Billy Duarte: His Game Was Going to the Dogs - Until He Turned to High-Limit Poker

A short stride across the street from Binion's Horseshoe, the Las Vegas Club has some of the sweetest suites north of the Strip. Billy Duarte welcomed me at the double-door entrance to his spacious Downtown digs, decorated in colors bright enough to compete with the insomniac neons that umbrella Fremont Street. We set up shop at the curved bar in the mile-long living room of his Glitter Gulch manse, a welcome respite from the cramped and smoky 2001 World Series of Poker tournament room where Duarte played the big pot-limit side games during the Series.

The affable Duarte spends most of his time these days in Oceanside, California, where he owns an oceanfront home and plays high-limit poker at Ocean's Eleven Casino, but he also maintains a mountain home in Colorado. His East Coast accent betrayed his Massachusetts upbringing – "I lived near Cape Cod until 15 years ago, when I moved to Colorado, where I always wanted to live," he explained. "I have a large family, seven children, some who like the ocean and others who like the mountains." Duarte and his wife, Lorraine, had been married for 43 years before she passed away in 2000, leaving him with "the empty-nest syndrome at the age of 62." Back in Cape Cod, Duarte was in the greyhound business – not the busses, the dogs. "I raised greyhounds and gambled on them, too. But when casinos began to thrive, people started gambling at them instead of the horses and the dogs, and it ruined the greyhound business."

Dana Smith: So, the greyhound races went to the dogs, so to speak. When did it happen?

Billy Duarte: Beginning in the '60s right through the '80s. I was in the business until I moved to Colorado, and I still have a dog farm in partnership with one of my daughters who raises, sells, and leases greyhounds.

DS: You can lease a greyhound?

BD: Yes, you can lease dogs to kennels at the track and get a percentage of what they win during their racing lives.

DS: How long is the racing life of a greyhound?

BD: Around three good years. By the time a dog is between 4 and 5 years old, he's pretty much done with racing.

DS: What is the training procedure for greyhounds?

BD: You start off by sprinting them lightly and then have them follow lures at the racetrack. By the time they're about 16 months old, they're ready to run, although only 30 percent of them make it as good racers.

DS: Do you have to be a dog lover to be successful at dog racing?

BD: No, I don't think so. You just have to like animals in general. It's gratifying to see how a greyhound will improve, or to race a champion dog. I've won $100,000 dog races, and when you get a dog of that caliber, it's very exciting. Speed has always been something that excited me, whether it be a runner, a horse, or a greyhound.

DS: How many dogs did you have when you were in the business?

BD: About 400. I maintained kennels in Wisconsin near Chicago, one in Kansas, and two in Colorado, and I leased dogs to kennels on the East Coast. I tried to place greyhounds that liked to race at a certain track at that track.

DS: Greyhounds have preferences about where they run?

BD: Absolutely! Greyhounds are very smart animals, so I tried to match them with their preferences. There might be 20 kennels at a track, and you would have your own three or four people working at your kennel. They would shuffle dogs in and out from my farm in Colorado. The racetrack paid 4 percent of the purses to the kennel owners to divide among themselves. When the handle went so far down due to the casinos, it became impossible to operate. Instead of running out $8,000 to $10,000 a week from the take, we were running out $4,000 or $5,000 a week. Finally, the expenses overtook the profits.

DS: You also had the animal rights activists to deal with, I assume. There's been so much talk recently about cruelty to greyhounds, I'd like to get your take on that issue.

BD: We had a lot of problems with the animal rights people, yes. I myself have never been cruel to a greyhound, but I'd have to admit that when you raise a couple of hundred greyhounds a year, there is a time when you have to do something with "retired" or unraceable dogs. So, if I thought that a greyhound would make a good pet, I would go out of my way, even incurring an expense, to try to place it in a good home. In my opinion, a greyhound is one of the best pets you could ever have, but there are certain dogs (including some poodles) that just don't have the right temperament to become a pet, so I donated those dogs to the universities for medical research.

