Johnny Moss, superb gamester and gambler and world champion of poker, was born in 1907 in a poor Texas town. Eventually his family drifted into Dallas when their economic condition did not improve much. At eight years old Johnny quit school and began selling newspapers. He also met his lifelong friend, Benny Binion. Together they learned games, and they began their life careers as players. By the time Johnny Moss was fifteen, he was making a living at dice.
Soon he was wandering around Texas playing games and learning games. In West Texas he also worked on a ranch. There one day he rode his horse by a golf course and saw two hackers betting as they played. He figured, “What folks are betting on, you learn to play, that’s all”. So he learned to play golf. He learned so well that he much later played a round of golf at the Desert Inn for a $100,000 stake. He beat 80, shooting 79, with irons only. At an earlier time, he won a $5,000 bet that he could shoot 9 below 45 with only a four iron. Johnny also learned to bowl. But these were really the side games. Following an automobile accident he could no longer compete in physical activities at the level that a hustler must compete in order to win. He turned to his real game – poker.
But still there were physical dangers. “To be a professional gambler”, he related, not only means “you have to know how to play the games, you have to keep your eyes open for two dangers, the hijackers and the law” . But that was before the big action moved to Las Vegas and was held under the big tops of the legal casinos. In 1949, Nick the Greek Dandolos came to Las Vegas looking for a game. Benny Binion, of the Horseshoe casino, called his friend Johnny Moss in Texas and suggested they have a one-on-one match in his casino. It was the first world championship poker match, and it lasted five months before Nick the Greek threw in his cards and walked away.
Twenty-one years later, the formal World Series of Poker began. Johnny Moss won it three times in the 1970s. Moss won the first tournament and played in every one until 1995. In his later years he played regularly, but not for the big stakes that had previously driven him. For a while, he was the poker room manager at the Aladdin Hotel. But mostly he traveled back and forth between Las Vegas and his home in Odessa, Texas. He died there at the age of eighty-eight, in 1995.
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