Chip Reese

Paul(y) McGuire (AKA Tao of Poker) has an excellent piece on Chip Reese's $1.7 million victory in the $50,000 buy-in HORSE WSOP event. The piece really resonates with me because of the background Pauly gives on one of the best poker players in the world.

Chip Reese was born in Dayton, Ohio where he played poker as a kid using baseball cards as currency and chips. He was a talented gin-rummy player and also excelled at backgammon. During his teens in Dayton, Reese regularly sat in the same games with World Poker Tour announcer, Mike Sexton. Reese graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in economics. He crushed all the games on campus and when he graduated, the card room at his fraternity house was named the David E. Reese Memorial Card Room in his honor. He was accepted into law school at Stanford University and planned on a career as an attorney.

As the legend goes, in 1974 on his way out to California to attend law school, Reese stopped off in Las Vegas with only $400 in his pocket. He started playing low-limit Seven-card Stud. By the end of the weekend, he won first place in a Seven-card Stud tournament, which paid $60,000. He never made it to Stanford. A year passed before he finally told his parents that he did not attend law school. He had been spending that time as a professional poker player in Las Vegas. He was once quoted saying, "Law doesn't have the same monetary incentive as poker."