DS: And that's where the problems started?

BD: Yes. The animal rights people didn't want the students to use live specimens, and donations to the universities were stopped. Because it was for the sake of medicine, it was hard for me to believe. Now it's at the point that you can't put the dogs down or donate them; you have to try to place them as pets, after having them neutered.

DS: Do you mean that, legally, you must make provisions for these retired or unraceable dogs, even though some of them are unsuitable even as pets?

BD: Yes. And as far as trainers treating their greyhounds poorly, I disagree. The dogs I owned were fat and taken better care of than most animals, and almost anyone I knew treated his dogs the same way – you simply weren't successful unless you treated them well.

DS: Are they like thoroughbred horses, in that if you don't treat them right, they don't run well for you?

BD: Exactly. What you put into anything is what you get out of it. As far as training dogs with live lures, I'll admit that we used live jackrabbits, which were considered to be pests, like rodents. But then the animal rights folks decided that jackrabbits should be protected. I just hope that it doesn't get to the point that the activists try to protect cows and chickens.

DS: Some greyhound tracks are still operating today, aren't they? I mean, the business isn't totally kaput, is it?

BD: Colorado has a couple of tracks; Florida has successful tracks in Hollywood, St. Petersburg, and Jacksonville; and there's West Memphis in Arkansas. But none of them handle the kind of money they did years ago.

DS: What did you do when you got out of the doghouse?

BD: I liked playing poker in my free time. I always did well at it, so when I finally gave up on the dog business, I began playing full time. I was raised in a farm area, and during the wintertime when there was a lot of free time, the farmers all played poker, so I took up the game when I was about 10 years old and continued to play it at a high level.

DS: You were living on the East Coast in the old days, not in Texas where we hear so much about the problems that gamblers had on the Southern circuit. What was it like where you gambled?

BD: It wasn't very different. I used to travel around the country for good games. Back in the late '50s and early '60s when I played in backrooms, we sometimes got arrested. The police usually would tell us when they were coming (they all knew us), and they'd barge in and arrest everybody, but when you went to court the next day, you'd give a name like "Cyrus Reed" and you'd get a $5 fine. Sometimes even the judge played poker with us, and then the next day he'd be in court fining us the standard five bucks. It just so happened that he was never playing with us when we got raided, of course, but it made good newspaper print for the elections when they arrested some poker players.

In those days we used to play high draw poker back East, and I even went to Australia to play it there. I always played either pot-limit or no-limit poker, never limit poker. Even to this day, if I can't play pot-limit, I just don't want to play. Then, when hold'em came out, it was a totally new concept for me, but I found that I liked the game and that it was perfect for pot-limit or no-limit. I did well at it, and when I moved West, I continued playing it. During the past 20 years, in fact, I've probably played more pot-limit poker than anybody alive.

To me, limit poker is very boring. Some people argue that it isn't, but after I've played it for a half-hour, I'm completely bored. There just aren't as many things that you can do in limit poker as there are in pot-limit or no-limit. When they named it "limit," I don't think they were talking about the money; I think they were talking about the brains it takes to play it. Of course, a lot of people get upset when I say that.

DS: Pot-limit games used to be scarce, but they seem to be enjoying a resurgence of interest these days, as Tom McEvoy mentioned in a recent Card Player column.

BD: Yes, it appears to me that pot-limit poker has resurfaced. Twenty years ago, you had to go on the road to find a game. I've played just about everywhere you can imagine. Sometimes I'd fly somewhere and the game would last only two days. Before hold'em became popular, I flew to Australia twice for a month just to play pot-limit draw poker, mostly with ranchers, once outside of Perth and another time about 100 miles from there in some desolate area. These days in Southern California, there are about five or six casinos spreading pot-limit games. In our usual game in Oceanside, we alternate playing a half-hour of pot-limit hold'em and a half-hour of pot-limit Omaha. I play almost every day, 10 hours a day, at Ocean's Eleven; it has a very comfortable atmosphere and, of course, it's nonsmoking, which is good for me since I don't smoke as much while I'm there.

