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#224 – WSOP #70 – Viva Los Muertos, Part III – Sick Man in a Sick Place
Gary Wise, who bailed me out repeatedly during the Series with his knowledge of what was going on everywhere with everybody, told me that Eskimo Clark had collapsed three times at the poker table during the Series. The first time was the week before. The second and third were earlier that day.
Such is the nature of Eskimo Clark that it was hard to pin down exactly what was happening, even when witnessing it. The original story, which I heard from many people that night, was that Clark suffered a trio of heart attacks. Gary told me, either later that night or the next day, that it was three “mini strokes.” He also discovered that during one of Clark’s collapses, he fractured a bone in his foot.
Looking for the first time at the three remaining razz tables, Paul wasn’t hard to find. For one thing, security guards were pacing circles around his table, like vultures. (I was told by a Harrah’s source that there was an emergency medical team with a full complement of equipment waiting outside the Amazon Room.)
From one look at Eskimo, it was obvious that something was very wrong. He was slumped in his seat, barely moving. Yet one hand was locked on the rail like a vise. A friend of his periodically stepped behind him to massage his back and even boost him into a more upright sitting position. The color was drained from his face. One of the players at his table told me was foaming at the mouth earlier.
Even though the situation was grave, from the play of the hands nothing seemed amiss. But this was razz. Take a look at some of Eskimo Clark’s opponents:
Jennifer Harman – She was practically disappearing inside a giant black parka.
Mickey Appleman – Twenty-five years after Al Alvarez wrote of Mickey in THE BIGGEST GAME IN TOWN, “clothes like a hippie’s unmade bed,” it would be an understatement to say Appleman still dressed the same way. It looks like he’s wearing THE SAME CLOTHES.
O’Neil Longson – I noted how healthy O’Neil looked compared with other occasions on which I had seen him. When I pointed this out a moment later to another writer, Longson was asleep at the table.
Men “the Master” Nguyen – Balancing three beers in front of him, he looked like the picture of fitness in this crowd.
Mini strokes, I’ve learned, aren’t so much actual strokes as clear warning signs that a stroke is coming. With that being the case, why was Eskimo Clark still here?
DEATH SHUFFLES THE DECK
My late cousin Shel counted, among his few pleasures late in life, marathon blackjack sessions at the Frontier. His last words were, “Next year … in Vegas.” His children dutifully scattered his ashes behind the Frontier.
Gambling is ingrained in the human experience. For people who embrace the charms of risk, it is an essential ingredient to living. Consequently, the history of people dying while playing cards is long, rich, and predictably macabre.
The first legend of American poker is the murder of Wild Bill Hickock at a poker table in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, on August 2, 1876. He hand he was supposedly holding at the time – two pair, aces and eights – is forever known as “The Dead Man’s Hand.” The hand showed up in a 1962 Bob Dylan song, as well as in 1980 songs by Bob Seger and Motorhead, as well as dozens of novels, movies, and television shows.
Arnold Rothstein, likewise, was murdered at a poker game. Credited as the man who fixed the 1919 World Series, he was the biggest gambler of his era and probably the man most responsible for the “organized” in organized crime. After failing to make good on over $300,000 in poker debts, he was shot as he arrived for a poker game at Room 349 of the Park Central Hotel in Manhattan on November 2, 1928. (The earlier game – which became the focus of the trial arising from the murder – included Titanic Thompson and future Poker Hall of Famer Joe Bernstein. Nick the Greek tried to get a seat in the game but couldn’t.)
Entertainers Al Jolson and Buster Keaton died playing cards, as did poker writer David Spanier. (Jolson was playing gin rummy.) Poker Hall of Famers Tom Abdo and Jack Straus died playing poker.
Abdo suffered a heart attack and had the presence of mind, as he was being taken away, to ask another player to count down his chips. Straus, who told people he wanted to die at a poker table, supposedly added, “and if there’s a god, I’ll be stuck when it happens.”
The World Series of Poker itself has conducted final tables under the shadow of death. In 1999, when David Grey won his first bracelet, Ross Lichen the player with second-most chips at the final table was a no-show due to a heart attack the night before. Prior to the start of play, the players at the final table (who also included Chris Ferguson) agreed to give Lichen FIFTH place money and remove his chips from the table. (I wrote about this story in Bluff in September last year and relied on the late Andy Glazer’s excellent World Series reports, which are still posted on ConJelCo’s web site.)
Lichen looked like he was going to have a heart attack when they were down to three tables. The tournament director encouraged him to take a break and get some air. Because the next scheduled break was twenty-four minutes away, he said, “I’m staying here. It’s too important to me.” His condition improved, other players even joked about it, and he was second in chips when they quit for the night at 2:30 AM.
So Lichen went to a doctor to get checked out before the final table, right? Or at least thanked his lucky stars he dodged a bullet and got some rest before the trials of the day? Nope, he decided to head over to the Bellagio for some more poker. That’s when he suffered the heart attack that hospitalized him. According to Glazer’s report, “he had wanted to leave the hospital to play his seat in the final table, but his doctor told him if he left the hospital he would die, and common sense finally prevailed.”
And so did Lichen. Two years later, he even made it back to the final table in the same event. This time, he finished fourth. Andy Bloch finished in fifth, the “dead man’s spot”. Larry St. Jean made that final table and finished sixth. I mention St. Jean because it was his first WSOP final table; his second was 2007 razz, and he was the runner-up.
Lichen subsequently won a stud tournament at Foxwoods and has cashed as recently as July 2006 according to the Hendon Mob Database. In fact, Larry “Angel of Death” St. Jean has ALSO won a stud tournament at Foxwoods.
Howard Lederer has told me, as I related in the Bluff column, that one of Doyle Brunson’s best stories is about Johnny Moss suffering a heart attack during the third day of a marathon poker session. He was hospitalized but he returned that same night, “because it was only a MILD heart attack.”
Paul “Eskimo” Clark has the right to laugh at these men and to ridicule these stories. According to Gary Wise on ESPN.com, the reason Paul was locked on the rail was to keep paramedics from taking him to the hospital. Craig Cunningham’s excellent report on Pokerworks.com concludes, “He refused to leave the Rio and instead headed to grab a cigarette and some chicken wings.” (I’m sure if the Rio had a Cinnabons, he would have polished off a box just for good measure.) I saw this man, clearly living on borrowed time, playing each hand as if it was his last, repeatedly ask the dealer to scramble the deck, a useless, superstitious, time-consuming exercise.
