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DAVID 'CHIP' REESE 1951-2007
High-stakes life was 'beyond incredible'
Centerville High School grad became one of the best poker players the game ever saw.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Even as she soaked her young son in cold water to keep the rheumatic fever from overtaking his weakened body, Sunny Reese calmed him with playing cards.
The woman who friends called Sunshine for her rosy demeanor took her son beyond the basics of gin, bridge, spades, hearts and, perhaps most importantly, poker. An athletic legacy incarnate, the boy listened carefully, calculating his way to a future of wealth and stardom in a profession ripe for his state-champion debating skills and wisdom gained by majoring in economics.
Extras
Beginning with that card education in his Centerville bathtub in the 1950s, David Edward Reese III conquered poker.
"His life," said close friend Rick Pummill, "was beyond incredible."
Reese, who died last week at age 56, is remembered by friends and rivals as a man who gambled for vast stakes but never bet too much. In a 30-year stretch of Las Vegas living that included cash-filled briefcases, million-dollar private games and ingrained Midwestern values, the math whiz nicknamed Chip became arguably the best all-around poker player in history.
When he wasn't raking cash-game pots of six figures or more, Reese won three World Series of Poker bracelets and, in 1991 at age 40, became the youngest person inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame. He sat in The Big Game, the poker marathon often hosted in Bobby's Room at the Bellagio, where a world-famous player could win or lose a small fortune in one sitting.
The 1969 Centerville High School graduate, who was a football center as well as a nationally qualified debater, ruled big-stakes poker in the world's gambling capital with a friendly manner, calm nerves and likable conversation that helped him win friends as he annexed their bankrolls. He mostly avoided poker's recent television boom, but while unknown to most casual poker fans, Reese's accomplishments and skill left his contemporaries in awe.
"The whole object of the game is to clean the other guy out, and friendliness isn't always a by-product," said Jeff Haney, who covers poker for the Las Vegas Sun. "But people really loved Chip, and his accomplishments in poker just cannot be overstated."
A strong foundation
Reese's family had established itself as a notable athletic bunch by the time he was born on March 28, 1951. His grandfather, Dr. David Reese, was a dentist by education but a card-player and athletic administrator by pastime. A former player for the Dayton Triangles, a charter member of the organization that became the National Football League, Reese became the first commissioner of the Mid-American Conference. It was from Dr. Reese, friends say, that Chip gained the card genes.
Sunny Reese's brother, Dave Maurer, coached the Wittenberg University football team from 1969-83 and, with a 129-23-3 record and two NCAA Division III national championships, was later inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
Reese's father played football and basketball at Oakwood High School.
From his bout with rheumatic fever, Reese emerged as a low-level gambler who would organize gin games at family gatherings, like the Fourth of July. His appetite for cards and stakes rarely was appeased.
"He would call when we were 10 years old and say, 'What are you doing?' " said Bill James, a local attorney and close friend of Reese from the time they were 5. "I would tell him I had to cut the grass. He would say, 'No, we have to play gin.' He would spot me points just to get me to play. And he was 10."
One could find Reese playing any game, including board games such as Stratego, chess and checkers, but cards remained his passion. When he was barred from some blackjack games because he could count cards, he taught his sister to play so she could replace him. Some say he started gambling with baseball cards, and by eighth grade he was playing secret back-seat hands against high school seniors.
In 1969, Reese enrolled at Dartmouth College and continued his infatuation with cards. Pummill, two classes behind Reese at Centerville, once visited Reese in Hanover, N.H., and watched him win $5,000 from a Beta Theta Pi fraternity brother, only to lose the check in his unkempt room. The next day, Reese won $5,000 again.
Professors gambled with Reese. They discovered that even though he was one of their worst students, he also was one of the smartest. His Dartmouth fraternity later named its card room in his honor.
Vegas' bright lights
When Reese first met Danny Robison on the Community Golf Course putting green, he got hustled. Robison was older and had been a state champion golfer at Fairmont, so when he met the teenager, he offered to putt against him for money. He would even putt left-handed, he said.
When the two drove off, Robison carrying Reese as his passenger, Reese owed $30. The younger gambler said he needed to run into his house to retrieve the roll hidden in a sock. Robison waited in the driveway. For hours. He could see Reese peeking through the windows, knowing Robison wouldn't come knock on the door of his parents' home.
"I didn't see him again for years," said Robison, a Kettering native who also became a well-known seven-card stud player in Vegas. He recalled the story with a chuckle late Friday after returning to California from Reese's funeral.
There are many tales about how Reese first landed in Vegas. One says he dropped out of Dartmouth. Another says he just happened to stop by on his way to Stanford Law School. Robison says he has the true story.
Reese, Robison said, had recently graduated from Dartmouth when he was cheated in a series of games in the Dayton area. He left town, moving to Phoenix where a family friend had a job waiting. Reese then called back home to Robison with news of a wealthy man in Arizona who wanted to play high-stakes gin. Robison drove to Phoenix, won $9,000 from the man (the check bounced) and headed on to Vegas.
Once Robison arrived in Sin City, he called Reese. He found a backer who spotted him $10,000, and he wanted Reese with him. It was 1973.
