Aimsworth, Sawmill, and Everett

In the old days when I was gambling on the road, just about everybody had a favorite poker hand that he was famous for playing strongly. "Fatman" Thompson from Corpus Christi played K-10 like it was two aces. In Houston, K-8 was "Kokomo Slim's" hand. And "Broomcorn" Herring played 6-3 like it was pocket rockets.

I used to be famous for playing 6-2, which we called "Aimsworth." I was in San Antone playing a big no-limit game with Jack Straus, Sen. Red Berry, and a bunch of the old-time players. Jack was on top of you all the time, but in full ring games, he wasn't as tough as he was shorthanded or heads up. He had two aces and I took the flop with a 6-2. A deuce came on the flop, he made a bet, and I called him. Off came another deuce on the turn, he bet, and I called him. A third deuce came on the river and we got all in. When I showed him that 6-2, he said, "What the hell were you drawing at there, Cowboy?"

"Oh, I wasn't drawing at nothing," I answered. "Just aiming at another deuce. I guess I'm 'Aimsworth.'" And that's how 6-2 got its name. My wife, Evelyn, even made me a custom shirt with 6-2 on the front of it that I wore during the championship event at the 1984 World Series of Poker when I came second to Jack Keller.

Another hand that I named is K-9, which is called "Sawmill." Milton Butts and I were playing poker in Bryan, Texas, where they had a good game going on the weekends. We'd been playing for a couple of days when a hand came up in which I had a K-9. I made a pretty good hand with it, but lost the pot and went broke. As I was driving back home to Houston with Milton, feeling kind of disgusted about going broke with that K-9, we passed by a sawmill where a man was sawing logs in the lumberyard. "As hard as that guy works for his money, I'll bet he would never go broke with a K-9," I told Milton. And that's how K-9 got named "Sawmill." Some of those names are still going around - Doyle Brunson mentioned the sawmill hand in his book, Super/System.

Everett Goulsby and I used to play together in Dallas, and he was about the best head-up player ever - I'm telling you, he was hard to beat head up. His "hand" was Q-10. (Looks like it might be Robert Varkonyi's favorite hand, too, since he won the World Series of Poker with it.) One night years ago, Everett was playing in a no-limit game with Benny Binion at the Horseshoe. Everett had two aces and Benny had two sevens. The flop came Q-7-something. Benny bet and Everett moved him all in. Benny thought about it for a few seconds and then threw away his three sevens! I couldn't believe that he would throw away the nuts. Later on, Everett bragged to me, "I'll show you how to make one of them billionaires lay down a hand."

Everett was a good player and he was a lucky player along with it. One time we were playing in Arlington, Texas, where I had a Vegas-style craps game. Henry Bowen and Curtis "Iron Man" Skinner, who used to play golf with Doyle and them, were my partners. Curtis was nicknamed "Iron Man" because of the way he could hit a ball with those golf irons. I started playing head-up poker with Everett and beat him out of $17,000 playing 30 minutes of lowball and 30 minutes of hold'em. When the game broke up at about 3 p.m., Everett decided to shoot some dice. We had a $100 limit on the craps game, and he got to be $30,000 loser. It seemed like there was no way that anybody could get out from that big a loss - at a $100 limit, that's 300 bets. But Everett hung in there until 4 p.m. the next afternoon. I nearly had to put my stickmen and dealers in the hospital, because he had worn them all down. I put in so many new dice, I ran out of them - nothing was wrong with the dice, they were just on a streak. And Everett got out! Can you believe that? He got out a $7,000 winner from being $30,000 loser. That's the biggest swing I've ever seen in a $100-limit craps game. I might not see another one like it in 200 years. I have about a million other craps stories I could tell you, but I'll save 'em for another day.

Editor's note: For a vivid account of poker personalities and their adventures as road gamblers, you can't beat Wolford's book, Cowboys, Gamblers & Hustlers, available from Card Player. For more details, visit www.pokerbooks.com.