I know this is old news but I just stumbled across it.

Why after sternly denying all of the Russ G posts on the old rec poker would he write something like this about his "best friend" after the guy is dead?

He basically confirms that Chip was a part of the Spilatro/O'Conner group for a period of time. They colluded, played marked cards, ran up hands..........

What is the motivation for defending your best friend until he dies and then saying, yeah, remember the claims made by that dirtbag on RGP, that I and the poker establishment did everything we could to discredit at every turn? Well, he was pretty much right.

Just seems shady, did they have a beef or something? I hope someone falsely wrote this article under his name.

http://www.pokernews.com/news/2006/2...chip-reese.htm

article was written significantly before he died.

I dont think so, the end of it is Doyle talking about the funeral and all. Maybe it was added on, but it doesnt appear to be.

i linked the wrong article in OP. will try to correct it.

http://www.pokerplayer.co.uk/news/fe...r_legends.html

Its well known that when Chip Reese ran the room at the Dunes, that they were not beating Major Riddle and Jimmy Chagra out of millions using their brilliant poker reads. WELL KNOWN

Nice edit, half.

if the "ant" told you to cheat and win money for him, it would of been wise to follow his instructions or a hole was going to be dug for you

Somehow I hadn't read that article before. Definitely worth the read.

Chip Reese was gay????

Found this funny, for some reason..

what an article, as someone who didn't have anything in invested in Chip, those last few paragraphs really were heart felt and well written

My point wasn't to judge Chip. It was just that a lot of oldtimers might remember the huge deal that Russ and GCA were when they began posting on RGP. A lot of accusations that were very strongly denied by players, management, press, and other poker world types.

Doyle was at the forefront of trying to discredit these guys, yet here he is, in public, confirming what they were saying. In the past few years he has made cheat comments about Johnny Moss, and now his friend and partner, Chip Reese.

I always figured that some of the stuff Russ posted was 50% true, and that Doyle was living by the old code of not ****ching, and begrudginly admired him for it. What is with all the loose talk now that the poor guy is gone? I also can't believe he hasnt been called on the carpet for the 180 degree turn since the RGP debacle. It seems like everyone was cheating except him.

So is it true what russ said? When the Mirage was the spot did Eric and Jimmy have half the room and Chip and Doyle the other half. Let me guess, chip is dead and Jimmy is long gone, so I bet they were scamming and Eric and Doyle, who are alive and prospering, were fighting the good fight to bring poker out from the shadows. That is just a guess.

From the Poker Vaults: Jimmy Chagra — The Second Biggest Fish of All Time, Part 1
2009 May 28, Storms Reback


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From the Poker Vaults, Poker Players
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The first time Jimmy Chagra entered a Las Vegas casino he brought with him several suitcases stuffed with cash and not the least bit of sense. The man gambled as if the money he wagered had simply fallen from the sky one day, and in a way it had — during the 1970s Jimmy Chagra was one of the most notorious drug dealers in the world, responsible for importing even more narcotics into the country than his rival Rex Cauble.

How does one rise to such a position? Growing up in El Paso, Texas, a rough-and-tumble border town where drug smugglers were practically considered heroes, certainly helped. Chagra’s inherent waywardness also contributed — he was the black sheep of his family. While his two brothers, Lee and Joe, chose to study law, Jimmy dropped out of high school and took to the streets. By the time he was 20, he’d become accomplished at smuggling contraband back and forth across the border. He favored marijuana because the penalties for smuggling it weren’t as stiff as those involving other drugs, but eventually he began importing large shipments of cocaine as well.

Chagra’s business proved to be incredibly lucrative. He made more money selling drugs than anyone could spend in a lifetime, and yet he still tried. During his heyday he claimed to be a professional gambler, but the truth was that he lost far more than he ever won. It wasn’t uncommon for him to lose $1 million in a single night playing craps.

Las Vegas was just about the only place in the country that could handle that kind of action, and it quickly became Chagra’s favorite destination. He usually arrived in town carrying several massive footlockers stuffed with cash, which he stored in the count room at Caesars Palace while he gambled. For much of the 1970s Caesars was his home away from home — he actually lived there for a stretch while he was having a house built for himself in Las Vegas. His relationship with the casino was so close he reportedly once loaned it $10 million for 24 hours after the baccarat tables experienced an extended run of bad luck.

