Match Roping and Playing Heads-Up Poker

Match roping is the cowboy version of playing heads-up poker. I did quite a bit of both back in the 1950s. I'll always remember the first time I met Dean Oliver, long before he won the first of his eight rodeo world championships. Jimmy Whaley and I were up in Idaho for a rodeo, got there three days before it started, and wandered into a bar for a beer.

"Where you fellas from?" a guy drinking at the bar asked.

"We're from Texas."

"What you all do down there?"

"We're calf ropers."

"Calf ropers, huh? We've got a calf roper here in Boise named Dean Oliver."

"I've heard of him," I said, "but I've never met him."

"You wanna rope him in a match roping?"

"I'll rope anybody from Idaho. Hell, I've never seen a potato digger that could beat me ropin' calves!" I bragged. I'd had a couple of beers by then and was feeling mighty powerful. A crowd of cowboys had gathered around us, and, boy, did that make them mad!

"You can rope out at my ranch," he said. "I've got an arena, fresh calves on the cow, everything. How much do you wanna bet?" The fella's name was Moe Sager, and he owned an 8,000-acre ranch there. I didn't know that he was Oliver's backer at that time.

"Hell, I don't know how much we have, but we'll bet whatever we've got," I answered kind of cocky. "Gotta save enough out for our room and eats, that's all." Jimmy and I started counting our money, and including the $200 we had hidden in the car, it added up to about $2,400. So, we started talking deal.

"How many calves you want us to rope?" I asked.

"Eight," Moe answered.

"That suits me. What time?"

"Eleven in the morning."

The next morning there were more people gathered around to watch us rope than there were at the rodeo. From his arena we looked down into the valley with the mountains rising all around, and way down there we saw cowboys driving a herd of about 300 white-faced cows. As they got closer, we could see that every one of them had a calf. A calf that's still on a cow and has never been roped is a wild one. They're fresh, they're stout, and they're wild as can be.

Then, Dean Oliver comes into the arena. He's about 6 feet 4 inches tall, weighs 200-something pounds, and he ain't fat. When Dean exercised his horse, he didn't ride him - he took the sonnagun by the halter and ran three miles leading him!

We started picking out the calves that we were gonna rope. The way it's done is this: You pick out four and he picks out four. You rope four, he turns around and ropes your four, and then you rope his four. I picked out the smallest calves I could find, each weighing about 270 pounds, while Oliver picked out the four biggest he could find; some of them weighed 350. Big as Dean was, it looked like I was caught in one helluva trap.

But luckily, I had a helluva horse. He'd jerk one down and I'd be there waiting on him, leg him down and string him. The way I worked a wild calf was to ease him up like his legs were glass, get a wrap on him, and then tie him - hell, I could tie a giraffe that way. I beat Dean by 70 seconds on those eight calves! Everybody was amazed. Sager was hotter than an onion. Dean Oliver was in shock. And I was $2,400 richer.

So, Jimmy and I gathered up the money, made the little rodeo there, and then headed for Caldwell, Idaho, for the next rodeo. We're sitting in a bar a couple of days before it started, and who shows up but ol' Sager, the millionaire who was backing Oliver.

"You wanna rope Dean again?" he asked.

"No, I don't," I answered, "but I'll tell you what we can do: I'll play you some heads-up poker, and if you beat me, I'll rope him for whatever you beat me out of."

"Hell, you've got that one on!" he answered.

"Well, just go buy some cards," I said, "and we'll start playing right now."

After he'd had another drink, Sager and I went up to his hotel room to play some heads-up lowball, along with a whole bunch of cowboys who came along to watch us. By the time the game was over at about 2:30 in the morning, I had beat him out of $10,000.

He wrote me a check for it - didn't bother me because I knew that he had plenty of money. I asked Jimmy to drive the 200 miles to Sager's bank so he could cash the check for me right when the bank opened. So, he and a buddy got a six-pack and took off in his new Buick to get the money. When they walked in the bank, they saw Earl, a boy who worked there and did some bareback riding at rodeos during the summer.

"Jimmy, guess what?" Earl said. "That sonnagun Sager called the president of the bank last night and stopped payment on Byron's check."

At the end of the rodeo I ran into Moe. "Hey, you sonnabitch," I yelled. "What about my money?" He never answered me and he never paid me - but I guess I broke him of the habit of betting on Dean and playing poker.

Cowboy Wolford tells this story and lots of others about the old days of poker and rodeo in his book, Cowboys, Gamblers & Hustlers, available through Card Player. Visit www.pokerbooks.com for more information.