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The current coronavirus crisis has reminded me of an important concept. It is one that I have written about and talked about for nearly 50 years.

It begins with a story. I had a friend, Howie B, who was the best stud player in several games on the upper east side of New York during the 1970’s. He had played with Stu Unger and Eric Drache when they were still on the East Coast. We called him Howie the Horse both because of his size and his habit of going out to Aqueduct or Belmont race track each day.

He usually lost whatever he had won the night before. In fact, he occasionally lost more than he had won the night before, and came back in debt. For a while, it didn’t matter. Every day he’d lose at the track, but every night he’d win at the poker game.

But over time, the games got tougher. Some of the really horrendous players went broke or got tired of losing and quit. Their places were taken by guys who played reasonably well. Some of the other weak players got better.

Finally, the inevitable happened. The Horse went on a losing streak at poker. And things at the track didn’t get any better. He got an afternoon job tending bar at one of the local joints. This served the dual purposes of providing a little cash and keeping him away from the track.

One afternoon, I stopped in for a few beers. I gave him a lecture about money management and playing only when you have the best of it. (To this day, I continue to give a similar lectures to talented games-players who are periodically broke.)

He said, “When I used to win every night, I thought those games were a candy store. Now I realize, the candy store isn’t always open.”

I laughed, had a few more beers and left. On the way home, it dawned on me that he had made a really profound comment on gambling, or perhaps even life in general. It is crucial to realize that the candy store isn’t always open!

What do I mean? I mean that there are times when you get into a very good situation. When that happens, make your money and enjoy some of it. But don’t make the mistake of thinking you can blow it all because the situation will never end.

Let me give you some examples of times the candy store was open for me:

• When Atlantic City casinos first went into operation, they dealt blackjack with early surrender counters that had a huge edge. On top of that, there were some very inexperienced dealers, whose mistakes in the player’s favor were seldom corrected.

• When Los Angeles poker clubs won their lawsuit and started dealing a variety of games, not just draw poker, and when Atlantic City put in poker, ‘Candy Stores’ opened up.

• When I first began to bet on sports, local bookmakers had radically different lines in different cities. The 49ers might be favored in San Francisco while their opponent, the Giants, were favored in New York.

• When sites like Full Tilt, Doyle’s Room, or Ultimate Bet were booming and soft before Black Friday.

I could go on and on with examples of gambling Candy Stores, but let’s look at times in the financial arenas when this concept applied:

• The first option traders to apply the Black-Sholes model on the American Stock Exchange had a temporary ‘Candy Store.’

• From about 1990 to 2006 buying real estate was a ‘Candy Store.’ Suddenly the game of musical chairs ended, and those holding houses or condos were in big trouble.

This happens even in personal situations. The first month of many relationships are full of wine and roses. Things start to go sour, and it may end a few months (or years) later when the miserable couple splits. The recent film Marriage Story portrays this well.

Prior to Covid-19, live poker and poker tournaments had been booming again. The games may not have been as great as they were after Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker main event, but until recently the poker ‘Candy Store’ was open. Likewise, business was great for bars, restaurants, casinos, airlines, cruise ships, etc. Not anymore. Those Candy Stores are closed. Now online gaming, especially poker, is flourishing as inexperienced players, trapped in their homes with nothing to do, start to play. Win their money while it’s there and buy stock in online poker if you can.

The lesson to be learned is that if you find a great situation and start making a fortune, don’t blow it on casino gambling, sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Everything gets tougher. Big losers will quit or go broke. The average player will become more knowledgeable and more skillful. And no one ever knows what idiocy the government will perpetrate next.

If you catch yourself thinking, “I’m a great player, a big winner, and things are so good that it doesn’t matter what I do with my winnings. I can always win more,” remember that the ‘Candy Store’ won’t always be open.

Steve ‘Zee’ Zolotow, aka The Bald Eagle, is a successful gamesplayer. He has been a full-time gambler for over 35 yearsand has two WSOP bracelets. He can be found at some major tournaments and playing in cash games in Vegas. When escaping from poker, he hangs out in his bars on Avenue A in New York City – The Library near Houston and Doc Holliday’s on 9th St. are his favorites.

Table Of Contents

This month, via the social sharing platform Reddit, a poker dealer and former player started telling his story. However, this was no ordinary story. Over the past fortnight, Julius - not his real name - has started to reveal all about the illegal underground poker games in New York that he played or dealt in over the past fifteen years.

Feedback from the poker community has been overwhelmingly positive, with hundreds of poker players, dealers, and fans rushing to request more chapters. It’s the latest poker binge and we caught up with the creator.

“I was really nervous when I made the first post,” says Julius, clearly shocked by the popularity of his story-telling. ‘I thought I was going to get a ton of crap for it. I’d been browsing the sub-Reddit on poker for a while and looking through the content I couldn’t find anything that was remotely similar.”

'I’d been browsing the subreddit on poker for a while and looking through the content I couldn’t find anything that was remotely similar.'

