LAKE TAHOE, Calif./Nev. – With a colorful cast of characters, casinos and poker chips, Glen Garrod tells tales of his time as a professional poker player in his book “Missouri & Me, A Poker Odyssey.” Garrod spent much of his time in the card rooms of Tahoe, though his stories span all over the globe. “My heart’s in Tahoe, even though it’s not the place for me these days,” said Garrod.

The book is made up of short vignettes into the world of poker, from when Garrod learned to play to his heart-pounding tournaments and high-stakes bets in the World Series of Poker. In between, he names players like Flyer, Lenny the Levitator, Cowboy Tom and the eponymous Missouri Dave—one of his closest friends and a legend among many poker players.

Garrod wrote the book during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, thinking it wasn’t a good time to be playing cards in close proximity with others. He collaborated with an old friend, who was a creative writing professor in Sacramento, to get down a manuscript, writing every night after dinner

“It was a nice collaboration with a lot of old poker players,” said Garrod, who called them up to hear their perspectives on experiences they’d shared. “And it was nice to revisit poker by writing about it and getting the creative juices going on these stories.”

Garrod had plenty of them—he had to cut down hundreds of thousands of words from his initial manuscript. “Some are funny, some are profound, some are sad. But the stories I have in the book are included for a reason.”

Many of those stories evoke a Tahoe from a different time, where cards were still dealt in the North Shore Club, Crystal Bay Club, and the Hyatt in the north and the Sahara Tahoe and Harvey’s were the setting for plenty of big games.

Garrod was there for many of those legendary times, including the Big Game. “Prior to us starting that, there weren’t any big games in Tahoe. In 1987, the buy-in was $300. In 2014, the last time we ran it, the buy-in was $10,000.”

Even if you’re not a poker aficionado, Garrod recalls those moments where the cards are on the table in a way that non-players can understand. “Not a lot of poker writers talk about the emotions when you’re playing for those high stakes, what influences those decisions and the critical thinking that goes into those big hands, and that’s something I tried to do here.”

Garrod acknowledges that the era he’s written about is very different than now—poker’s legalization in California was a huge shift, and the skyrocketing popularity of the sport after Chris Moneymaker’s win was seismic.

Even the casinos have changed in Tahoe. “I was shocked to see that the casinos charge for parking now! In the old days, they would do anything to get people in there, like serve food on the cheap. Now, the culture has shifted.”

But the culture that Garrod remembers is what he wants to share with readers. “I want people to see that poker, way back when, was a subculture in America. People from all over the country would ply their trade. They were honest, trustworthy men of their word.”

Indeed, Garrod and Missouri Dave, who visited card rooms all across America, were recognized and respected for their character. “We were a fraternity of tight-knit people. There’s not really that close connection these days as far as I’ve seen,” said Garrod wistfully. “But everyone has their own story. We’re all a collection of our own stories and that’s something I’m trying to tell.”

You can read more about the book on the website MissouriAndMe.com. Here’s an exclusive taste of Garrod’s writing on South Lake Tahoe that he shared with the Tribune–a story not in the book, but riveting all the same:

“One of the first places I played poker in a casino card room was at the old Sahara Tahoe. It was a poker room like no other. The dealers and the managers were like one very big happy family, most of whom loved to play poker. There were dealers with colorful names like The Martian, Old Dad, The Kid, Crusher, Blackie, Doggie and the Rat.

The Uncle was known for dealing his shift, taking off his clip-on tie and switching from the dealer’s chair to a players seat and then 16 hours later he’d switch seats again and clip the tie back on. The Hurricane, named for his sometimes volatile antics, though a jam-up poker player would at times be reduced to a tropical storm.

The efficiency, joy, and the esprit de corps the employees of that card room exhibited was infectious to all who entered and made it the absolute poker capitol of northern Nevada throughout the seventies and eighties.

Players like Mr. Hold’em and Missouri Dave became legendary in poker mythology in Lake Tahoe and beyond. When Texas Hold’em became legal in California many from that historic card room were scattered around the Golden State and became poker room managers and casino executives.

Lots of those people from that era remain bonded today. Sparky, the left-handed shortstop from The Nickel Snatchers, the poker room softball team, still deals at what was until recently Harvey’s.”

Eli Ramos is a reporter for Tahoe Daily Tribune. They are part of the 2024–26 cohort of California Local News Fellows through UC Berkeley. Learn more at https://fellowships.journalism.berkeley.edu/cafellows/.