Remarkable Achievements

First, I want to review some of my previous comments about the Mayfair Club.

I was partially responsible for hold’em coming to the Mayfair. I played Paul “X22” Magriel a series of backgammon/hold’em freezeouts. We’d play a short backgammon match, and then play a no-limit hold’em freezeout using the backgammon checkers as our chips. Soon, these matches caught on, and a number of players were playing them. This group included Roger Low and Bob Beimish, who both went on to become successful option traders. The Mayfair had been a bridge club that evolved into a backgammon club, but suddenly, poker was alive there. By the mid-’80s, the Mayfair game had taken off. We played no-limit hold’em every evening. Both while waiting for the game to start and when it ended, we discussed hands, plays, and concepts. These discussions would continue at local bars late into the night. Playing, talking, analyzing, and studying created a large pool of very good players. This was due to the fact that most of us had an intellectual approach to games. We played and studied games a lot. At that time, the Mayfair players were clearly the best backgammon players in the world. They also were very good at a number of other games, such as bridge, chess, gin, blackjack, hearts, Scrabble, and a variety of other strange games.

Jack Effel, the World Series of Poker director, recently asked me if I had made a lot of money playing poker at the Mayfair. I was embarrassed to say that I didn’t make much. How could I, when all of the regular players were so tough? The three best poker players were, in my opinion, Dan Harrington, Howard Lederer, and Erik Seidel (in alphabetical order). Two of these three, Seidel and Harrington, were recently inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame. Erik is a quiet guy with a dry sense of humor, and has been a consistently tough competitor in both tournaments and cash games. Dan probably has had the best batting average of any player in high-stakes no-limit hold’em tournaments. By this I mean that he doesn’t play that often, but the percentage of the time that he wins or cashes is extremely high. He also has written some of the best poker books ever. I want to congratulate both of them, but since I am sure that you are familiar with them and their remarkable accomplishments, I want to discuss an even more remarkable achievement by one of the old Mayfair regulars.

After the top three (Harrington, Lederer, and Seidel), the Mayfair’s second tier of players was also very strong. It included Mickey Appleman, Noli Francisco, Jay Heimowitz, Billy Horan, Jason Lester, Sonny Mendoza, Bill Rothstein, Jeff Rothstein, Mike Shictman, and me. The names that you don’t recognize are
winning cash-game players who don’t play tournaments that often, and I’m sure that there were some other tough players I’ve forgotten to mention. If you survived at the Mayfair, you got very good. Also remember that at this time, there were very few regular no-limit hold’em games anywhere in the country. (I think there may have been one or two in Texas, but none in Atlantic City, Vegas, or California.)

I want to call your attention to one of the names on that list: Billy Horan. Always well-liked and very sociable, he had been a top athlete and had become a great games player. First, he excelled at backgammon, and then poker. He smoked fairly heavily, and right now is battling emphysema. He is confined to his New York City apartment, where he breathes through a plastic tube attached to a huge ventilation machine. Hopefully, he will be able to get a successful lung transplant and resume a relatively normal life. When I visited him recently, he was in great spirits. He is very fortunate to have Heidi, his longtime girlfriend, there to help take care of him. Even under these adverse circumstances, as “Spencerman3,” he had just become one of the nine multiple World Championship of Online Poker bracelet winners. Now that’s what I call a really remarkable accomplishment. Nice going, Billy Horan. ♠

Steve “Zee” Zolotow, aka The Bald Eagle, is a successful games player. He currently devotes most of his time to poker. He can be found at many major tournaments and playing on Full Tilt, as one of its pros. He usually spends much of the fall hanging out in his bars on Avenue A — Nice Guy Eddie’s and The Library near Houston, and Doc Holliday’s at 9th Street — in New York City.