I have played poker with Amarillo Slim, Sailor Roberts, and Johnny Moss. I have not played with Doyle, that I remember. What y'all are talking about was called playing "top hand" or "in-together." I thought of a long post about it, but the haters came out before I even posted anything. Why should I tell a story for the major stalker/hater to get upset about?

Johnny Hughes

Johnny's fact-checker and lingo expert must be on vacation.

Hate to suggest you ppl do some reading. However Im reading a book called "Ghosts at the table" by Des Wilson. It talks about D D and S traveling the roads together to play. Everyone knew they shared a roll. They wouldnt go out of their way to not play each other, but there wasnt a point when it got to them HU. Most the time one would raise, the other would fold, and the winner would show his hand to prove he had "something" (most the time). And since everyone knew they were sharing a roll, coming up with tells and signals to each other didnt really work. Because extra focus was on them.

Johnny Hughes, some of us would love to hear your story about this.

I really don't like to gamble, but I would bet my life that the big guy and a few other big names have cheated in the past, mostly with hand signals...and if you think the bigger games are honest today, you are an idiot.

+1

I play in several underground rooms and yes it happens all the time as well as things like marked decks and slight of hand dealers that feed players cards.

This is why I will NEVER trust online play.

Just between you and me I have a friend that has 5 computers synced up so that he can play them all on one table at the same time.

When I was playing the Sandia Poker Room in the mid-nineties I got to meet the infamous "Slick." His real name was Larry Grover. He was a retired pit boss. He spent 13 years at the Stardust and 17 years at the Landmark.

He couldn't go any higher than pit boss because of his record before he went to Nevada. Slick showed me a picture of him and Tony "The Ant" Spilotro in a police lineup when they were in their late teens. They grew up together and were good friends.

I talked with Slick many times about Vegas poker. His main advice (remember, this was the mid-nineties) to me was to stay out of the big bet games. "You got no outs against them kid" he would tell me. "They'll play each other on the square all day long but as soon as you sit down nothing even has to be said. They're gonna chop you up."

"So how are they gonna do it, Slick?" I would ask.

"Two things, they are gonna play "best hand," and they're gonna use code language." Slick would say

"What's best hand?"

"They play the best hand between them against you. If one guys got pocket Kings and the other guy has pocket Queens or Jacks their gonna go iinto the muck. Only the Kings are gonna play you. That way you are never getting pot odds better than even money."

"So what do they do, signal each other?"

Yes, but not in the way you think. They don't use physical signals--that's detectable and provable. They use code language."

"Code language?"

"Yeah, kid. Let's say the code word for Ace is "play" and the code word for Six is "cinch." I look down at my hand and see an A/6 then I'll send it to the muck saying 'I can't play I ain't got a cinch' I just told my guys I threw away an A/6. This is strong stuff, kid. Only the strongest hand is gonna come at you and---if there is three of us working together---the strong hand is gonna know 4 cards that are unavailabe to you and him. So if one of us has Kings and another has Queens and another has A/6, the Queens and A/6 are going to the muck and the Kings are gonna know that if you have something like AK you are gonna be much less likely to hit the flop because one Ace is not available to you."

"It's strong stuff, kid. Everybody thinks they use physical signals but that's just stupid. And everybody thinks the weak hand raises for the strong hand but that's just stupid too because it is to easily detectable. They do it the way I told you kid. And they'll beat your brains out with it. Send you packin'.

Thanks for the lessons, Slick

I find this to be absolutely true. Very fine writing. Very, very accurate.

You wouldn't be talking about that $300 change-in pot limit Omaha 8 or better game at Sandia would you? You get a wheel, you get quartered for a big part of your stack. Folks are sitting with two or three thousand up front waiting for a tourist to fall out of a multi-colored hot air baloon. Some call the 10/20 limit game at Sandia "the Corporation", ever hear that???

Back when they were taking off Banker Sam in the low millions, the ''team" would arrive for the no-limit game together every afternoon. I can read everything about the Sandia Casino poker room from the parking lot.

Johnny Hughes

Your "friend" sounds like a real winner. Associate yourself with these types often?

Sounds like a game on television. Who talks about their hand all the time as they are folding preflop? What about the whole table doing this preflop? Furthermore, any idiot would be able to figure out what was going on and so would the dealers.

Of course, if this is really how "it all went down, kid" the house and dealers would be in on it. If that was the case, there would still be many more effective ways to accomplish the goal of chopping up tourists.

I mean, I saw the show "Tilt" on ESPN; I'm no greenhorn.

I've never played Pot Limit 08 mainly because I met a guy once who told me he flopped a steel wheel (five high straight flush) in three way action, the last raise was for $10,000 and HE GOT A QUARTER OF THE POT!!!

No I worked the lowly 1-5 no-ante, $1 forced opener, Stud 8 or better games back then. In the early to mid-nineties they were real juicy games around the mountain states. I started in Deadwood, migrated to Cripple Creek where I made a good living in those games at the Phoenix House poker room. But they closed the room on me in December of 94. Sandia had just opened it's poker room so I migrated down to Albuquerque and the games were juicy there.

