The first high-stakes poker player I interviewed was John “Austin Squatty” Jenkins. He was an erudite rare-book dealer who played big-money hold’em. His contradictory interests made the Texan scholar story-worthy.
Then the truth came out. The guy emerged as a revenge-bent snitch, a con artist, and an arsonist. Before my story ran, Squatty was found alongside the Colorado River with a bullet in his head.
I thought of him and other card-playing rogues after reading about Lenard “Lucky” Adams this past week. A poker pro who, in 2017, had been charged with rape, fraud, and kidnapping (most of the charges were dropped, though he was made to pay restitution). Adams is now being accused of scamming fellow poker players.
These days, the good news is that incidents such as this one are more the exception than the rule among card players.
But it wasn’t always like that.
Doyle Brunson once told my writing partner (on the book Aces and Kings) about playing in games where he literally put his life at risk. Rounders used to traverse the southwest with guns in their cars to fend off hijackers. In a 1970s New York Times article, a crooked player with a nickname so racist that it would never fly today was depicted slipping cards into a Binion’s Horseshoe poker game, and the infraction was common enough that others at the table laughed it off.
Depending on what side of things you were on, that may or may not have been worse than the plan that was hatched at a World Series of Poker table, for Charles Harrelson (dad of Woody) to murder a federal judge on behalf of the marijuana smuggler Jimmy Chagra. He did the job and was paid off with cash stuffed into a Pampers box.
I did a few stories with Russ Hamilton – including a whopper for Sports Illustrated that had him hustling a bunch of his friends at golf – before he became a poker room pariah amid allegations that he was involved with a brutal online cheating scam.
The last poker villain I spent time with was the notorious David “Devilfish” Ulliott. He did jail time, played mediocre-at-best guitar, and could have been a third Kray twin. He wasn’t exactly a highly trusted poker player, though I think the former break-in artist was more angle shooter and self-centered hustler than out-and-out cheater.
During one of my last encounters with him, over dinner at the old Horseshoe steakhouse, he tried strongarming me into buying a diamond and called me fat when I refused to pony up money for the suspect jewel. On the upside, he also paid for dinner and gave me more than my share of juicy stories.
Colorful as guys like Devilfish might have been, I have to figure that they are not terribly missed by honest players. Grinders who stick to online poker can rest easy knowing their chips (and kneecaps) are safe every time they buy in.
In a game as financially perilous as poker, things are so much better – for players, though maybe not for story-hungry journalists seeking colorful characters to write about – with the majority of majorly bad actors out of the big-time action.
Michael Kaplan is a journalist based in New York City. He is the author of five books (“The Advantage Players” out soon) and has worked for publications that include Wired, GQ and the New York Post. He has written extensively on technology, gambling, and business — with a particular interest in spots where all three intersect. His article on Kelly “Baccarat Machine” Sun and Phil Ivey is currently in development as a feature film.