Gamblin' With the Boys in Dallas

Back in the '60s and '70s, the best poker games were at the Red Men's Club on Irving Street in downtown Dallas, so I rented an apartment and played poker there every day. The club was owned by Raymond Farrow, who also owned the liquor store downstairs. You had to walk through the liquor store and up the stairs to the club, which had about 1,500 square feet of space and a little kitchen through the swinging doors in the back of the joint near the restroom. Two poker tables and a small cage where you bought your chips were located up front. The limit games were always $5-$10, and there usually was a big no-limit hold'em game going on, too.

Lots of well-known players played at the Red Men's Club. Mac McCorquodale, Bob Hooks from Wills Point, Texas, Cotton Bullard, O.T. Bounds, Morris Shapiro, Buck Winston, Bobby Chapman (the highest-limit player in Dallas), Titanic Thompson, and I all played no-limit hold'em there. Doyle Brunson used to play with us occasionally, and Doc Ramsey, Martin Cramer, Hugh Shoemaker, Blondie Forbes, and Freddy "Sarge" Ferris all played there from time to time.

Before he bought the joint, Raymond had been in the liquor and food business, and he couldn't play a lick of poker. There was no telling how much he lost in the game. One time while we were playing, Morris ordered a sandwich, saying, "Put a slice of onion on it for me." At the time, Raymond was a $20,000 loser in the game. A big gray-haired guy, he got up from the table to make the sandwich. After a minute or two, he stuck his head out the kitchen door and said, "Morris, I forgot to tell you that a slice of onion costs a nickel extra." You see some funny things in poker - Raymond was stuck $20,000 and was worried about losing a nickel!

Henry Rosenberg played with us in Dallas, too. I remember once when he had two aces in a big pot and got beat with them for a lot of money. Henry raised hell when he lost. He took those two aces and threw them way up in the air. Somehow or other, the A hit a crack between the acoustic panels in the ceiling and just stuck there. They never did take it down. I wouldn't doubt that heart ace is still hanging there today.

Mac McCorquodale played at the Red Men's a lot, and I got to know him well. Mac always dressed like a king, with silk shirts that had big, black pearl buttons on them. He's the one who took hold'em to Las Vegas at the California Club; he asked me to go with him, but I didn't have sense enough to do it. If I had gone, I probably would've gotten rich. Mac was a character. He would win, win, win, and then every once in a while, he'd get to drinking Cordon Bleu and throw off all his money. One time, Mac went to Hot Springs, Arkansas, for the races, during the days when Hot Springs had open gambling. He got there a few days early, so he went to a local place to play some five-card stud. It turned out it was a takeoff joint, where you couldn't win a dime. In one hand, Mac had aces on fourth street and his opponent's highest card showing was something like a jack. McCorquodale moved in on him. "Can you get insurance here?" Mac asked. They told him no. "Can you cut the cards?" No, that wasn't allowed. "Well, can you borrow $200 to get home on?" Yes, you could do that. And, sure enough, when the last card came off the deck, the other guy broke McCorquodale! Doyle and the others still talk about that story.

Mac told us about the time he had been playing poker at the Elks Club in Waco and had been drinking a little at the table. He left the club in a taxicab a $30,000 winner and went to another place to play some more poker, but when he got there, he couldn't find his money. That sort of sobered him up. He was sure that he'd left his wad in the taxi, but the cabby told him that he hadn't found anything. Mac was sick; he offered a $2,500 reward to anyone who returned the money to him. Two days later when he went back to the Elks Club, Mac remembered that he had hung his jacket on the coat stand in the corner while he was playing poker there. He took it off the rack, and in the inside coat pocket sat the $30,000, right where it had been for two days!

That joint in Waco was something else. It was upstairs, and had a big bar in the front and a poker room in the back with windows that had been covered with plywood shutters for years. The Elks finally decided to knock off the plywood and put in new windows to get some ventilation. Two of the old gamblers who had been playing up there for nearly 20 years keeled over dead within a month; I figure they couldn't stand all that fresh air!

Editor's note: Cowboy Wolford is the author of Cowboys, Gamblers & Hustlers, a vivid and true account of his adventures as a gambler and rodeo roper in the old days. Visit www.pokerbooks.com for more information.