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A British poker and gambling desk since 2005.

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Legends

Down To A Chip And A Chair

All The Aces daily poker column: DOWN TO A CHIP AND A CHAIR. The story of that saying goes way back to the early 1980’s when a brilliant Texan Poker player called Jack “Treetop” Strauss got all the way down to just one chip at the World

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18+ onlyWritten, edited and fact-checked by the All The Aces desk in Britain — how we work and how we correct mistakes. Some links out are paid placements; they are not reviews, and nobody pays for coverage. Gambling in the UK is licensed by the Gambling Commission, and nothing here is advice to bet.

How Jack Strauss inspired this poker saying...

There’s a famous saying in poker circles for an unlucky run. “Down to a chip and a chair.” The story of that saying goes way back to the early 1980’s when a brilliant Texan Poker player called Jack “Treetop” Strauss (“Treetop” on account of his height) got all the way down to just one chip at the World Series of Poker. You guessed it. He went on to win and became the 1982 World Series Champ and a millionaire to boot. Sadly, the story has a sting in its tail. Age fifty eight, “Treetops” was finally felled during a game of no limit Texas Hold’em at the Bicycle Casino in L.A. “Treetops” made a huge bet and promptly dropped stone dead at the table from a chronic heart attack. Apparently he’d run a monster bluff and the strain proved too much. Poker romantics at the table  remarked they were sure it’s the way he would’ve wanted to go. The lessons here are clearly to keep your bluffs under control and to remember even a chip and a chair can be enough to make you winner.
FLOP STRATEGY
The flop is the key to success in Texas hold’em. Make your critical decisions at this point in the game. What chance does it present you with? Can you read what it’s potentially done for your opponents? Often at this stage you’re able to tell an opponent’s situation by the way he calls. Maybe he’s drawing to a flush or a straight. If you see three cards to a flush or a straight then you’re getting alarm bells.
Obviously a three card straight should cause you even more concern than a flush developing, as it poses a bigger threat.
Everything after the flop is pretty much set in stone. Get it right. And if you’re a beginner, play it tight.

What the saying means at the table. The phrase survives because the arithmetic behind it is genuinely strange: a player with one chip left has not lost, because he cannot be made to put in more than he has. Go all in and the most that can be taken is that chip, while the most that can be won is a call from every player in the hand. A short stack is the only position in poker where a bet carries no further risk, and a player who understands that stops playing a short stack as though it were a long one in miniature.

That is the half of the story worth copying. The other half, the monster bluff that proved too much to carry, is the warning the column attached to it, and it is not only a story about a heart. A bluff that large has to be held in the face of every reaction at the table, and most players who run one discover they can build it but cannot sit still behind it. If you cannot hold the posture, the bluff was never available to you — which is why the advice underneath the legend is to keep them under control, and to remember that one chip is still a hand.

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