DS: You're a smoker, yet you prefer nonsmoking poker rooms?

BD: Yes. When I play in Vegas, I think that I'll enjoy smoking at the poker table, but there are so many people who get aggravated by it that I feel bad and get upset. I've found from playing in California that nonsmoking cardrooms work for the good of everybody. If I want to smoke, I certainly can get up from the table for 10 minutes once an hour to smoke outside the room. Twenty years ago, nobody ever complained about the smoke – it wouldn't be a casino if there wasn't smoke blowing around – but everything in life has improved since then.

DS: Even during tournaments, you play pot-limit or no-limit cash games almost exclusively?

BD: Yes. Years ago, almost all of the games were no-limit. Then, it changed to pot-limit, which I believe requires more skill than no-limit. It disturbs me that people seem to think that it takes a lot more money to play pot-limit or no-limit than it takes to play limit poker. I don't agree with that notion. All you can lose is your buy-in, whether it be $500 or $1,000. You lose what you can afford to lose, and that's it. You can lose it quicker in no-limit, but there isn't much difference in the amount of money involved.

DS: Whom do you fear in pot-limit poker?

BD: Playing in a big game in which the blinds are $25-$50 or $50-$100, the best player I've played against is Johnny Chan. He's very tough at high-limit poker. And there are lots of young players these days who play a lot better than the older players I've played with.

DS: How do they learn so fast, these players in their 20s and 30s?

BD: These young guys just play well – I can't find any older players who match up with them – and they're smart. Through computers, they've figured out the odds and every possibility, whereas old-time players never had that privilege. The problem with some of the younger players is that they want to play everything and have a hundred bad habits: They want to gamble on sports and golf, they want to play all the poker games, and they stay up for two or three days at a time. But when they're performing in higher-limit games, they do very well. And when they're in a big game, the game itself rises to a bigger and better level as far as ability goes.

DS: Do you find yourself playing better poker at the higher levels?

BD: Yes, I do – and I think that Chan does, too – because of the intensity and the ability to perform your best when it means the most. Poker is a lot like athletics – the more important the game, the better you perform.

DS: You rise to the level of the competition?

BD: Right. But even though I sometimes play at higher limits, I've found that I'd rather play poker at a level I'm comfortable with on a daily basis than run into a game once a month that's very big and is where large sums of money can be in jeopardy.

DS: But you would take the opportunity to play in those very big games, wouldn't you?

BD: Yes, if the game was really high and they played it every day, I would play in it every day myself. But to run off to play a very high game one day and then have to run back home to play my normal game, I don't like that idea.

DS: It takes the edge off your regular game?

BD: Yes, it gets everything out of whack as far as consistency goes. I believe that if I play in the same game every day, I'll do well. Why jeopardize that to risk it all in one big game?

DS: Knowing your opponents, then, is a big item for you?

BD: That's part of it, of course, but it also involves discipline. To me, the most important thing in pot-limit poker – and in most poker – is this: "How well do you play when things aren't going well for you?" I think one of my biggest strengths is that I probably play better when I'm losing than when I'm winning. With about 95 percent of players, it's just the opposite. I've seen some good players who have a "bad downside" burn up when things are going bad. When they're doing well, they're the toughest players you've ever seen, but just let them lose in a couple of rough spots and they fall apart.

DS: And you know who they are and can take advantage of that flaw?

BD: Exactly!

DS: Oh, you're bad, Billy!

BD: Well, at my age you have to take all the advantages you can – there aren't many left. I've always thought, too, that people should be able to accept their losses, and should never lose their tempers at the table by throwing cards or criticizing dealers. As for me, if someone beats me in a pot, I know that I'm losing that money, but I sure don't want to lose anything else. I don't want to lose my self-respect. I can never blame a dealer for some hand that I lost.

DS: Isn't it surprising how often poor behavior is allowed at poker tables?

