Smoke Gets in Barbara’s Eyes for A Smoke-Free Gaming Commercial

In the Stone Age days of poker, when smoking was still allowed in California cardrooms, I wrote many columns decrying this destructive habit. In return, I was rebuked by two fellow Card Player columnists who smoked, “Bulldog” Sykes and Susie Isaacs. Bulldog eventually needed a breathing machine at night and then died, while Susie finally gave up the habit and wrote how much better she felt. “Tex” Sheehan was another early writer who succumbed to smoking problems.

Smoking took its toll on many others my wife Barbara and I knew. Her best friend was Catherine Brown, a one-time WSOP ladies champion and a very intelligent woman who had been mayor of a small Texas town, and who owned a home health care business, but who ironically was a dedicated smoker. Once, while in California, she came down with a breathing attack and Barbara rushed her to an emergency room. By coincidence, the physician was a poker-playing friend of ours, Michael “Zip” Vitullo. He bluntly warned Catherine that she had emphysema and would die if she didn’t quit. She resisted, insisting she merely had asthma, but soon had to carry around an oxygen tank and then passed away at a much-too-early age.

Alma McClelland, wife of Poker Hall of Fame tournament director Jack McClelland, and Jack Lewis, the heaviest smoker I ever knew, were among other cigarette casualties from the world of poker. Barbara’s stepfather, a retired deputy sheriff, came down with breathing problems 30 years after he quit and had to use oxygen. An experimental operation that involved having part of his lung cut off failed when a tube came loose and he passed away. Barbara, who was a precocious child to say the least, began picking up butts along railroad tracks and puffing on them when she was four years old, then began smoking for real in high school, when it was “the thing to do.” She finally stopped after she met me and knew how much I detested the habit.

When a smoking ban in California casinos was imminent, casinos bitterly fought it, claiming it would ruin their business. One even sent a dealer, who had been an actor in commercials, to testify against the new law, arguing that it would cripple their poker business. But when the ban finally took effect, casinos discovered that business was better than ever! With smokers now forced to inhale outdoors, I wrote at the time that the air was now fresher inside than out.

I also played a small part in helping to end smoking in casino poker rooms outside California when a crusading player named Casey Kastle asked me to compose a petition, which he circulated to good effect. Thank goodness. I still remember the time I did the tournament write-ups for the WSOP at Binion’s. It seemed like everyone at the final table was puffing away, and I nearly choked to death.

I myself started smoking back in the 40s when I was 14, sneaking under the boardwalk next to the apartment building I lived in when I was growing up in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. About a dozen years later, I quit when I came down with pneumonia, which might have been the best thing – next to meeting Barbara – that ever happened to me.
With all we know today about the horrendous effects of smoking, it’s beyond me why people spend thousands of dollars a year just to get hooked on this addictive habit. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death. It kills close to a half-million people in the U.S. each year, cuts an estimated 12 years off a smoker’s lifespan, and its health costs are about $96 billion annually.

Probably the leading opponent of smoking in casinos is a woman named Stephanie Steinberg. She formed Smoke-Free Gaming of America eight years ago to fight casino smoking in her home state of Colorado, and after a ban was imposed, she moved the battle to other states, working closely with different groups. Progress has been steady, she reports. For example, MGM is building a major casino in Maryland, even though smoking in non-Indian casinos is forbidden there. It would be the first smoke-free casino in the MGM empire.

Recently, she recruited Barbara to do a public service anti-smoking commercial for TV. It was filmed by the Levy Production Group in Las Vegas and Barbara did a sensational job choking and mugging her way through the shoot. If they gave Academy Awards for 30-second commercials, she’d be a lock. My fans will be disappointed to see that I’m not in it – aside from holding a smoky cigarette offscreen — but it’s just as well because I wouldn’t want to upstage my sweetie.

In the film, Barbara is introduced as a professional poker player and says she used to play in secondhand smoke. “I mean lots of secondhand smoke,” she emphasizes, gasping while cigarette-smoking players engulf her in fumes. Barbara goes on to say that she tried all sorts of things to cut through the smoke while she played. She is shown waving a Chinese fan and a duster, holding a small electric fan and then wearing an assortment of face and gas masks.

Finally, she shoves aside all the masks and fans on the poker table, and announces, “Then I realized the best strategy was to go all in and play without any smoke. Now that’s how a champion plays,” she concludes.

Good advice. Now let’s all join Barbara and Smoke-Free Gaming and fight smoking in casinos. It’s not just chips, but our lives that are at stake. Barbara’s public service announcement can be viewed on You Tube at http://youtu.be/LKljaMItqPM ♠

Max Shapiro, a lifelong poker player and former newspaper reporter with several writing awards to his credit, has been writing a humor column for Card Player ever since it was launched more than 20 years ago. His early columns were collected in his book, Read ’em and Laugh.