The big game in the house then, I think, was either no-limit or pot-limit holdem. I think it was 5-10 blinds. The game was built around an asian guy. They said he owned a lot of property around Albuquerque. Anyways, he was the main producer. There was a kid who got a big inheritance who played in the game for awile. He dumped his whole inheritance and wound up down in the lower limits with us.

Slick retired to Albuquerque because his lawyer daughter lived there. He had emphysema real bad and I doubt he's still living today. He would come in for a couple of hours everyday and play low-limit. I suspect it was just something for him to do. He was a real nice guy.

I had to leave Albuquerque in 96. When I first got there they had 5 or six Stud Hi-Lo games everyday and everybody playing family pots but by 96 it was down to one table of nits. I had to get my hat. But I made alot of friends in Albuquerque. I'm gonna have to get back and see them one of these days. Good luck

Mickey

I have absolutely no idea how my post got posted 3 times.

BTW....If it was back in the day....and your name happened to be Doyle or Chip or Sailor or Slim or whatever...and Tony "The Ant" came to you and said "I'm gonna have to put you boys to working for me taking off the poker games out at the Stardust"....what would you tell him?....No?

I'd tell him I was friends with Benny and to take it up with him.

i dont think slick was a poker room boss or i would have known him. but maybe he was. fill me in. pit bosses knew absolutely nothing about poker and even less about what they did.
slick may have been different.
alot went on that you had to know about or you werent playing for too long.

Hey mickeycrimm, I know your triple posting was an accident and it might have something to do with your connection being screwed and your browser resending the same information thrice. I don't know for sure though.

But you should go back and edit/delete your posts for future reference if a mod doesn't do anything.

ZOMG!

I'm a street kid and grew up in the slums, only to make something of my life latter in my mid twenties and YES I still have lots of shady dangerous friends but to me they are just "people" that are trying to survive the only way they know how.


Survival of the fittest baby, and what my friends do is no different than what goes on in almost every board room in the world everyday, not to mention the corruption in politics.

Don't even get me started on the SCUMBAGS that own the Casino's.

Not much has changed, the element mostly just wear suits these days and rape/beat you to death with lawyers though.

Incidentally, I did not buy the part where they use code words to tell their partner their hand. Having two or three of the best players staying out of each other's way is the main part. Skipping a continuation bet or semi-bluff and giving a free card is better when your partner is in and might need a free card. The main thing is not to give two to one money in no-limit. They only need one signal. The nuts.

When it narrows down to two partners, they put on a show with bigger pots, bad plays, outrageous bluffs. A big show of competition between the two of them. It gets the game up out of the dirt. The greed of the mark is the heart of the con.

Johnny Hughes

I like Johnny's take on this. After you've played with the same guys for a while, there's no need for signals, you know who has what. A lot of people think collusion entails the whipsaw, but it's more about dumping KK vs. AA so that 67 doesn't get any odds. On the other hand, if the stranger with the big stack suddenly wakes up and makes it 5 BBs utg, they all smooth call, and if one hits the flop, he gets the stack.

jmo

Slick told me he was a pit boss for 13 years at the Stardust and 17 years at the Landmark. He had just retired and moved to Albuquerque when I met him. Thirty years would would go back to the mid-sixties and he would have been in his mid thirties.

Slick referred to himself as an "old crossroader." As Slick tells it him and Spilotro grew up together and were partners in crime on many a deal. Eventually, Slick had to get out of Dodge and landed in Las Vegas where his mob connections got him a job.

There were several other guys in the police photo that he showed me. He told me that he was the only one in the picture that wasn't dead or doing life in prison.

I figured since he knew Spilotro so well and even that guy Rubenstein, I think that's his name, maybe not, that ran the Stardust that Slick must have known something about how the poker games were taken off.

Whether Slick was right or not I don't know. But I did take his advice. I wound up in Nevada....but I didn't go looking for those big bet guys. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Another thing I questioned Slick about was, since he was a pit boss, was card-counters and how he handled them. "No problem, kid. My general instructions to my dealers was to shuffle up if anyone so much as tripled there bet. "

"Did you ever have to rough anybody up, Slick?"

"No, kid. But if I wanted to I would wait for the idiot to make his big bet, then I'd walk up, grab the muck, take a look see, then give the idiot the staredown. They always got the message."

BTW, Ray, how's the weather in Whitefish today. It's a very nice day here in Billings. Sunny skies, 78 degrees. Good luck.

Mickey

I'm a dinosaur when it comes to computers and computing. But I can break and run nine-ball.

"We're all ignorant. Just on different subjects."
Will Rogers

I cant believe this thread is still going. If anyone cant see how having half to 1/3 of the people at the table playing with the same roll is a HUUUGE advantage they are an idiot.

Spilotro grew up in Chicago and didn't settle in Vegas until he was 33 (1971).