Women In Poker Profiles: Terry King

Terry King

By Madison Kopp (from April 2016)

There is a longstanding debate as to whether Texans or Oklahomans make the best story tellers…Terry King lays that issue to rest permanently. The deeper into a story she gets the thicker and more irresistible her accent becomes, leaving the score board locked at–
Texas: some irrelevant number
Oklahoma: Infinity
When I first established myself in poker in Las Vegas, the locals were quick to share the critical history of the city via the oral tradition. They informed me of the legends that mattered: Johnny Moss, Doyle, Cissy, Danny and the 8 ball method, the cautionary tale of David Kopp, the heads up proposition David “Chip” Reese (Terry King’s then boyfriend who was widely acknowledged to be the best player in the world) had laid out for years at the Dunes, where he ran the cardroom. This was the first I heard of Terry King.
It was said that on a slow day at the Dunes card room the following option was available: one could name their own game and price but they had to play both Chip and Terry in any order you chose. Although the local bards still sing of the gimmick— the girlfriend could really play—Terry remains engagingly humble about this bit of her larger-than-life legend. She barely remembers it. “All you had to do was beat the girl” remembers David Kopp, a professional from the time. “What could be easier? After that you played Chip… worst you could do was break even” he laughs, “Right?” Two or three times David recalls Mark Speert, another professional player from the time, playing thousand dollar Seven-Card Stud freeze outs with Terry and losing. He had to beat Chip to get even. Terry croons, “Oh I am sure that Mark beat me. I think he beat Chip too.” This trademark modesty is a theme in the charm belying the talent of Terry King.
Terry King was never just one thing: not just a pretty face, not just an under the radar heads up talent, not just a smartass, not just a sweet girl… Phyllis Yazbek, longtime friend, met Terry at the final table in the 1978 World Series of Poker Ladies tournament (which at that time was $200 buy in 7- Stud) “I started with kings and she made jacks and nines and she won the tournament,” Phyllis laughs, “if my hand had held up who knows where I would be now?” Phyllis, a poker industry legend respected for her work at the Bike and Hollywood Park among other accomplishments explains “Poker was not the way it is now, you didn’t see that many women in the room or playing high limit…Cissy, Terry, Jackie Jean, they were fighting against a lot of male players. ‘” At the same time she says Terry “kept poker fun” and “kept you laughing.” “Terry” she says, with the obvious love and intimate affection indicative of a close long term friendship, “is a selfless very good person.”
The day of that Ladies tournament, Terry almost did not play. She had handed the buy-in to her then husband, Larry Wyndham, and he had “lost” the $200 on the way to the cage. (“that was the end of Larry,” says Terry.) He borrowed $100 and sold 25% to Vince James Spilatro and 25% to Danny Robison and Chip (a duo for another story.) When Terry got heads up with Starla Thompson, an undeniable talent she says advice from Danny made all the difference. ‘Danny having a piece of me said “Starla’s boyfriend is a good friend of mine so you can’t tell anyone but I can give you a couple of pieces of advice and you’ll bet her for sure.” What was that advice? “Oh no! I’m going to have to take that to the grave with me.”
Phyllis later hired Terry to run tournaments at the Bike because “…she understood players. She was a fantastic ambassador of poker who got the psychology of poker players.” In the determination of us versus them classification, Terry King is clearly one of us…. And entirely uniquely herself. Phyllis is quick to add “She always played great.” I imagine Terry anonymously torturing the online kids who all believe they invented continuation betting. One thing is certain, talent and self-possession like hers is indicative of the staying power of a true champion. Insanely cool.
Why is Terry King so important to poker as a woman? Because she simply showed up and won. Day in day out. She worked on her game and she played with ferocity. Terry learned and kept learning and made herself into a really good player. She knew where the window was and despite the fact that she was warm and kind and funny and drop dead gorgeous…she lived by her wits and made her own name. To me it is always a challenge when I start getting “attention” in the card rooms. I tend to hurry up and put a thick shield of fat back on my bones or stare at the floor so long that I forget to do anything else. It gets hard to exist. In discussing the challenge of being female in poker it is important to establish that the play of hands is not more challenging to one or another gender however the walk to the table from the bathrooms can be a very different ordeal: Terry managed to balance playing great with not being uncomfortable with being female— that’s not so easy…
I immediately think of Terry King when I think of women who made my life in poker more possible. She appears to have never had a second thought about whether hers was possible. That is gender blind.

Women in Poker Profiles: Cissy Bottom

By Madison Kopp (from February, 2016)

     The air at the photo shoot was likely only tense to Cissy Bottom. “It was just an article about four female poker players but she said the whole thing made her uncomfortable and she wanted it to be over as soon as possible,” says David Kopp, longtime poker pro and friend who recalls Cissy being stressed by the event. “She said that she thought Annie Duke was really pretty and she didn’t know why she (Cissy) was there.” While such events are commonplace today as female players are often giftpackaged as a hazard of their d-list celebrity, to Cissy it must have seemed bizarre. “I’m a poker player,” she often offered in explanation for just about everything.

