Poker Player - Chip Reese
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Chip Reese earned three WSOP bracelets and was the youngest ever player to be recommended for the Poker Hall of Fame in 19991 at the age of 40. Although his tournament victories are reserved, his winnings still totalled $3.5 million despite his decision to concentrate most of his time on cash games. Many players considered him to be the best cash player ever; Doyle Brunson said of him, “Chip’s the best Seven-card Stud player I’ve ever played with.”
Reese was born in Dayton in Ohio in 1951 as David Edward Reese. He learned to play poker from his mother while he suffered from rheumatic fever during elementary school, meaning he had to stay home during most of that year. Reese later called himself, “a product of that year.”
During high school, Reese was a keen football player and was a member of the debating team where he won an Ohio State Championship. After high school he attended Dartmouth College after turning down a place at prestigious Harvard University. During his time at Dartmouth he was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity while studying for his degree in economics. As well as this, he continued to play poker also teaching his brothers in the fraternity how to play.
In 1974, after completing his degree he was offered a place at Stanford Law School where he intended to study to become an attorney. However, travelling to California on his way to Stanford, he decided to take a stop off in Las Vegas. Having only $400 to play with, however, he ended up winning $100,000 by the time he was due to start at Stanford. This lead Reese to say his famous quote, “Law doesn’t have the same monetary incentive as poker.” After his big Vegas win, Reese decided to stay in Las Vegas permanently. But it took a year before he admitted to his parents that he wasn’t studying at Stanford, instead he was a professional poker player.
In 1982, not long after winning his second WSOP bracelet, Reese decided that playing in cash games was a lot more profitable. His casino of choice was the Horseshoe however his children wanted to see their dad on TV so he played at the Jack Binion World Poker Open at Tunica, Mississippi, where he reached the final table. Also in the same year he finished in fourth place in the televised WPT.
Reese became good friends with another legendary poker player, Doyle Brunson. Reese regularly played at his home table, ‘The Big Game’ where some of the most expensive games took place. Reese also wrote a section about seven-card stud in Brunson’s best selling poker book, ‘Super System’. Brunson has been quoted of saying about Reese, “If my family’s lives were threatened and I had to win a poker match in order to save them, Chip is the player that I would definitely choose.”
Reese was known for his style of play. He proved that he was able to control his emotions at the poker table with strength and self-confidence. He knew which games he could stay with and win big out of, and which to give up on and wait for another day. He never let short-term results influence his decisions and played looking at the game as a whole.
On December 4, 2007, Chip Reese died in his Las Vegas home. It has been speculated that he died from pneumonia however some of Reese’s friends argue that it was a blood clot caused by a gastric bypass. After his death Doyle Brunson said, “He’s certainly the best poker player that ever lived.”
Danielle Almond.
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