History & High Stakes in Big D: Dallas Amvets Club Linked to Some of Game’s Best
March 29, 2022
Sean Chaffin
Contributor
This article comes from the
PokerNews archives and originally published on March 02, 2016. It has been updated as a feature during
PokerNews' Texas Week.
Dallas' Greenville Avenue is bustling on a June afternoon as busy afternoon traffic flows along the street. In the last few decades, Greenville has become a hot spot -- a place to grab a bite to eat or hit a bar for a few drinks with friends. But 25 years ago,
1921 1/2 Greenville Avenue was home to the
AMVETS Club, one of the best-known underground poker clubs in the country and host to some of the biggest names in poker history.
Several
World Series of Poker bracelet winners bet and bluffed their way to success in this non-descript two-story, red-brick building in North Dallas.
Once a house of gambling, the room upstairs is now subdivided: one side serves as a photography studio and the other side a strip aerobics studio, complete with rows of shiny stripper poles. Below the club is a smoke shop and pizza joint with a stairwell sandwiched between them leading upstairs. A bright red sturdy steel door remains, used as security along with a camera and door buzzer outside -- you had to know someone to get inside.
The current tenants are a far cry from the old AMVETS, which ran games from 1969 to the mid-1980s featuring some of the best players at the time — many now WSOP champions and even members of the
Poker Hall of Fame.
Getting the Gamble Going
In the 1930s and 1940s, illegal gambling was rampant throughout Dallas, with men like
Benny Binion and rival
Herbert Noble running casinos and numbers rackets throughout the city. As
Gary Sleeper brilliantly outlines in his book
I'll Do My Own Damn Killin', the gangster war between the two men left a long trail of blood, gang-style murders with pistols, shotguns, and even dynamite.
Part of that history would eventually include poker -- after all, it is "Texas" hold'em. In the 1960s, gamblers hoofed it across the state, seeking out action on the felt.
Bob Hooks, now 80, was a known rounder in Dallas. A lifelong poker player, Hooks was looking for a consistent game in the area. After talking to a partner, the AMVETS Club was born in 1969.
"I knew all the players and he kept the paperwork, so we opened up," Hooks said from his home in Edgewood, Texas.
Officially, the club was known as
AMVETS Post No. 4, and from the beginning it attracted some of the state's best players. The club is often confused with the
Redman's Club, a series of other clubs that were not related to the original on Greenville. While poker and gambling halls were, and still are, illegal in Texas, club owners used charitable organizations like the AMVETS to charter their club, with the game's rake only covering charitable activities and club expenses. The ruse helped owners skirt the law, keeping the cards in the air. The term "club expenses" was open to interpretation as future club owner
Byron "Cowboy" Wolford noted in his 2002 biography
Cowboys, Gamblers, and Hustlers.
"Of course, when my business partners and I ran clubs in the old days, we interpreted the word 'expenses' very broadly," Wolford wrote.
The club was viewed as a private club, and mostly left alone by law enforcement. Hooks ran the club for a year, but the bright lights of Las Vegas came calling. In Vegas, Hooks became a pioneer of Texas hold'em. It was his friend and fellow Texan
Johnny Moss who first introduced Hooks to Binion. Moss, who passed away in 1995, is a Poker Hall of Fame member, winner of seven World Series gold bracelets, and winner of the
WSOP Main Event in 1970, 1971, and 1974. He was also a frequent player at Hooks' club.
"I was with Johnny Moss out in Vegas and he introduced me to Benny Binion, and Benny was about to open up a card room at the
Horseshoe. Moss says, 'Well, you need to give this man right here a job out here [in Las Vegas],'" Hooks said.
On Moss' recommendation, Binion offered him the job on the spot, but Hooks took a few days to consider the proposal. He had a family and farm back in the Dallas area, as well as a pretty successful card room, but ultimately accepted the job managing the Horseshoe's card room.
Moss, Binion, and Hooks
"I said yes... and it was the best thing that ever happened to me," he said. "If you were working with the big man (Binion), then that meant you were all right."
