Smith Sets the Record for Gettin' Busted

It would take all the audiotapes they sell at WalMart for me to record all the great poker players I've played with over the years. One of the greatest was Bill Smith. I first met Bill in Las Vegas at the Horseshoe Club, where he worked in the poker room long before the World Series of Poker ever started. Sailor Roberts, Bob Hooks, and Bill were playing poker there, and I went to Vegas to play with them. Bill could put a man on a hand better than anybody I've ever seen. If he hadn't been such a heavy drinker, he probably would have been the world champion three or four times instead of just the one time he won it against T.J. Cloutier in 1985. When he had only a few drinks, he played world-class poker, but if he had too many drinks, he didn't play very well at all.

Bill lived in Dallas near where I lived, and he used to play in my poker game there. He and I also ran some Vegas-style craps games around Dallas. Bill was a great no-limit poker player, a dangerous player, and it seemed like he never worried about anything, including whether or not he had any money. I don't know how many times I've been arrested for playing poker, but I guess Bill holds the record. One morning in Lubbock while he was playing poker, the police raided the game and put all the players in jail. As soon as they got out of jail that afternoon, they went to another game, and the police raided it. When they got out of jail, they went to another game that same night, and the police raided them for a third time! That might be the world record for the most times getting arrested in one day for playing poker. Bill died in 1997, and lots of us still miss him.

Another great poker player I knew was Cotton Bullard from Wills Point, Texas, where he owned a ranch. Cotton drove his Model-A Ford to the Elks Club in Tyler in the '50s, and joined it because you couldn't play there unless you were a member. He could hardly read or write, but he had good card sense. He won himself rich in the big no-limit hold'em games at the Tyler Elks Club playing against all those oilmen - some of whom couldn't play a lick - and just a few other good players like Bob Bryant and Bob Hooks. The Elks Club charged 5 percent extra when you bought chips. If you bought in for $500, it would cost you $25 to play. Of course, if you went broke and bought in for another $500, it would cost you another $25. By 2 p.m., the game would be full, and you could sell your seat for $100. In fact, Jess Sweeney got rich just by selling his seat every afternoon at around 3 o'clock.

The Elks Club closed at midnight, and lots of the regulars didn't like to quit playing that early. Johnny Mayfield and I had played a lot of poker in Waco and other parts of Texas, and we knew all the players, so in 1965 we opened up a game right across the street in a suite of rooms at the Carlton Hotel, where everybody could play as late as they wanted. When the Elks Club closed for the night, lots of the players would walk across the street to play with us.

One night our game became raggedy, so Sarge started a game called "Georgia skin," the gamblingest game in the world, with everybody betting against everybody else. They used to have skin tournaments in Louisiana, and Sarge was quite a player. You get dealt one card and then you take a card off the deck. If you have a king and a king falls off, you lose. You can't take more than one card, because if you do, the deck gets shorter and you might fall right quick. If there is a "cub" in the deck, and most of your cards are buried on the bottom of it, you can win a lot of money when you're playing for high stakes. I played in a skin game in Shreveport in the '60s where the least you could bet was $50. Little Red Ashey and some people who owned the Red Lily Cue Club in Houston were in the game. They would drive into town in their new Cadillacs with two pocketsful of money and play skin for four or five days at a time. It was a big game, with swings of $60,000 or more.

On this particular night in Tyler, I'd been working our poker game at the Carlton for quite a while and had just gone to sleep in the other room when Johnny woke me up, saying, "We're gonna start a skin game. You wanna go in with me?" Since Johnny and I were partners in the poker game (we charged 5 percent on the chips just like the Elks did), he checked with me first.

"No, I don't wanna go in with you or anybody else," I answered. "I don't know much about skin, and I don't want to tie up my money in it."

"Well, all right, I'll just go in by myself," he said, and he headed out the door.

The skin game started. All the boss gamblers were in it - Martin Cramer from Houston was playing big, and Sam McFarland sent somebody to Longview twice to pick up $20,000 for him. Then, Sarge got hot. He was catching every right card in the deck, and boy, he started drowning them. Making a long story short, they played and played and played until Sarge broke every one of them, and won more than $100,000.

Mayfield went broke along with all the rest of them. When it was over, he came running back to my bedroom, asking, "You were in with me, weren't you, Byron?"

"Hell no. I don't know how you came out, but I sure as hell wasn't in with you." I still had my bankroll on me from the poker game, but it all went south when I had to go in and straighten up everybody's chips in the skin game - it was a cash deal. When I paid Sarge, he tipped me $1,200. Of course, he had broken up my poker game, and we couldn't get it started again for quite a while.

I've got a few more stories about the old days of poker, but I'll save 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.