Fadin' the White Line

In the 1960s when I was 30-something, I used to leave my home base in Dallas to go play poker in Tyler, Waco, Brenham, or anywhere there was a good game. Everybody knew when and where the best games were going on, so you could play poker in a big game every day if you wanted to, sort of like playing the tournament circuit today. Lots of us road gamblers faded the white line from Dallas to Houston to Waco to Shreveport to Corpus and points in between.

Not all the road games were in gambling joints, the Elks Club, or AmVets; some of them were in homes. The head of the house would run the game and his wife usually would cook meals for all the poker players. We knew that the best games on Wednesday and Thursday were in Brenham at Martin Cramer's home out on the lake. Martin had $100-limit dice games and good poker games, and he didn't have to worry about getting raided. No charter, no nothing, he just had it fixed up so that nobody bothered him. On Tuesday and Friday nights, I used to play in Hugh Briscoe's home game in Denton, and later on, Hugh played at my club in Dallas.

In Texas in those days, there was one certain guy who "owned" an area and they called him the boss gambler in that town. You could run a little poker game in the boss gambler's town, but you couldn't run any craps games because the boss just wouldn't stand for it. Sam McFarland was the boss gambler in Longview, Slim Lambert was the man in San Antone, and Martin Cramer was the boss gambler in Brenham. Martin was killed one night in Houston when somebody broke into his apartment and hijacked him. The police never found out who did it.

Some of the road gamblers traveled together and played off the same bankroll, like Bobby Hoff, Carl McKelvey, and Sailor Roberts did. Everybody was aware of who was playing the same money, but that didn't bother anybody. Road partners usually didn't play in the same game, but even if they did, the other players didn't fear any collusion. Regardless of what people might think, I've seen bankroll partners playing in the same game, each man for himself, not getting anything from the other guy; they played their hands. Of course, they kinda stayed out of each other's way. But even when a man was playing the same money with his road partner, if he went broke, some other gambler usually would help him out if he had money at the time.

Very few gamblers ever drank alcohol when they were at the table. I've seen two or three of them drink a little bit, and usually they threw the party when they did. I knew Bill Smith (the 1985 world champion of poker), and went lots of places with him. When he got to a certain point in his drinking, he couldn't play, but when he wasn't drinking, nobody could beat him. He didn't care, really. And I guess that some of them caroused around a little bit, but I never saw them bring women to a poker game. Poker was strictly business, as everybody was just trying to make some money at it.

Some poker players had problems with drugs in those days, but even though I knew them quite well and traveled around with them, I never participated in any of that stuff myself. I'd heard about the drugs, but I never said anything about it to anybody because I figured it wasn't any of my business. The most important thing was what they were doing in the poker game, not what they did away from the table.

Folks have asked me whether the road gamblers played just against each other, wondering how any of us could make any money always playing against the other top hands. Naturally, that's not how it was. Let's say that Mac knew somebody from Waco who had money, what we called a "producer." Mac might make a call or two and we'd drive to Waco to get in the game with him, not with the other professional players. There were always three or four men from that area who had money who weren't top players, men who just liked to play poker, and they were the ones we wanted to play with - they were the producers of the road show.

We traveled to poker games just like the cowboys went to rodeos. Some rodeos were bigger than others, and some poker games were bigger than others. But, you might go to a small game and if the right people showed up, it could become a big game. The "right people" meant anybody who didn't gamble for a living like all the rest of us. A local businessman might come in, have a few drinks, and throw a party. Some of the party throwers were oilmen. Their wells were busy producing black gold while they were producing money at the poker table.

Charlie Cannon was an oilman who lived about 30 miles from Waco and was a close friend of Noble Bates, a local gambler. Charlie just loved playing poker. If there wasn't a game going on when he walked into the Elks Club, Charlie would have a few drinks and then stake everybody to get a game started. There might be four or five ranchers there waiting around the bar, and Charlie would say, "Hell, let's start a game. I'll stake you to $500 each," and the game was on. If they went broke, he'd give them more money. There he was, playing against his own money - and he never did win!

Another player I used to play with was James "Goody" Roy, a tall guy from Mount Pleasant, Tennessee. One night when I was running a big poker game at the AmVets in Dallas, the action was particularly good, so I called Goody. "Fly on down here to Dallas," I told him. "We've got a helluva game and I'll take 25 percent of you if you want me to."

Goody liked to "rabbit hunt" more than anybody I've ever seen, but we had a rule against it at the AmVets. After everybody's out of the hand and the pot has been pushed to the winner, the rabbit hunter says to the dealer, "Burn one so that I can see the last card." I picked up Goody at the airport, and while I was driving him to the club, I mentioned that he couldn't rabbit hunt in our game.

"You can't rabbit hunt?!" he hollered.

"Nope, you sure can't. It's one of the rules."

"Well, hell, just turn around and take me back to the airport right now!"

"What?! Are you serious?"

"I mean it! I ain't playing if I can't rabbit hunt." So, we changed the rules while Goody was in town.

I've got a million road stories, but I'll save some of them for next time.

Editor's note: Cowboy Wolford is the author of Cowboys, Gamblers & Hustlers, available through Card Player. Visit www.pokerbooks.com for more information.