The move positioned Hooks, along with AMVETS alumnus Moss, into the limelight of the burgeoning poker world in Vegas. While Moss is known for winning the first two tournaments, Hooks found his own level of success, finishing second in the Main Event in 1975 to
Bryan "Sailor" Roberts. Roberts, who was Hooks' roommate at the time, took the entire $220,000 prize, however; the event was winner-take-all until 1978.
Over the next few years, Hooks continued playing in Vegas while becoming more involved in the growing Vegas scene. After a year working for Binion, Hooks ran junkets for the
Hilton,
Flamingo, and
Golden Nugget, and then managed the card room at the Golden Nugget for
Steve Wynn from 1975-1978.
Meanwhile, the little poker club on Lower Greenville continued to roll on -- and attract big-name gamblers -- and a new owner. This new owner would become a major name in poker throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
Learn more about poker in Texas here!
Cowboy Up
After running the club a year and heading to Vegas, Hooks sold out to a Dallas friend. Its best-known proprietor then took over, Byron "Cowboy" Wolford.
Born in Barbers Hill, Texas, in 1930 in the midst of the Great Depression, Wolford would become a poker legend. The son of an oil roughneck, his family moved near Tyler after his father came into a $1,700 insurance settlement from an auto accident. The family purchased a 45-acre farm and oil was promptly discovered on the property -- another boon to the family income.
Taking to horses and roping as a teenager, Wolford got his start as a professional rodeo cowboy. Retiring from the rodeo circuit at 30, he was later inducted into the
Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame. Capitalizing on his poker prowess during rodeo stops, he entered the then-shady world of professional poker.
A poker player of the old school, Wolford hit the poker circuit before the top players were household names and TV networks broadcast hole cards and bad beats. His success at the table included a runner-up finish to
Jack Keller in the
1984 WSOP Main Event, and winning a bracelet in 1991 in the
$5,000 Limit Hold'em event for $210,000. Wolford's tournament career spanned four decades and he amassed $737,410 in winnings in nine cashes in the WSOP and totaled $902,000 in lifetime tournament winnings.
But before all his success in Vegas, in the mid-1970s Wolford took over the AMVETS. Unlike his predecessors, he invested heavily into improving the club, spending $30,000 for new carpeting, a fresh coat of paint, and a nice bar and kitchen. A steel door and buzzer were installed to keep the location secure. The card room was similar to a big meeting hall with three or four tables running: one high-stakes no-limit game ($10/$25) and a few lower-limit games. Players flocked to the club.
"It wasn't long before we had a hell of a no-limit hold'em game going," Wolford wrote in his memoir. "We also had two limit hold'em games going, and boy, business was good!"
And among those players was
T.J. Cloutier, a member of the Poker Hall of Fame.
"In those days, that was a lot of money," Cloutier says. "I mean, everybody bought in for a thousand or more and there was plenty of money on the table."
Like Moss, Cloutier flourished on the felt, winning six WSOP bracelets, $4.4 million in WSOP winnings, $10.2 million in career tournament winnings, and finished second in the
1985 Main Event to
Bill Smith, another AMVETS veteran. The Hall of Fame member and resident of Richardson, Texas, said the action was good at the club and Cowboy's efforts showed.
"I played there in the late-70s and early-80s," Cloutier said. "I was in Shreveport at the time, and I used to drive up from Shreveport to play in it. All the top players in Texas came to this one. Everyone that came into to town who drove in or flew into town came there to play. And there were big-time players."
After a few years, Wolford sold the club to Dallas resident
Troy Inman. Wolford would continue to play and find major success. While living and playing in California, he also served as a host at the
Ocean's Eleven Casino in Oceanside. In 2003, the gambling cowboy with a quick wit and wide smile passed away at age 72.
"I've lost one of my oldest and dearest friends," poker icon
Doyle Brunson said after Wolford's death.
Among Cowboy's legacies was the little club in Dallas that produced some poker stars.
