Chip Reese is dead
Chip Reese is dead at 56.
Chip Reese was bad -- bad as in really, really good. I'm of the opinion that yesterday, he was the best all-around (incorporating tournaments, ring games, heads-up, and mixed games) poker player alive. Now he's one of the better all-around poker players who are dead (Stu Ungar vs. Chip Reese, heads-up, HORSE. I'll kill myself now if it means I get to be a railbird).
Pauly has yet to comment, but Linda has, and there's a post at The Poker Prof (by, erm, Pauly) that highlights Reese's career.
I am an unabashed academicist, if that word means what I think it does. Chip Reese came out of Dayton, graduated (or did he? sources have debated that for some time now) in econ from Dartmouth, and used his game theory knowledge to crush cash games around the globe. His chapter on Seven-Card Stud in Super/System is still considered the exemplar tutorial, and his heads-up showdown with Andy Bloch in the 2006 $50,000 HORSE event is still my favorite moment (if one can call eight hours a moment) in poker history.
For more, check out Amy Calistri's blog, CardPlayer, or this really great essay from The Professor, The Banker, And The Suicide King author Michael Craig:
There has to be, to some degree, a recognition that behind the smile and the sunny manner was a man who devoted himself with every fiber of his being to separating you from your money. In fact, a memorial to Chip Reese must recognize the dichotomy in all gamblers: being nice is good business and good form but its goal is to strip other people of their money and leave them feeling alright about their loss. If you are a professional gambler, that's what you do, and if you have any reservations, your success will be foreclosed or limited.
That says a lot about poker and identity, doesn't it?