Chagra was equally generous to those who worked for the casinos. He once tipped a cocktail waitress $10,000 for bringing him a complimentary bottle of water. On another occasion after enjoying a rare win at the craps table he gave a croupier a $600,000 tip.

When such extravagance began to attract the wrong kind of attention, Chagra switched his allegiance from Caesars to Binion’s Horseshoe, and it was there that he discovered the thrill of wagering massive amounts of money against the best poker players in the world. The way he played, it seemed as if he really didn’t care if he won or not, making him a dream come true for the high-rolling players who set up shop at Binion’s during that era. The list of those who took sizeable chunks of Chagra’s fortune away from him is as long as it is distinguished — “Amarillo Slim” Preston, Doyle Brunson, Jack Straus, Chip Reese, Puggy Pearson, and Johnny Moss all fattened their bankrolls with Chagra’s easy money.

Playing against Chagra did not come without some risk, however. Like Andy Beal three decades later, Chagra liked to put pressure on his opponents the only way he knew how, by constantly demanding that the stakes be raised. The minimum buy-in for one of the games he typically sat in was $50,000, but his savvy opponents usually bought in for much more because Chagra was known to bet $20,000 blind, in his words, “just to liven the game up a little.” When Chagra was in the game, it wasn’t unheard of for there to be over $2 million sitting on the table.

As overmatched as he was at the poker table, Chagra was an equally easy mark on the golf course where he would routinely lose as much as $400,000 in a single round. Far from discouraging him, he was always ready to come back for more. “He would shake it off and say, ‘Let’s play another round tomorrow,’” said Jack Sheehan, the Las Vegas writer who is currently working on a screenplay about Chagra’s life.

One man who beat Chagra just as badly in both arenas — the golf course and the poker room — was Puggy Pearson. “I beat him and I beat him and I beat him,” Pearson once said. “I probably won $600,000 from him. He tried to play a lot of everything. He was in the dope business and he wanted to look like a gambler. I beat him at poker and golf and I might have played some bumper pool with him. He lost a lot of money to those of us who were in Vegas at the time. He lost well into the millions for sure…. Yeah, Jimmy was a good boy.”

For most of the latter half of the 1970s, Jimmy Chagra served as a meal ticket for the best rounders in the world, and, despite losing millions of dollars to them, he seemed to be enjoying every minute of it. He was a real-life Tony Montana, living the high life, doing as he pleased, but we all know how Scarface ended. Chagra’s demise, while not quite as dramatic as Montana’s, was every bit as predictable.

Great article! thanks OP

"We invested in going to look for the Titanic, which we almost did find before running out of money. "

lol

great read! love these old school stories!

Why don't you correct the link in your op?

Seven card h/l sure has changed: "I remember one hand where I was rolled up with Kings, which you ordinarily wouldn’t play."

I had to think about that for a second also. I'm assuming it's because they played no qualifier for low.

doyle confirmed bad person

I hope he's not knocking down other players to solidify himself as the best player of his era

At least we can still look up to Amarillo Slim.

Personally I think he did everything he could to distance himself from his own reality to remain in action, and then later, to be able to solidfy his godfather of poker image as the poker boom got rolling.

But I just dont know how stupid he thinks everyone is. Chip cheated. Chip and I played in the biggest game since the 70's. But I was never a cheat. Does he realize how stupid that sounds?

If you read his book, I think between the lines you can infer that he was just part of a different tough guy group. He mentions countless times tangling with Spilotro, but always came away unscathed and uncompromised. At one point he even says he always got paid what he was owed because maybe Tony S. enjoyed gambling with him and respected him. What a laugh. He got paid and was left alone because he was with the Binions. Period.

Three crews in Vegas then. The Jews, Chicago, and the Texans. Once it was known that he was protected by the old man and his 50 gun toting, homicidal maniacs, Spilotro moved on to easier pickings. Like the blonde kid from Dartmouth.

Chip= Ivy League graduate, in his 20's, games player.

Doyle= Bookmaker, road game hustler, hooked up with and protected by the absolutely toughest and richest guy to come out of Dallas, who had no troulble handling problems with murder.

It is a fact that no legitimate criminal could ever mess with Doyle given his friends.

But that Chip, he made some youthful mistakes. Wow, what a laugh.

Ive personally never liked Doyle... or his ponytailed son

haha wp

Which ponytailed son?