There’s no way to sidestep the fact that I learned the fine art of poker from the kids in the old Oxford games – dealing and playing. In those days there wasn’t a sophisticated network of poker tournaments that brought a flood of people rolling through your town/game.

The World Series of Poker ran every year, but even at that, it wasn’t advertised anywhere, it was more word-of-mouth.  There may have been a few tournaments out there somewhere that had built a name but my beginning history goes back to 1980 and I can’t say I knew shit about poker before then and even after I first started dealing and learned to play.

The craziest part about the games was that no one really had any money.  There were a few players that probably had a bankroll and managed it fairly well but think about it — how do you beat a game that takes a $6 drop for the rake and the max the pot can have in it is $100? Someone has to bleed money, actually a lot of someones have to bleed money.

I referenced the gaming commission in Missoula in another post recently, they were worried that the mafia would come in and take control of the gambling if more than 5 or 6 machines were allowed in each establishment.  I went before them a couple of times while I was managing the poker game at the OX and I couldn’t believe how S-T-U-P-I-D they were about gambling in general and how they didn’t try to learn anything or expand their horizons…the shades of Sheldon Adelson of days gone by.

In order to get your gaming license to deal or license a poker table or a machine, you had to undergo some serious investigations, fingerprints, the whole thing, and about 10 pages of your life history.  In retrospect I’m surprised they didn’t require a lip print and the title to your car (if you had one). You had to pay a startling $125 every year to get that license/renewal. Keep in mind this was in the early 80s – that was a full week’s worth of wages for most people in that area.

The worst of it is that most people who want to learn to deal poker don’t have a spare $125 just tucked into their fanny pack to see if they can stand the heat.  That was one of the reasons I went before the commission with Margaret Ogg (OX employee and friend…that all changed later and I’ll eventually get to that story).

The commission was made up of a school teacher, someone from the clergy, I think there was a lawyer, a few regular business people types, and someone that was sort of ‘there’ most of the time.  Margaret and I pleaded with them to let us bring in a temporary dealer to see if they liked the job and we were interested in them for a two week trial period without forcing them to get their license first.

This is what we got from one of the members. Not quoted because I can’t remember the exact wordage but it went something like this:

“We could never do that!  What if the person you were trying out was dealing the game and they became upset and pulled a gun out and shot one of the players?  We would be responsible for that act because we allowed them to deal as a temporary dealer instead of investigating them first.”

We argued.  We asked if they wouldn’t give us a teensy bit of credit in our judgment of hiring someone.  We wouldn’t let someone sit in the box that we felt had a problem in dealing with people.  Nope!  We could never be the judge of character, even though we dealt with every type of character on a nightly basis.

There was a video game room at the local mall, an arcade, that opened when the mall did and closed at 9pm and you had to buy tokens to play the machines, plus an attendant was always on duty — along with a mall cop or two working the whole area. I bring this up because this is also what we got at that meeting:

“We don’t even like the arcade at the mall.  We’ve considered closing down that sinful, dark hole because it breeds problems and we don’t think kids should be allowed in there.”

Right!  Future killers and gun wielders that shoot random people shopping the mall were all born out of the arcade. Oh, wait!  I don’t believe there ever was a shooting at that mall, thankfully the gambling commission was there to make sure nothing ever happened out of the ordinary and the last time I was in Missoula, the mall still had an arcade.

I can’t help myself, my next post will probably be about the Montana daze because I’m on a roll.  G’nite.