While in high school, I started making money playing poker. I helped pay my way through University playing in and running a poker game. Upon graduation in 1968, I moved for a summer in Lake Tahoe but remained for 27 years.

In 1975 I opened my own poker room at the Fanny Bridge Inn in North Lake Tahoe. That year I became a professional poker player, living exclusively off my earnings from cards. From that beginning I never looked back.

I began to make a name for myself as I climbed into the higher echelons of the larger poker fraternity and I gained recognition as one of the top players from northern Nevada. I mostly played cash games though I did well in a number of tournaments which included winning Harvey’s Lake Tahoe’s ‘Final Four of Poker’ two years running in 1995 and 1996.

For ten years I spent an entire month in Las Vegas as a guest of Binion’s and a player at The World Series of Poker.

Along with my partner, Missouri Dave, we traveled the roads of the Western United States playing in her poker rooms.

In England, I lived and played poker, off and on, for years.

In 1987, I became a founder of and a consistent player in the twenty-seven year run of the legendary Big Game of Reno/Tahoe. From that time the Big Game went on to become the biggest No-Limit Hold’em game in northern Nevada. It went from a $300 buy-in to a minimum $10,000 buy-in with two blinds of $100 each.

I did take time to create, patent and market a casino table game called High Country Poker in which players played a form of Texas Hold’em against the dealer.

When the Covid 19 Pandemic gained traction I quit playing poker and picked up my pen. The result has been Missouri and Me, A Poker Odyssey.

I am married to Kate Winningham, an herbalist and a women’s health consultant who was recognized as a pioneer in midwifery in the state of Nevada. We have three grown children and four grandsons. We own our home on 5 acres in the Sierra Nevada foothills community of Nevada City, California.

And, I have a lot of stories.