When Weakness Prevails, Show Them The Meaning of Strength

[redietz]

Mr. Walters was so far ahead of the curve, it was ridiculous. After his initial successes, what he did was go on talent scouting expeditions. He would recruit individuals with reputations and more or less assemble roundtables of talent for each sport, only he would try to keep the individuals from interacting much with each other. So he kept the talent isolated. Then he could compare/contrast the savants, see who won how, and try to profile how they did it, so he became less dependent on them. Not good for the talent, but good for Mr. Walters.

The thing about Mr. Walters, he was the classic old style gambler with a somewhat classy but folksy persona and the eyes of a tiger shark. Jock Ewing of the gambling world, more or less.

Thought you were going to correlate Slim in there somewhere.
Legend has it that he bet a guy he could hit a golf ball further.
He took a helicopter up North somewhere and hit his golf ball over the ice.
Just like in Tin Cup... still going.

LOL. I was maybe 16 (not googling, so fact check me) when I read Play Poker to Win by your boy, Amarillo Slim. First gambling book I read.

The golf ball on ice story is famous and true. I honestly don't remember if it was Slim, but it was one of that crew.

I used to sit inside Binions when they had metal bleachers set up inside for the WSOP. You couldn't tell what the hell was going on, but people watched anyway. You were maybe 50 feet from the table. No hole card cameras or anything. You just watched because you were in the presence of the big names in gambling. And when somebody got knocked out, there were oohs and aaahs. Most of us hadn't seen what had happened, but we ooohed anyway.