      The eventual Cecilia Stricks Russo Bottom was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1941 in a house won in a poker game. Pregnant at 16, she left Atlantic City High School to give birth to her son David Russo. She returned to finish high school but her life had already assumed an alternative track. Initially setting up household with her new husband the union was not to last. One night as they entertained guests her husband paused mid-sentence, snapped his fingers, and pointed to his coffee cup. The docile and compliant Cecilia immediately leapt to her feet to retrieve the pot of fresh hot coffee and poured it exactly where it was demanded— on Mr. Russo’s head. After this, she went about devising a means of support for herself and her son which involved the race and poker. Legal gambling came to Atlantic City in 1978 and legal poker in 1993 however there had long been a private poker circuit. The games however were not all accessible to Cissy who was constrained to playing social poker with the “ladies.” One afternoon while playing Criss-Cross high/low (a game with a horizontal and a vertical row each of five cards intersecting at the third card which is common to both. Each player is dealt four cards and may play either row) she was dealt AAAJ. She held it up in disgust, attracting the attention of one of the “ladies” who picked it up and looked at it after Cissy mucked. After the hand was exposed Cissy was no longer welcome in the games. She was 34 years old with an adult son and it was time to seek an even playing field. After a few successful trips to Las Vegas she made the decision to move there in 1979.

     Establishing herself first at the Fremont in the 3/6 limit hold’em game, she easily dominated. It is here that her Las Vegas legend begins. Running with a crowd including Mike Landers, David Kopp, Rick Klehammer, Denny Axel, and Jimmy Flanagan, they ate two-dollar-steak-specials and discussed poker strategy every day at Binion’s. Despite cutting edge insight into Hold’em strategy— a game of which she had said “…as soon as I heard about it I knew I’d like it”— she was slow to move up in limits. She was early to recognize AK as a strong hand and said “What you want is for everyone to make a pair or for no-one to make a pair.” Friends pushed her to play higher but she was reticent. A statement made years later may shed some light on this: “I believe pot saps ambition.”

     By the time I met Cissy she was 50ish and had been a Las Vegas icon for more than a decade. She snickered at me, took my hand limply, said “how do you do?” with —I swear—a slight curtsy, and had no further use for me. While I believe this was meant to be dismissive of me, Marsha Waggoner, a poker icon in her own right, recalls a very different side of Cissy “Cissy told me to always make the last rinse of my hair after shampooing a COLD one. It will make your hair shine, I’ve never forgotten that and I always do it and I think of Cissy. We were good friends and played at the Stardust almost every day. Loved Cissy!” Cissy’s dismissal of me said more about her desire to be left alone to play than about anything else. Even when I showed up in Vegas, oblivious to how I was seen by the locals, Cissy was still the only female pro one was likely to see in a 15/30 or 20/40 game. Coming from a market where virtually everyone called themselves a “professional” (and carried a dog-eared copy of Sklansky for Advanced players and had a high security clearance at Sandia or Los Alamos labs) but I was one of the few with no other source of income, it never occurred to me that there was any trick to getting into a game other than putting one’s name on the list. By the time I was ruining poker games by sharing my every breakthrough and folding hands face up, Cissy had already claimed her independence with that fateful AAAJ event. She had already been on the correct and revolutionary side of the J10suited debate in which she and one of her crew held the line against the rest of the pack: the proposition being whether to fold or call with J10 suited on the button after a player who certainly held AA or KK raised and was then called by seven players— Cissy’s side held that they would rather re-raise than fold in this spot, an avant garde strategy at the time. It is easy to see in retrospect why Cissy had little use for me— I was walking road which she had paved.

Women In Poker Profiles: Prologue

A few months ago I started a series on women in poker from a personal perspective. I announced the event on my personal Facebook page on February 3rd and then proceeded to learn exactly how difficult deadlines — even self-imposed deadlines– can be to meet.

This was the first oh! so innocent post:

There is a small set of women without whom my poker life would have been dangerous if not impossible.

 

Each of these women have (or had…at least one is dead) talent and so much more. They each could be described as savvy, aware, and of course broadly intelligent. None of them traded on looks. All of them (played or still) play great. These women were winning players before anybody ever heard of them. These women need to be raised up and appreciated as groundbreaking icons — just for waking up, going to work, and, of course, winning.

 

Over the next few months I am going to try to write some pieces on these women. Some of you might be surprised to read about yourselves, you should all know how much of a difference you have made.

These stories had other homes but they will now all reside here for easy access.

T

The First Blog Post That Wasn’t Exactly What It Seemed

This is the first post of my eponymous “Madison Kopp” yet it is far from my first blog post. this will be the archive spot for my greatest hits as well as the somewhat more dignified location for my Women In Poker Profiles which began on my eclectic  and undisciplined Facebook page.