Poker Legend, Jack "Treetop" Straus
If any guy fit the tag, “He lived life large,” it was Jack “Treetop” Straus. Big wins, big losses, big game hunter. He adopted Hemingway’s motto: “Better one day as a lion than one hundred years as a lamb.” Jack was a Texas-teller of tall tales. He reveled his friends, opponents, journalists, and anyone else who would listen with his colorful stories, usually beginning with, “Did I ever tell you about the time I . . . .” Some of his yarns may even have been true. For example, as the story goes (told by Jack, of course), he was waiting in an IRS office in his home town of San Antonio because he had been hauled in for owing a million dollars in back taxes. He overheard a poor soul begging with an agent: “Please, don’t assess me $50,000. I’ll lose my business. My wife will leave me. I’ll be ruined.” Jack got up, went over to the agent, and said, “Oh, hell, just put it on my tab. I owe so much it won’t make any difference to me.” His World Series of Poker win in 1982 put a classic line of Jack’s (he had so many) into the literature. He had made a big bet and thought he lost all his chips. He overlooked one $500 chip up against the rail. He parlayed that chip into many more and eventually won the top prize in poker. His line: “All you need to win is a chip and a chair.” In the early days of the World Series of Poker, there was one winner and one winner only: 100% of the money went to Numero Uno. Later, the first place finisher got the bulk of the money, second place got something, third place got somewhat less, etc. Jack thought that was a terrible system. His way: winner take all. Nada to everyone else. Dubbed “Treetop” because he was 6’, 6” tall and a basketball star at Texas A&M, he often sat hunched up (or down) at a table to diminish his height. He played in high stakes games, against the best players in the world. The only way Jack knew how to play was, win it all or lose it all. Another of Jack’s lines: “If you were supposed to hold on to money, they would have put handles on it.” And another, “When I lose, I don’t mind losing money. It’s the embarrassment of being beaten.” While covering the World Series of Poker in 1983, this journalist sat with Jack over a cup of coffee at Binion’s Horseshoe Casino in Vegas, and asked: “When’s the last time you bet the rent money, Jack?” He laughed, looked at his watch, and said, “About fifteen minutes ago.” Jack “Treetop” Straus came to the end of his days in a manner befitting a poker warrior: he had a heart attack at a poker table in California in 1988. It’s a shame he couldn’t add this experience to his long list of unlikely stories, beginning with, “Did I ever tell you about the time I . . . .” (c) 2006 Murphy James
Other Basketball Betting Articles
The Day I Decided To Stop Gambling With Gamblers Anonymous Everything was going perfect for me in life. Good job, good home, good life and good friends. Until one day some friends asked if I wanted to go to the casino. By the time I realized it, three years of my life were gone and I was in debt. It was time to quit.The day I decided to stop gambling I was depressed and relieved at the same time. ...Best Online Casinos Online Casinos have brought the thrills of traditional casinos to the comfort of one’s living room, but the unchecked proliferation of casinos on the net have made it difficult for the players to choose the Best Online Casinos.It is high on the mind of every player to find a casino that provide great fun and excitement and is also honest ...Texas Hold’em Poker for Newbies If you are new to poker totally, then you will want to try your hand at Texas Hold’em Poker first. It is one of the easiest poker games to learn for beginning players, unlike seven card stud or Omaha poker. In fact, Texas Hold’em can be learned in just a few minutes. Within a few hours, you could almost be playing like a professional!Wi ...How to Make Money Playing Poker You’re sitting on an Ace, 10 of hearts, the flop comes up Ace, 5, 8 of Spades, and your opponent check raises you, is he a smart bluffer or does he really have the flush? Texas Hold’em has swept the nation, it’s everywhere. People simply can’t get over the rush of winning, but few know how to make money playing poker.If you’ve played th ...Basketball Sports Gambling Strategy Basketball sports’ gambling is a game of skill and relies on a great deal of strategy, which must be used in order to win. The challenge is to gather and analyze as much information as you can about a game, weigh the probabilities of each team winning, and subsequently compare your opinion to the odds makers. Make the right judgment and you win. ...Online Poker Tells: What to Look For When we refer to tells we actually mean words, emotions, acts, gestures and any other manner of behavior that a poker player does or executes while player and trying to cover the strong hand they are holding. Tells are usually done without the will of the one that acts them out, but no matter if they are consciously executed or not, the other pl ...Casino Card Games There are three types of casino card games -- Poker, Black Jack and Baccarat. These games are played in almost every casino around the world. Though, some