Chip Reese Poker Player David ‘Chip’ Reese was regarded as one of the best cash poker players in the entire world. Chip Reese was famous in the poker community for the following traits:

Intelligent
Analytical
Self-control

Chip Reese Learns to Play Cards

Chip Reese was born in 1951, and he developed rheumatic fever at an early age. His mother stayed home with him for a year and taught him card games to pass the time. The intelligent young boy quickly caught on and was soon winning every hand. Reese described himself as ‘being a product of that year”. By the age of six, Chip Reese was beating fifth graders and soon won every baseball card in the neighborhood.

Chip Reese continued to play throughout high school and was equally successful in sports and the debate club. He won the state championship and went on to compete in the national finals. After graduation, he was accepted by Harvard but opted to attend Dartmouth. There he majored in economics. He joined the Beta Theta Pi Fraternity and taught many of his fraternity brothers and professors to play poker. His fraternity later named their game room ‘The David E. Reese Memorial Game Room’ in his honor.

Chip Reese and the Las Vegas Poker Scene

Chip Reese was later accepted into Stanford Law School, but a trip to Las Vegas changed his career path. He entered the casino at the Flamingo Hotel with $400 in his pocket and after beating the high rollers at poker, he left with over $66,000. It was enough to convince him to quit his day job and move to Las Vegas.

During those early years, Las Vegas was still an untamed town. Reese felt that he would do financially better by running a game room himself. After approaching the general manager at the Dunes casino, he became manager of the casino’s poker room. It wasn’t long before it became THE place in Vegs at which to play high-stakes poker.

Reese has stated that each player has a zone that they feel comfortable in, but to be successful at poker you have to gamble. Some poker professionals will only enter a game under the right conditions, with the right number of people.

Reese once said, "Those guys have cost themselves a fortune over the course of their careers."

Many times over the years Chip Reese would sit down at a cold table where he had no advantage in the hopes that a hot game would get started. Reese also did not believe in the absolute of mathematical poker. He has stated that sometimes a wrong decision could lead to a better break in the cards further into the game.

Chip Reese and Doyle Brunson

Chip Reese saw a lot of success and gained a reputation as an excellent high-stakes poker player. During his first two years in Vegas he made over $2 million dollars. He befriended Doyle Brunson while in Las Vegas, and Reese contributed to the section on seven-card stud for Brunson’s book Super/System.

Doyle Brunson has said, “Chip Reese is the best seven card stud player I have ever played with.”

Chip Reese World Series of Poker Bracelets

Chip Reese won three World Series of Poker tournaments. His first was in 1978 at the $1000 Seven-Card Stud Split event and the second was in 1982 at the $5000 Seven-Card Stud event. The third was in 2006 at the $50,000 Inaugural H.O.R.S.E. event. The cash prize for first place was $1,716,000. In a seven hour showdown that went back and forth through 286 hands, Reese beat out Andy Bloch and took the prize money.

While Chip Reese may not have a long list of tournament winnings to his resume, it is because he had decided to concentrate on high-stakes cash games instead. Reese tried to look at poker as one long game and not get distracted to how much he won or lost in one hand.

“I can bet $100,000 and feel nothing,” he said in a 2003 interview with People magazine. “If you think about the money and what it means, you’re gone.”

Chip Reese - Poker Player and Family Man

Unlike other gamblers, Chip Reese could also leave a table while losing. Once when he was behind by over $700,000, he left the table because his son had a baseball game.

Family was important to Chip Reese. In his later years, he played less poker in order to spend more time with his wife and children. Instead of poker, he bet on sports and horseracing.

Sportsbetting and Prop Bets

Along with Brunson, the two developed a system for sportsbetting that became wildly successful. And like most gamblers, he bet on everything imaginable. Once, he and Brunson each bet $50,000 to see who could lose more weight. In the end, Brunson won by losing one hundred pounds. Reese gained fourteen.

In 1991, Reese became the nineteenth person inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame. At 41 years old, he was also the youngest.

Chip Reese also regularly played at the Big Event in Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio Hotel. The event, where $100,000 bought a seat, usually featured names like Doyle Brunson, Bobby Baldwin, and Johnny Chan.

Death

Chip Reese passed away on December 4, 2007 at his home in Las Vegas. He had recently contracted pneumonia ,and it has been speculated that he died of a heart attack while in his sleep. Some of his closer friends say that he died of a blood clot that could have formed from an earlier gastric bypass surgery.

The newspaper at his hometown of Dayton, Ohio, published his obituary in their sports section. In it, some of his friends and family talked about Chip Reese.

Bill James, a close friend through the years, said about Reese, "He cared more about his family than he did about poker, and that's what made him a great player."

His friend and peer Mike Sexton said, "All great players, to a man, say Chip Reese without question was the best all-around poker player in history."