BD: It's amazing. Bad behavior is very upsetting to me, and it is a detriment to any poker game. I like casinos where the house and the players get together and immediately get on a person who does something wrong. In my regular game, we take care of out-of-line behavior ourselves. When there is zero tolerance, even the players with bad manners eventually improve, and then the whole atmosphere improves and you get to where you can talk and play without any tension. It's such a pleasure to play with "gentlemen"; I'd rather play with top-notch players who act like gentlemen than with poor players who aren't mannerly.

DS: Why don't you play many tournaments?

BD: I've won a few small tournaments, but I've never really felt comfortable playing in tournaments. "You're a better player than so-and-so is," people will say. "Yeah, I'm a better live-game player than he is, but he's a better tournament player than I am," I answer. When it comes time for the tournament specialists to play a tournament, they're prepared to play it; I'm not prepared for it. When I'm playing in a live-action game, if I lose a big pot, I want to make a big pot. It seems that in side games, you're always looking to play for a big pot; in fact, you're setting up for a big pot during the entire game. But tournament players just drag along, and you look over there at the end and there they are. And then somebody'll say, "How can that guy win a tournament when he can't ever beat you guys in the side action?" I think that tournament players should respond by asking, "How can that guy be successful in side games when he can't even win a tournament?" It's a two-headed coin, two sets of skills.

DS: What's the biggest game you've ever played?

BD: As far as blinds go, I've played in several pot-limit games where the blinds were $200-$400, which is a very big game. I'm quite comfortable at $25-$50 blinds, which is plenty big enough. I don't enjoy playing big pot-limit Omaha games, because all of the money so often goes in before or on the flop, and there's no skill factor after that.

DS: In a sense, it's a freezeout before the flop.

BD: Exactly. Everybody throws in all of his money and then everyone stands up and claps. To me, $10-$25 pot-limit Omaha and $25-$50 or $50-$100 pot-limit hold'em is the perfect scenario. And when you see $40,000-$50,000 pots, it really gets interesting, and spectators gather around. In my opinion, poker rooms need to spread a larger game, because people like to come into the room to watch. That's their dream, to be able to play high someday – so I think that we should be trying to encourage pot-limit play, not kill it.

DS: How much money do you need to bring to the table to play at those limits?

BD: The usual buy-in is $1,000, and if you want to rebuy a couple of times, you might want to bring $6,000 or $8,000 with you. Some people want to buy more chips when they're losing, but a good player will just think, "Well, today's just not my day," and will call it quits until tomorrow. I'm not looking to win or lose $20,000 every day. I think that if I keep things at a sensible level and keep my losses down, in the long run I'll win consistently just by playing well. And that's good enough for me – I don't need to win a million dollars to be happy. Consistent earnings are fine with me.

DS: But you are planning to play "the big one" at this World Series, right?

BD: Yes, but mainly because a lot of my friends have told me that I should. An article was published the other day that listed me at 200-to-1 against. "You're better than that!" several guys told me, but there again, they were comparing side game players to tournament players. In some ways, I would prefer not winning that much money all at one time, because it would sort of spoil the perfect poker life that I have: I like the consistency of daily play and I seem to win enough to survive. But more than anything else, I'm playing the championship event because I've been coerced into playing it.

DS: Peer pressure?!

BD: Right!

DS: In closing, you have a special message for younger players, don't you?

BD: Yes. The message I have for them is this: Stop trying to emulate the older players. You're already better than most of the old-timers, so there's no need to put them on pedestals. Some of the stories and reputations of older players were built during a time when collusion and some other bad things were going on in poker. Nowadays, of course, the game is going forward, and it's up to you younger players to keep things progressing in the right direction.

DS: You're asking younger players to come forward and set higher standards for poker?

BD: Exactly. It'll be a much better game if they do that.

Editor's note: Dana Smith is the owner of Cardsmith Publishing. Visit the web at www.pokerbooks.com for more information.