'Treetop' and the Ponies

Jack "Treetop" Straus stood about 6 feet 7 inches tall and he loved to gamble. I played poker with him for 40 years in Fort Worth, San Antone, and Dallas, and in Las Vegas at quite a few World Series of Poker tournaments. He was one of the best shorthanded players in the world. He wasn't as good in a full ring game because he had too much gamble in him, but I can tell you one thing - sometimes he'd bet so much, it wasn't poker to call.

Years ago he used to put on tournaments in Las Vegas. In 1979, I played in one that he hosted at the Marina. "How you been doin'?" I asked him.

"I'm runnin' this tournament," he answered, "but I don't know what the hell I'm gonna do, Cowboy. I don't have any money." I won the deuce-to-seven lowball event at his tournament, and after the whole thing was over, I asked him again, "How did you do, Jack?"

"I lost $90,000 to the tournament," he answered.

"But I thought you didn't have any money," I said.

"I can get all the money I need to gamble on," he answered, "but I have hell paying my rent."

Jack was a bettor, loved sports, and loved the horses. One time at the Horseshoe, I saw him bet $30,000 on a ballgame, leaving him with only $4 in his pocket. "Hell, this is enough to eat breakfast on," he told me.

Jack was a smart operator, cool. One time while he was living in Houston, he had a pocketful of money and decided to go to New Orleans for the races. He asked Bob, a big bookmaker in Houston, to go with him. "If you go to the races with me," Jack told him, "you can book me down there." They were pretty good friends, so Bob agreed.

They got to New Orleans about three hours before the races began and checked into the Roosevelt Hotel. Jack had a scheme in mind in which he could "past post" the bookie and make a big score, so he left Bob in the room and went downstairs to the taxi stand outside the hotel to see if he could make a deal with the dispatcher. Sure enough, the dispatcher agreed to plant a cab in front of the hotel that Jack could identify by the number painted on it. Then, he instructed the cabby not to take any customers until he saw Jack and Bob come out of the hotel. Meanwhile, Jack arranged for a man at the track to run to the telephone as soon as the first race had finished and call the dispatcher with the results.

When Jack and Bob came downstairs together, cab No. 37 was parked right in front of the hotel. "Can you take us to the track?" Jack asked, signaling that they were his "customers." The races began at around 1:10 p.m., and it was quite a distance from the hotel to the track. As soon as they pulled away from the curb, Jack began looking over the race form.

"I guess the races have already started," he said to Bob, "and that's too bad, because there's a horse that I wanted to bet in the first race."

"Hell, go ahead and bet," Bob said.

At about that time, the dispatcher's voice came over the cabby's microphone. "Where you going?" he asked the cabby.

"To the racetrack," he answered.

"Well, after you drop your customers off at the track," the dispatcher told him, "pick up a man at 2304 Villa Street."

The key number was the last one in the street address, the 4. After hearing the message, Jack messed around another minute or two studying the race form, and then told Bob that he wanted to bet the No. 4 horse.

"Go right ahead," Bob said. "How much you wanna bet?"

"I'll bet $3,000 on him to win," Jack answered.

"You've got it!" Bob agreed.

The minute they got to the track, they checked on the winner of the first race, and miraculously, the No. 4 horse had won it. The horse paid about 8-to-1, so Jack won more than $20,000 on his bet. Of course, they stayed at the track the whole day, and Jack bet all the rest of the races - and wound up losing about $3,000 for the day! That's how much he loved to gamble.

I miss Jack. He was a great poker player with a friendly personality, and everybody liked him. He was a good man to have around the joints, too, because he played high and was pleasant to play with. I saw Jack win some big scores and I saw him lose some big ones, but through it all, he was quite a man, friendly and full of life. In 1982, Jack won the World Series of Poker after getting down to a single $500 chip, and in 1988, he was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame.

Editor's note: Byron "Cowboy" Wolford is the author of Cowboys, Gamblers & Hustlers, where you'll find colorful tales from yesteryear about vintage poker players. Visit www.pokerbooks.com for more details.