A Love Letter to My Favorite Poker Player

After a short, but sweet, reappearance in Vegas, Russ Georgiev returned home to Seattle, celebrated his 62nd birthday and died in his sleep of a heart attack.

To those of you who say, “That’s great news!” I offer this. Russ was smarter than most of the population and was able to figure things out from a very early age. He played bridge as a child and actually had his master points by age 5 ½. He was an entrepreneur at age 8 and had 7 neighborhood children in his ‘employ’ making and selling custom potholders. At 16 he was winning huge amounts of money pot bowling at Lewis and Clark lanes. Because he ‘saw’ something no one else had seen in greyhound betting procedures, he took advantage of his knowledge and, legally, made a killing at the dogs – finally ‘they’ caught on and all greyhound betting had to be revised. He was arrogant, but he had a right to be. He was exceptionally good-looking, intelligent, well-mannered, well-read, drove great cars, wore the best clothes, and could out-argue and out-think almost all the people he came in contact with. So to those of you who are glad at hearing the news, I say, you’re just plain jealous, the normal response of those who don’t measure up and can’t appreciate someone who does.

Was he a braggart? Yup. But, at least his stories were true. I have printed email correspondence to him from all the guys you know from the poker world. And I was with Russ when Ruth Streeter of “60 Minutes” called him about doing an expose. And I counted the $70,000 cash he used to carry around in a paper bag back in the 70’s. We weren’t on the best of terms in the late 80’s, but he sent me $200-$300 cash per week for 18 months when I was undergoing chemotherapy. He helped countless people, some just to keep up the big shot image, but more because he was actually a kind-hearted guy.

Was he a cheat? He admitted it. He divulged all kinds of things about cheating, but most people didn’t believe him. Look at online poker…Russ surely had the last laugh.

He wrote a great book, POKER UNCHECKED. To understand how brilliant a player he was you need to know that he challenged the best to prove him wrong and they declined. He challenged them to heads-up games, and they declined.

So Russ is dead and I bet the posts on your poker websites will be a lot duller without him.

To those of you who will sincerely miss him, I say he was on his way back to the top. A long while back he came up with a revolutionary idea for pari-mutuel betting – the Nevada Gaming authority stalled for years before recently approving it. You should see it in action before too long…

And before the rumors start…for the record, Russ died owing NOTHING.

I will miss him.

Vicki,

younger sister of Russ Georgiev