Episode 1 is copied from Playing 4 Keeps® Newsletter Volume 8, issue 1. There were other articles and bits of gambling information in the January edition omitted here. However, because the first appearance of Sailor’s stories was published in this edition, I wish to exhibit the starting point as a reference showing how the episodes were originally displayed.
Playing 4 keeps Newsletter Vol 8 issue 1 / Published January 2006
Happy New Year 2006! Thanks to all my readers for your continued loyalty to the Playing 4 Keeps Newsletter. This year marks the eighth year of continuous Playing 4 Keeps Newsletter publications on the World Wide Web. Wishing you all a prosperous new year, especially at the tables.
The Professor – Michael Vernon
On the Coat-Tales of a Gambler
First publication in the Playing 4 Keeps® Newsletter
As told by Sailor Harris and written by Michael S. Vernon
Introduction
I first met Sailor in Taos, New Mexico. It was a hot July day, and I was shopping for a patio door for a remodel job on my house. A new business park was holding a grand opening with live radio, food, and drinks. I was sitting in the shade having a green chili cheeseburger, when Sailor came up to me and asked, “Are you Michael Vernon that writes Playing 4 Keeps?” I said, “Yes, I am but how do you know that?” Sailor replied that he saw my Playing 4 Keeps license plate holder and put two and two together. He said that he had long been a subscriber to my newsletter. He went on to say that he played a lot of blackjack in Las Vegas in the “old days.” Sailor casually mentioned that it was a time when a player, who knew how to count cards, could easily win a few bucks. He also told me that he played some tournaments in those days, but now he no longer plays much. However, when he gets a stake together, he’d like to pay Las Vegas a visit for old times. That was about it and then, wishing me good luck, we parted company.
About a year and half later, I bumped into Sailor in a chance meeting, again in Taos. I had moved to Pueblo, Colorado by this time, but I was in Taos on business. I was running early morning errands and stopped at a fast-food joint to use the bathroom. Turns out, Sailor was just coming out as I was going in. We had a short catch-up conversation in the parking lot. Sailor said he was back on the road again traveling and was headed for Las Vegas. As it turned out, we had a mutual friend in common, Jake Roberts. I could scarcely believe that out of the blue, I met up with Sailor again, and he knows my best friend and gambling partner t’boot.
A couple of months later, on December 30th, 2005, I received an email from Sailor. He had just read my August newsletter. He was disappointed to learn about the demise of the five-dollar blackjack game that I wrote about. He said that his plans for Las Vegas got hung up but that he was still on his way, sometime in the New Year. Sailor recalled that during our last meeting I had mentioned that Jake Roberts and I were going to play poker at Cities of Gold Casino. He asked if we had any plans to be in Las Vegas in January or February and that perhaps we could all meet up.
What Sailor wrote next just kind of broke into a story of “the life and times of a gambler.” Receiving email messages from Sailor was like walking into the middle of a movie and not knowing what was going on before. I received two more of his story-like email letters the next day. After reading Sailor’s emails, inspiration overwhelmed me like a wave. I was reading the true-life adventures of a gambler. I asked Sailor if I could edit his email stories, change the names, and publish the stories in the Playing 4 Keeps® Newsletter. Sailor liked the idea and gave me his permission. The following is his reply to publishing his stories. As a result, I am introducing the beginning of a new series in the Playing 4 Keeps® Newsletter, On the Coat Tales of a Gambler.
“…put my stories in the order and format you wish, just change all names, make corrections etc. I will tell you stuff as I remember it. So far, I have told you about all I remember… I remember this, there were always plenty of pretty women around and a quickie was only ten bucks. Man, it was a life! Lucky for me I escaped. I could have been killed quite easy just for being in the wrong company or the wrong place at the wrong time.” Sailor
On the Coat Tales of a Gambler
Episode 1 – I’m a $5 blackjack player.
Michael, I finally got round to reading your August newsletter. It was informing. However, the news of the changes in Las Vegas that you wrote about was not good at all, since 95% of the time I play at a $5 blackjack table, when I play. Also, I enjoyed your take on poker. The last time I saw you, you said that you and Jake were going to a poker tournament that night. I would guess you both did well.
I know you are busy these days. I am in Albuquerque, all set to go to Vegas, and the V.A. changed my damn appointment for the second time. I had an appointment before Christmas, then, they changed it until today. Now, I find out it is changed again to the 11th of January. Hopefully, I will get the all clear from the doc and head for Vegas that same day. I hope to be out there (Vegas) and in Arizona until it warms a bit in Taos, perhaps until late March. I do enjoy your monthly gaming news, thanks a lot.
Long before I was a blackjack player, I was a poker player. Never played much poker at casinos. In those days they didn’t have low limit poker tournaments. I quit poker because the casino games just moved too slowly for me. Players take forever to make their play.
I was a city fireman for over four years in the sixties. (1965 – 1969) At the firehouse there were poker games every night. I really enjoyed that poker game. It was low limit poker, but, if a guy did not watch it, he could lose thirty to fifty bucks or win that much.
Ten bucks would buy a lot in those days… I never knew him, but when Amarillo Slim won the first world series of poker, I was living in Amarillo. I think it was the first one, anyway it was in the early seventies. I saw him around town a few times. He was always dressed to the hilt and drove around in a fancy Cadillac. The book of his life story is kind’a interesting. The book is fairly new… smart guy if true…he usually gambled with backing from others.
Have a big $$ 2006, Sailor
Author’s Note: (The book Sailor refers to is “Amarillo Slim, In A World of Fat People” Harper Collins Publisher. In 1972 “Amarillo Slim”, Thomas Auston Preston, won the WSOP at Benny Binion’s Horseshoe Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was one of 12 players in the tournament. Preston became the ambassador of poker, and as they say, the rest is history.)
Sailor continues, in his next email…
If either you or Jake have plans to come to Vegas in January or February, let me know and maybe I can hook up with you guys. I doubt that I will play much regular blackjack while I’m there. Maybe I’ll play a few games between Monday and Friday. But mostly I am going to be looking for blackjack tournaments. I plan to enter a bunch of them using the $1,000 Hollywood Casino paid me in October. It was their second free slot tournament. They stopped them for a while. You know, the Star Casino is going to start holding poker tournaments on Wednesday mornings starting next week. I think I may study up on poker and enter some of those tournaments as well. You do know that the Star Casino has poker tournaments almost daily, and at Sandia, they have a few every week but I doubt that I will play any poker until I get to Vegas. (Sailor mentions New Mexico casinos.)
Long ago, in Vegas, playing poker could be really rough. Everyone at the table could be a “house man” except for me. It was hard to beat those guys, but I soon found out how to spot them. I didn’t really play that much poker in Reno, Tahoe, Vegas, or Laughlin. By the time I got out west, I was seriously into blackjack and was about burned out on poker, and that crowd of operators.
See you, Sailor
In the next issue of Playing 4 Keeps: Sailor shares a story from his younger days hanging out with gun toting gamblers and what it was like… the men, the women, and the money.
“Did you ever hear of a guy named Scary Scarpone Ladrón? He got himself killed long ago in a poker game. He was a good buddy and a real high roller.”
On the Coat Tales of a Gambler continues in Episode 2- Scar Face