Byron 'Cowboy' Wolford, 1930-2003; A Tribute to a Rodeo Champion and Poker Legend

The cards were in the air, the chips were down, and Binion's Horseshoe was packed – it was

World Series of Poker

time in 1998 and I was waiting for an elevator to take me to the action. As the door opened, out stepped a dude all decked out in overalls with a sequined royal flush cascading across the bib, a white Stetson, and cowboy boots – it was the legendary Byron "Cowboy" Wolford. As he entered the foyer, a fan rushed up to him and gushed, "I just love those overalls you're wearing. Where did you get them?" Demonstrating the quick wit for which he was famous, the authentic ("He's the real thing," his good friend Carl McKelvey told me) Texas cowboy replied, "I was friends with Liberace, and when he died, these overalls are all that he left me in his will." (Actually, his loving wife, Evelyn, designed and sewed the many unique outfits that became his trademark.) After this first meeting, I set up an interview with the cowboy, and we later collaborated in writing Cowboys, Gamblers & Hustlers, one of my most enjoyable writing projects – primarily because I got such a kick out of listening to Cowboy's tall but true tales about his life as a rodeo rider and road gambler.

"In poker, the thickness of a card, the luck of the draw, can make you rich and famous or send you to the rail whimpering and broke. If a diamond had come, you'd be the world champion – but it didn't and so you aren't." No one better understood the role of luck in tournament poker than Cowboy. He made it to the final table at WSOP events nine times, including placing second in the championship marathon in 1984, winning the $5,000 limit hold'em event in 1991, and taking third in the $2,000 pot-limit hold'em tournament in 2000.

But it wasn't his accomplishments in poker that gave him the most pride. "The two trophies I won back-to-back at the Calgary Stampede (1955-56) and the 30 belt buckles I won rodeoing mean more to me than any World Series bracelet, because I did it myself with my own skill, my own coordination, my own thoughts. I didn't win them because a spade instead of a diamond came on the end."

Wolford ended his rodeo career in 1960 at the age of 30, and began traveling the circuit as a road gambler alongside such famous Texas gamblers as Doyle Brunson, Jack Straus, Amarillo Slim Preston, Titanic Thompson, and Oklahoma's pride, Bobby Baldwin (to whom he placed second in the $10,000 deuce-to-seven draw event at the WSOP in 1980). Eventually he migrated to Las Vegas, where he became friends with Benny Binion. In 1996, Wolford's photo holding a pair of dice appeared nationally in advertisements for Binion's Horseshoe. When pot-limit hold'em action declined in Vegas in the '90s, he moved to Oceanside, California, to play poker, later becoming a host at Ocean's Eleven Casino. "Cowboy Wolford was like a part of our family," Bob Moyer, general manager and partner at Ocean's Eleven Casino said. "He made a great impact on poker in Oceanside, and he was always there to help other players improve their game. We will all miss his stories and his wit."

Las Vegas Sun reporter Ed Koch noted, "His sense of humor, flamboyant and authentic cowboy outfits, and horse sense made Cowboy Wolford one of poker's most endearing figures." Part of what made the champion roper and poker icon so endearing was his approachability. It was easy to recognize the colorful Cowboy even in the sea of poker players at the WSOP, and it was just as easy to strike up a conversation with him. His personality drew people to him. World Poker Tour television audiences would've loved him. "As poker players, we are truly a rare breed – it's the challenge and the ego, it isn't the greed," the cowboy rhymed in one of his perceptive poems about poker.

"The poker world has lost one of its most colorful characters," Howard Schwartz of the Gamblers Book Shop commented. "Cowboy Wolford stood for a special generation of self-taught, street-smart players who lived an exciting, energetic life spanning many generations. He will be sorely missed." The hard-working cowboy, who was born in a boomtown tent during the East Texas oil boom, played his last hand of poker back home in Dallas, where he recently had opened a poker room. Texas was where he belonged. "I'll always be a cowboy at heart," he said in his book. And if I know Cowboy, he's looking to meet up with Glass Eye, his champion horse, for one more trip out of the chutes in that big rodeo in the sky; and maybe shoot some dice on the hay bales in the rodeo barns; and, for sure, play some poker with his ol' buddies Benny Binion, Jack Straus, Bill Smith, Titanic Thompson, Mr. Brooks, and Sailor Roberts.

"I've lost one of my oldest and dearest friends," Doyle Brunson said of Cowboy Wolford – and so has the world of poker.