people play for leisure, there are those who gamble and bet. There are different types of Poker, Black Jack, and Baccarat. The card games played in casinos usually involve a lot of money on be ...Online Poker Betting: How Safe Is Your Money? Many people can become concerned when it comes to online gaming. This is especially true when money is involved over the internet. So when you combine these two elements, online gaming and money, people can become a bit nervous. Online poker betting is just such an arena where money, the challenge of a game and the internet meet.However, ...Play Online Poker Today, there are more and more people interested in learning to play online poker. While poker has been around for hundreds of years, recently it has become very popular, especially among young, college aged men.Part of the reason people are wanting to play online poker is it ease of access. All you need to do is sign up for an account at ...Free Poker Games Do you enjoy playing poker or are you interested in learning? You may want to try one of the websites that provides free poker games. There is a variety of free poker games offered including the increasingly popular Texas Hold’em. Instructions on how to play each game are available for beginners. Then you can begin playing right away against peo ...Indiana Pacers 2006-07 Preview One of the most disappointing teams for the past few seasons, the Indiana Pacers have been on a steady decline ever since their former small forward Ron Artest charged into the stands to attack Pistons fans. After losing his replacement, Peja Stojakovic for almost nothing, they find themselves without championship caliber talent for the first ti ...Dice Setters or Rhythmic Rollers? If you ask a group of craps players if they would rather be on a table with a rhythmic roller or a dice setter, they will almost inadvertently tell you a dice setter. This is because they have most likely played with numerous dice setters with some grade of success and secondly, because most people will think of rhythmic rollers as just somebody ...How To Play a Video Slot Machine and Win Big Profits Video Poker is a game that requires some skill to play and bridges the gap between slot machines and table games and are easy and simple to play.This article will show you how to play video poker slot machines and give you some tips to help you maximize your winnings.In most casinos video poker machines, (when played with strategy) ...Las Vegas - The World's Number One Gambling Destination Las Vegas certainly lives up to its name as being the city of dreams. Walk along the many streets and see the bars and casinos, and let yourself become intoxicated with the lights, glamour and free drinks. Gambling in Las Vegas is all consuming because the idea is for you to gamble. Most importantly however, it is vitally important that you ha ...MLB Baseball Betting Betting on sports events is fun and exciting, and potentially lucrative if you know how to make good bets. This is particularly true of mlb baseball betting. There are a lot of factors that can have an impact on the outcome of a baseball game and in order to be successful at mlb baseball betting, you need to be aware of all of them. This is wher ...Texas Holdem Texas Holdem poker is a card game played with the standard 52-card deck. It is played in countries all over as a home game, from casinos to card rooms, and also online. Holdem can be played with just two players, or a maximum of eleven players.It is not a problem to start playing this game even when one is new to it. Texas Holdem poker ...Texas Holdem Poker - Today The Texas Holdem poker phenomenon has taken the country by storm. There are reportedly over 100 million active poker players worldwide. Poker’s popularity is largely the byproduct of technology and several recent trends: 1) online gaming, where players engage and socialize in real-time over the Internet, and 2) the broad publicity created by hig ...Celebrity Big Brother 2006 - Betting Update Stating Jodie Marsh was a definite final four contender was a massive faux pass as she was voted out of the house first. The odds have swung dramatically for some of the celebrities since the show first aired 12 days ago and here is the latest betting round-up for the 10 celebrities left in the house.Chantelle Houghton 10/11Despite ...How I Went 10-1 Last Week With Sports Betting -Idaho vs. Hawaii Have you ever wondered how the sports betting "smart money" became the smart money? Do you wonder what the sports betting smart money does differently than the amateurs?To understand the answer to those questions, you can analyze how I went 10-1 last week with my sports betting selections. To best understand how I do this, let's just look ...Play Omaha Online Do you often find yourself wishing you could play poker with a different set of people that just your weekly pokers pals? Not that those pals aren’t great but they want to play Texas Holdem and you’d rather play Omaha Holdem? Have you ever considered trying to play Omaha online? If not, it’s time you did.To play Omaha online all you reall ...Understanding Omaha Poker Omaha poker is very much similar to another type of poker, the Texas Holdem. The