Some great poker trivia,
poker stories, poker myths and poker
quotes.
George Devol - the greate poker
cheater?
George Devol
was born in 1829 in Ohio. He ran away from home at
the age of ten as a cabin boy on a riverboat.
After seeing the high lifestyle of the
professional gamblers that steamed up and down the
river, Devol devoted himself to the study of
cheating. By the time Devol was in his teens, he
could deal bottoms and seconds, palm cards, and
recover the cut. He first made big money at the
age of seventeen. It was the time of the Mexican
War, and he trimmed soldiers on the Rio Grande.
He was a big man,
weighing over two hundred pounds. He had a large
head and big hands, and claimed that he could
"hold one deck in the palm of my hand and shuffle
up another." Devol loved to fight, and often used
his remarkably thick forehead to butt his
opponents senseless. He never hesitated to pull a
gun, accept a fair fight or-if necessary-run. Some
of the exigencies of his profession are made clear
in his autobiography as he explains:
"I
don't know (and I guess I never will while I'm
alive) just how thick my old skull is, but I do
know that it is pretty thick, or it would have
been cracked many years ago, for I have been
struck some terrible blows on my head with iron
dray-pins, pokers, clubs, stone-coal, and
bowlders, which would have split any man's skull
wide open unless it was pretty thick. Doctors have
often told me that my skull was nearly an inch in
thickness over my forehead."
George Devol,
Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi
George
Devol made and spent many hundreds of thousands of
dollars in the years preceding the Civil War,
working mainly on steamboats in the South. His
partners included Bill Rollins, Canada Bill Jones,
Edward "Dad" Ryan, Big Alexander, Tom Brown, Posey
Jeffers and Holly Chapell.
In the
early 1870's, Devol worked the trains between
Cheyenne and Omaha, and between Omaha and Kansas
City. His partners from the south were Canada
Bill, Sherman Thurston, Jew Mose and Dad Ryan.
They competed against, and sometimes teamed up
with westerners like John Bull, Ben Marks, Cowboy
Tripp, Doc Baggs, and Frank Tarbeaux.
George
Devol and Jew Mose were working the Cheyenne to
Omaha train when Devol picked up a man on the
sleeper and beat him out of $1,200. It turned out
that he was one of the directors of the road. As
soon as he reached Omaha, the outraged official
had handbills printed and hung up in the cars that
not only prohibited gambling, but also threatened
to fire any conductor permitting the game to take
place on his train. The railroads sent in
Pinkerton agents to watch for the best known of
the fraternity.
The great days of the
railroad gamblers were over. Devol quit the
profession in 1886, at his new wife's insistence.
The last years of his life were spent peddling
copies of his autobiography. During his forty
years as a gambler he estimated he won over two
million dollars. He died in Hot Springs, Arkansas
in 1903, virtually penniless.
