policy type of law, allowing poker rooms to operate at the
discretion of the cities or counties in the state. So obviously I was
trying to find a way to get into these rooms at a young age. At 17 I
was able to alter my drivers license last digit on my birthyear, from
7 to a 3. Though not a good job, it did pass inspection in several
places. You must remember the ID's in those days were paper and
changing a digit wasn't the hardest thing to do. The hard part was I
looked 15, not 21.
To begin with the only places that accepted me were the Afro American
poker rooms, where six or seven guys sat around a table waiting for a
player to come walking in. The game was No Limit 5 card stud, meaning
straight 5 card poker and you could bet whatever you had in front of
you on the table.
I was always welcome as I always lost, even as tight as I played. I
would always get two Kings my first two cards and I would always lose,
though not every hand, as sometimes I received unexpected help because
these guys weren't the best card mechanics you could find. Though they
weren't great card mechanics, they knew how to catch cheats and how to
cheat. After about 10 times of playing with them, about twice a week,
I finally caught them cheating me. I didn't say a word, just threw my
cards away. I had played in this game at least 10 times and averaged
losing between 20-30 every time I played. I finally found them
cheating me and there was nothing I could do.
I threw the two Kings away the first time and the dealer thought he
made a mistake. On the second time this happened, he knew I knew and
it was like a party. Whitebread, as I was called, had caught them. Now
came the speeches and lectures and I listened to everyone. These guys
did play honestly many times, but whenever live money came in, their
job was to get it. I hung around with these guys for a while and
learned my Ph.D. from them in cheating at poker, or shall I say, what
to look for so not to be cheated at poker.
Soon I parted company with these guys and started playing in some of
the private games the bowlers used to have. I was 18 at this time and
old enough for the private games. Right off the bat I started winning
every time I played. I was very tight as I was learning. I was also
very quiet. Soon I became 19 and received a new drivers license. It
was easier to change the 7 to a 5 and I had been around long enough
that many expected I was 21 by now, so I started playing in the bigger
legal card rooms in Seattle.
Here I would spend all my time soon, forgetting about bowling and just
about everything else. The card room opened at noon and closed at 2am,
only to have another card room open 20 miles away. This one stayed
open from 2am until 10am, so there was virtually gambling around the
clock.
The limits in those games was $1-$5 in the first game, which was a
dealer choice game. The second game at night was higher stakes and the
game was lowball, $4-$8 and $8-$16 stakes. On a given night you could
win several thousand dollars, as the game was played with a kill.
As far as I know, these games were basically honest, but I was still a
novice at this time. I made about $150 a day back then, equivalent to
more than most people earned in a week. For the next two years all I
did was play poker, getting better and better, learning more and
more.
The big time in those days was Gardena, this was the place everyone
who was anyone in poker had to go as this was the place where the
gladiators fought, the best in the world. Las Vegas had card rooms as
did Reno, but these places had terrible reputations. Emeryville in
Northern California was the second place you headed to make your name,
but in these days, Gardena ranked number 1.
In December of 1968 I was drafted but having high bloodpressure kept
me out of the armed services. In November of 1968, the Democratic
governor of Washington lost the election and the Republicans took over
and the card rooms were shut down. I packed up and headed for Gardena.
More later
Russ Georgiev
www.pokermafia.com
.
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