"I bet he broke every speed limit to get there," Robison said, "and we took the town by storm."
The art of poker
Mike Sexton was recently discharged from the Army in the late 1970s when he traveled to Vegas to see Robison, his childhood friend from Kettering. He found his old pal living in nothing short of a mansion with another gambler, Reese.
Sexton — another worldwide name in poker from the Dayton area who is a commentator for the Travel Channel's World Poker Tour broadcasts — then watched Reese dominate poker like few were able to do before him.
"Not one time in 30 years," Sexton said, "did he play in the second-biggest game in the room."
While playing in high-stakes games, to which he rarely brought less than $500,000, Reese built both astonishing wealth and a legendary lifestyle that impressed both friends and competitors and stretches to tall-tale status. Take, for instance, the time Reese was asked about his biggest hardship. He couldn't go to McDonald's, he said, because they could never break a thousand-dollar bill.
Once while visiting home, Reese met some old friends who studied with him at Dartmouth. He asked if they wanted to attend the next day's college reunion, and the friends replied that they didn't have the money. Reese produced a briefcase brimming with hundred-dollar bills and asked, "Do you think this is enough?"
When he traveled away from Vegas, Reese had no trouble finding competitors, either.
"He would come to visit his parents and get calls from all over the region, from places like Chicago and Indianapolis," said Michael O'Rourke, the Centerville dentist whose father was a close friend of Reese's father. "These were people who wanted to play against the best, and Chip was the best."
It seems difficult to find someone with a bad feeling toward Reese, except perhaps the Lake Tahoe casino manager who watched Reese lose thousands of dollars in blackjack, accept an offer of free room and meals and then win $20,000 the next day. The grim-faced manager gritted his teeth on Reese's exit and said, "I hope you enjoyed your stay."
"Chip was a schmoozer," said Barry Greenstein, one of poker's top pros. "He was an expert at getting people to love him, invite him over, play gin rummy, ask him to dinner. You would lose your money to him, but you were happy doing it."
A true friend
Reese solidified his reputation in the poker world by winning the inaugural $50,000 buy-in H.O.R.S.E. tournament at the 2006 World Series of Poker, which tested competitors in five disciplines of poker. After a legendary duel with fellow pro Andy Bloch that lasted 286 hands, Reese added a third bracelet — to go with wins from 1978 and '82 — and an extra $1.78 million to his bank account.
Legend also says Reese collected million-dollar fees for teaching gin and backgammon to royalty around the world and once was ship-wrecked on an island while taking one such trip. He hired a service, friends say, to start his car for him, because he worried about whose money had he won.
The stories that friends seem to remember most, though, lie outside of card rooms. While it's entertaining to hear about Reese building his first million out of just $400 in a few short years, those closest to him say that his generosity and compassion mixed with his killer card instinct to form a truly loved player with a heartland constitution, uncalculated wealth and an infamous life in perhaps the most infamous of professions.
"I had a daughter unexpectedly die 20-some years ago," said Doyle Brunson, a poker legend who was a close Reese friend. "Chip and I were acquaintances at the time, not close friends, but we were neighbors. I contemplated suicide for a bit, it crossed my mind, and Chip talked me out of that.
"I started looking for answers, reading the Bible, visiting a Baptist university in Texas, asking myself, 'What does all this mean?' Chip and I chose the Christian faith, and that was what comforted me. We became lifelong friends.
"I like to think that maybe it's the end, but it's also a beginning."
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7389 or knagel@DaytonDailyNews.com.
Birthdate: March 28, 1951
High school: Centerville High School
College: Dartmouth College
Poker accomplishments:
1978 World Series of Poker Seven-Card Stud event champion
1982 WSOP Seven-Card Stud event champion
2006 $50,000 buy-in H.O.R.S.E. champion
Reasons
for success
Friends say Reese was both highly skilled at math and controlled with his betting, never allowing himself to fall too far behind. He also, perhaps because of his debating background, could talk almost anyone into joining his game.
Quotes
"All great players, to a man, say Chip Reese without question was the best all-around poker player in history." — Mike Sexton, a Kettering native, top poker pro and television commentator
"We were business partners for 32 years. I think we did 10 different business deals, and we probably went broke in every one of 'em. We tried things like looking for Noah's Ark, raising the Titanic, searching for gold, buying into television stations, mining operations. We always laughed about it and asked ourselves, 'Why do we do these things?' But that's who we are. We're gamblers." — Doyle Brunson, legendary poker pro
"He could remember every card in three decks." — Rick Pummill, close friend from Centerville High School and Dartmouth College
"He cared more about his family than he did about poker, and that's what made him a great player." — Bill James, close friend since age 5
"All of us thought he was crazy, that he was an idiot for going out there. He proved us wrong." — Dave Maurer, former Wittenberg football coach and College Football Hall of Fame member who was also Reese's uncle
"Years ago I was talking to Chip about Stu Unger, who died young at 43. I asked Chip if Stuie was the most talented player he had ever seen. He said, 'Natural ability-wise, yes, he had the quickest mind. Stuie's problem is he doesn't understand the object of the game, which is to accumulate wealth, improve your lifestyle and provide for your family.' " — Sexton