Julius is, as you might expect, deeply entrenched in the poker world, and currently resides in Vegas; the ‘gambling capital of the world’. Having left New York some time ago, he feels like he has sufficient distance from the subject matter to tell all about working in underground poker rooms. The kind of places the creators of Rounders visited to research the 1998 movie.

“I work for a few different poker rooms in Vegas and the most common thing people ask me is ‘Where are you from?’ Eighty percent of the time, the next question is ‘Did you play poker in New York?’ When I tell that I played and dealt in underground clubs, they want me to tell them the crazy stories or if I saw cheating.”

READ ALSO: The new PokerStars Marketing Code is out!

That’s how the Reddit story started. One night, Julius left his last table and got home fuelled with an impulse to write about when he first visited a poker club when he was a 16-year-old. The next thing he knew, it was three hours later, and he’d created the first chapter.

“I have no formal training in writing and I’m sure that’s evident. But I’ve always enjoyed being articulate in my life. I’ve never done anything even remotely similar to this. I have no idea where this came from.”

The impulse has taken him to eight chapters to date, with plenty more to come. The one-time computer programmer, who was born in California but then moved to the East Coast and New York, loved the perks in New York, and money was the root of it.

“I had a pretty good job at a software company but always dealt poker on the side at nights or weekends, because the money was fantastic, and it was cash.”

Julius became drawn into the poker world more and more. It came to a point where he was making a lot more money in the poker games than he was in his regular job.

“I was happier doing it. I love the game and the industry. It brings me a lot of joy.”

That joy runs right through his story, and despite having to change a few names and clubs (‘Out of respect and not to blow a spot’), Julius may have protected people’s names but he lays the tale out there as honestly as it comes. This is the truth of what dealing to poker players or playing poker underground is really like. Julius believes dealing has made him a better player, but that’s not something he thinks applies to everyone.

'I had a pretty good job at a software company but always dealt poker on the side at nights or weekends, because the money was fantastic, and it was cash.'

“My favorite book is the myth of poker talent by Alex Fitzgerald. The best players in the world put in the most time and work the hardest.”

As a dealer, Julius thinks he and his fellow dealers have the opportunity to pick up poker skills to pay the bills. It all comes down to that hard work element.

“We get to observe tens of thousands of hands on a daily basis eight hours a day. If you study the game and pay attention to the hands you’re dealing, you can learn quite a bit.”

Julius believes most dealers have an advantage - but only if they pay attention to players they deal to and embrace the study sign of the game. But he does... so why isn’t he the best poker player in the game?

“I have horrible bankroll management!” he says with a rueful laugh. “I used to play $5/$10 but the game has become extremely nitty. I’ll play $1/$3 in Vegas because it’s so easy. I get the itch for poker two or three times a week, but I deal every other day; I work seven days a week.”

Despite his obvious love for the game, Julius, now nearing 30 years old, has no desire to turn professional in poker. But he does love mixed games and says that mixing it up helped his No-Limit Hold’em game immensely. Some stories will come up in future chapters that explore that... along with police raids, crazy poker hands, and getting out of New York just as Julius’ luck was running out.

“Because I titled it ‘Inside Underground NY Poker’, I guess it’ll end when I made the move to Las Vegas. In my life, that was a new chapter for me, but I’m only up to 2007 right now, so I’ve got some time to go through before I leave.”

Now Vegas-based, Julius’s adventures have continued above board with a dealer’s license. He loves being in the gambling capital of the world. He made the decision to move to Vegas because he’d had enough of dealing underground illegally. It was only a matter of time before something bad happened in New York. But hey, if you’re reading his adventures, you’ll know that danger is on 5th Street waiting for him.

Read it yet? If not, you can find all the chapters right here. Here at PokerNews, we’re hooked.

Inside Underground NY Poker Reddit Links

Inside Underground NY Poker Excerpt

With Julius' permission, an excerpt of one of his stories. This bit comes from the opening post; Part 1.

“When you rang the bell, they’d ask you who you were, you’d tell them how and who invited you, and in a minute or two you’d be buzzed in through the first steel door. After entering, you’d come to a second steel door with another camera positioned in front, which only opened from the inside.

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'you’d come to a second steel door with another camera positioned in front, which only opened from the inside.'

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When you finally entered the room, it was gorgeous — clean, large, comfortable, and was equipped with everything you wanted in a club. A full-sized kitchen, multiple clean bathrooms (one even had a shower), a lounge area, a high limit room, waitresses, a bunch of large flat screen TV’s, and a smoking room among other things. The first thing you’d notice was that they had 6 high-quality poker tables paired with executive chairs, not including the one in the high-limit room. This club was spacious.

As you walked in, a valet would ask for your keys and he would go fetch your vehicle and park it in an organized fashion amongst the others. You’d then make your way over to the podium and tell the floor which game you wanted to play — they usually had at least several games going — $1/$3, $2/$5, and $5/$10 NL and higher when it ran, but the much higher games were much more private.

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Strapped with $1,000 in cash on me, I request a seat in the $1/$3 game and eventually make my way onto the table. The max buy-in was $500, which I opted for because most stacks at the table were deep. It didn’t really matter anyway — this was my first time playing in an underground poker club and I was nervous as hell.”

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