Posted by Editor | Filed under Al Alvarez, Bankroll Management, Jack Straus, Strategy
PARABLE #2 – HIGH-STAKES LIFE
I really regret never having met Jack Straus. Straus, a contemporary of Doyle Brunson and a member of the Poker Hall of Fame, is known to me primarily from the stories written and told by Al Alvarez and Anthony Holden.
Jack’s determination and will to win are amply illustrated in the famous story of his 1982 World Championship. Having bet all his chips and lost, he gathered his belongings from the table and prepared to exit. Under a cocktail napkin, he found a single, misplaced chip and was therefore obliged to sit back down and play it. From this one chip, he won the Main Event.
That was not atypical of Straus. Al Alvarez described a famous story about Jack in THE BIGGEST GAME IN TOWN:
In 1970, a terrible run at poker in Las Vegas reduced him to his last $40. Instead of quitting, he took the $40 to the blackjack table and bet it all on a single hand. He won, and continued to bet all the money in front of him until he turned the $40 into $500. He took the $500 back to the poker game and ran it up to $4,000, returned to the blackjack table and transformed the $4,000 into $10,000. He finally bet the whole sum on the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl and won $20,000. In less than twenty-four hours, he went from near bankruptcy to relative affluence. The story is famous enough to have gone into gambling folklore, but the real point of it is his refusal to compromise. Each time he bet, he bet all the money he had, from the first $40 to the final $10,000.
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Loading ...2 Responses to “#957 – Three Parables on Bankroll Management, Part II”
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KenP Says:
February 3rd, 2010 at 3:54 pmIf I’m not mistaken you two have something in common…
The same haberdasher.
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Poker news Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 11:32 amGood ole treetrop Strauss. I also heard he was abusive to the dealers. What that story doesn’t say is that he probably had backers lined up so he really wasn’t betting his last dime. He could bet reckless cause he knew he had safety net.
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