Chip Reese, considered by renowned poker players like Doyle Brunson and Barry Greenstein to be one of the greatest poker players who ever lived, died of a heart attack at the young age of 56.

I knew nothing about Chip Reese, that is until I saw this YouTube clip of him on Bill Rini’s blog.

After watching this video my curiosity about Chip Reese was piqued. I went to Barry Greenstein’s website and listened to Barry say extremely nice things about Chip.

A friend sent me a New York Times obituary about Chip Reese. In the obituary Chip is quoted as saying the following: “I can bet $100,000 and feel nothing,” he said in an interview with People magazine in 2003. “If you think about the money and what it means, you’re gone.” This is why I’ll never be a great player like Chip Reese. I only think about the money.

When police begin to go after people playing low-stakes poker in VFW posts you know something’s going crazy. It’s apparently illegal in Texas for the house to make money off of a poker game, even if the money is being used for a charity. Keep in mind that it’s not illegal for the state of Texas to take a cut of lottery proceeds. Hmmm, something doesn’t seem too consistent about this.

Poker, the game played by Mark Twain, George Bush, members of the Supreme Court, is apparently destroying the fabric of this great nation. Watch the video and see for yourself the problems that cops face viz a viz people who play poker in “illegal” gambling rooms. Drew Carey does a nice job narrating.

 Macau is hosting it’s first poker tournament ever, so the local dealers had to be trained from scratch.  The following online report is about one of these poker dealers.  

“During the $300 mega-satellite on the first day, we had a dealer at our table who was new and pretty nervous as it was his first time dealing. He collects the cards from the previous hand. He riffles them, strips them, cuts them. He says, “blinds please” and the small blind posts.

He pitches a card to the small blind, and then to the big blind. Then, with mounting horror, he sees that the big blind has not put out his blind yet! He has an expression of sheer panic on his now weathered visage. After being frozen in his deer-in-headlights look for two seconds, he composes himself.

He sticks his right arm up, ramrod straight, and yells out, “FLOOR!” Big blind has now posted his blind. One of the tournament directors runs over, expertly avoiding people along the way. The director asks the dealer what the problem is. Dealer says, very seriously, “I dealt a card to him before he posted his blind.”

The director keeps a perfectly straight face and says, “No problem, keep on dealing.” The dealer’s relief is evident to all. He keeps dealing.”