player must also create a five-card poker hand both from the pocket cards and the community cards. A deck of 5-cards is used in this type of poker game.About ten people can play the game.Omaha poker, however, is different in the number of faced-down p ...College Football Week #9: Rooting For Goliath It's no fun rooting for Goliath.I mean, yeah, sure, it's always fun if you win. But especially when you're betting college football, there's a guilt associated with sitting down in front of your television, flicking on the remote, and hoping that one set of 20-year-olds, who have been privileged and praised as the best athletes in the wor ...Online Gambling Casinos - Wear Your Thinking Cap and Prosper I receive many emails each week from people who deposited money at an online casino, only to walk away empty handed merely minutes later. Most of them are quite upset and understandably so. When you have lost money you want to blame someone. It's part of the human psyche and a natural reaction. When I ask people if they were playing acc ...Craps Strategy - How To Win In Simple Steps If you want to win at craps you need to have a craps strategy that focuses on placing the bets with the greatest odds of success.This is relatively simple, the house edge against you is relatively small when you apply a correct craps strategy to win.Another advantage of playing craps is the excitement and entertainment value it giv ...Basketball's Favorite Teams - Los Angeles Lakers The Los Angeles Lakers are a professional basketball team in the NBA. They are considered to be a basketball dynasty and, as a team, hold a number of notable records that explain their fame. As of the end of the 2004-05 season, they have more wins (2,621), a higher winning percentage (61.9%), more finals appearances (28), and more championship ...No Limit Texas Holdem This is the most extensively publicized and advertised game of poker. This could be because it is featured on the World Poker Tour and ESPN. Even in the largest poker tournaments being played in the world today, a no-limit betting structure is not uncommon.No-limit Holdem is a game of technicalities. If you make a big mistake in a limit ...Progressive Online Slot Machines – Six Simple Steps To Win a Million! Progressive online slot machines are making many lucky players millionaires and the jackpots are so huge today their life changing!So how do you give yourself the best chances of winning one of these stellar jackpots? Let’s find out!Progressive online slot machines offer jackpots that are larger than flat top machines.While ...Sportsbook Odds There are two important ways of interpreting probability. One has to be Point Spreads and the other money lines. Though betting is almost the same in both sportsbook betting odds, because you bet on who is going to win, point spreads differentiate because they establish a number of points in which the winner needs to have over the loosing team. ...Football Betting Odds There is one major misconception about football betting odds—that they closely predict the outcome of the game. Football betting odds are actually designed to bring in the largest number of bets. So one person will see the spread on a game and what to go with the favorite and another will bet the spread of the loss. While football bett ...Keys For Your Selection of Betting Sites Ever since online betting sites have become hot favorites of the millions of luck seekers of the internet world, the selection of reliable and trustworthy sites is becoming a major issue in the field of on line betting. On the spot conventional betting provides the bettors a fairly good knowledge of the betting facilitators and the advantage of ...Buying Poker Chips Whether you enjoy the glitz and glamour of visiting a casino, or simply enjoy playing cards at home, an important part of the game are the poker chips you will use. Despite being an integral part of enjoying a bet, poker chips are usually the focus of very little attention, but they have a history all of their own, before they ever reach the bet ...Blackjack Card Counting – Do You Believe These 4 Myths? Card counting does put the odds in the favor of blackjack players however there are common misconceptions about card counting that can and do cause players to lose.If you want to win at blackjack and do card counting then it is important you don’t believe these 4 myths:The More complicated the method the betterA card countin ...Vikings/Bills Sunday NFL Breakdown The Minnesota Vikings had a chance to put some pressure on the Chicago Bears in the NFC North last week, but a fumble late in the game gave Chicago one last opportunity and the Bears took advantage. Minnesota will look to get back on track this week as they travel to Buffalo to take on the Bills for the first time in four years.Get ready ...Famous Basketball Stadiums - Alamodome You’ve seen the games on television, and maybe you’ve even been to an NBA professional basketball game at one or more of the venues they use. But you’ve always wondered about the history of some of the more well known stadiums used by the NBA. There are so many, it’s difficult to pick just a few to talk about, but this article will give you a ...
|
