Mickey Appleman
Mark "Mickey" Appleman is an American professional poker player, sports bettor, sports handicapper now living in Fort Lee, New Jersey. His poker accomplishments include winning four WSOP bracelets, all in different variations of poker and four top 25 finishes in the WSOP Main Event. Appleman was born on July 1945 in Brooklyn, New York to parents of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, he grew up in Long Island, where he was strong in both academics. He received his undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Ohio State University where he was a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi, he earned an MBA in statistics from Case Western University. Appleman moved to Washington, D. C. where he worked as a coordinator in a drug rehabilitation clinic. He taught math in public schools. Appleman used money he had made from sports betting to fund his early poker career, he began playing at the World Series of Poker in 1975, he was a regular player at the Mayfair Club in New York City where he played against some of the now famous and successful poker players like Dan Harrington, Howard Lederer, Erik Seidel.
In his long career as a professional poker player, he has won four bracelets and has finished in the money of the $10,000 no limit hold'em main event in 1987, 1989, 1990, 2000. In 2008, Appleman appeared on NBC's Poker After Dark show in the episode "Mayfair Club." The other players were the former owner of the club, Mike Shictman, professional poker players Howard Lederer, Dan Harrington, Steve Zolotow, Jay Heimowitz who won the tournament and the $120,000 cash prize. Appleman finished the tournament in third place; as of 2015, his total live tournament winnings exceed $1,787,000. His 47 cashes at the WSOP account for $1,185,861 of those winnings. Mickey has a son, born in 1987. Interview by Nolan Dalla Hendon Mob tournament results The Jesus of Handicapping by Michael Kaplan Personal Website
Betting in poker
In the game of poker, the play centers on the act of betting, as such, a protocol has been developed to speed up play, lessen confusion, increase security while playing. Different games are played using different types of bets, small variations in etiquette exist between cardrooms, but for the most part the following rules and protocol are observed by the majority of poker players. Players in a poker game act in clockwise rotation; when it is a player's turn to act, the first verbal declaration or action they take binds them to their choice of action. Until the first bet is made each player in turn may "check,", to not place a bet, or "open,", to make the first bet. After the first bet each player may "fold,", to drop out of the hand losing any bets they have made. A player may fold by surrendering one's cards. A player may check by making any similar motion. All other bets are made by placing chips in front of the player, but not directly into the pot. In general, the person to the left of the dealer acts first and action proceeds in a clockwise fashion.
If any player has folded earlier, action proceeds to next player. In games with blinds, the first round of betting begins with the player to the left of the blinds. In stud games, action begins with the player showing the strongest proceeds clockwise. If there is a bring-in, the first round of betting begins with the player obliged to post the bring-in. If no one has yet opened the betting round, a player may pass or check, equivalent to betting zero and/or to calling the current bet of zero; when checking, a player declines to make a bet. In games played with blinds, players may not check on the opening round because the blinds are live bets and must be called or raised to remain in the hand. A player who has posted the big blind has the right to raise on the first round, called the option, if no other player has raised. If all players check, the betting round is over with no additional money placed in the pot. A common way to signify checking is to tap the table, either with a fist, knuckles, an open hand or the index finger.
If in any betting round it is a player's turn to act and the action is unopened the player can open action in a betting round by making a bet—the act of making the first voluntary bet in a betting round is called opening the round. On the first betting round, it is called opening the pot, though in variants where blind bets are common, the blind bets "open" the first betting round and other players call and/or raise the "big blind" bet; some poker variations have special rules about opening a round. For example, a game may have a betting structure that specifies different allowable amounts for opening than for other bets, or may require a player to hold certain cards to open. A player makes a bet by placing the chips they wish to wager into the pot. Under normal circumstances, all other players still in the pot must either call the full amount of the bet or raise if they wish remain in, the only exceptions being when a player does not have sufficient stake remaining to call the full amount of the bet or when the player is all-in.
To raise is to increase the size of an existing bet in the same betting round. A player making the second or subsequent raise of a betting round is said to re-raise. A player making a raise after checking in the same betting round is said to check-raise; the sum of the opening bet and all raises is the amount that all players in the hand must call in order to remain eligible to win the pot, subject to the table stakes rules described in the previous paragraph. A bluff is when a player bets or raises when it is they do not have the best hand; when a player bets or raises with a weak hand that has a chance of improvement on a betting round, the bet or raise is classified as a semi-bluff. On the other hand, a bet made by a player who hopes or expects to be called by weaker hands is classified as a value bet. In no-limit and pot-limit games, there is a minimum amount, required to be bet in order to open the action. In games with blinds, this amount is the amount of the big blind. Standard poker rules require that raises must be at least equal to the amount of the previous bet or raise.
For example, if an opponent bets $5, a player must raise by at least another $5, they may not raise by only $2. If a player raises a bet of $5 by $7, the next re-raise would have to be by at least another $7 more than the $12; the primary purpose of the minimum raise rule is to avoid game delays caused by "nuisance" raises (small raises of large bets, such as an extra $1 over a current bet of $50, that have little effect on the action but take time as all others m
Glenn Cozen
Glenn Cozen is an American professional poker player from Pasadena, best known for his second-place finish in the $10,000 buy-in Main Event at the 1993 World Series of Poker. Despite being a unknown player before the tournament, Cozen managed to make the final table of the main event, he was short stacked throughout the final table but was able to outlast several top professionals at the final table, including 1990 world champion Mansour Matloubi and bracelet winner John Bonetti who had much larger chip stacks than he had. Cozen made it to heads-up play but was short-stacked by this time and he was defeated by Jim Bechtel on the third hand of heads-up play, he won $420,000 for his second-place finish. Cozen has a total of three cashes in the WSOP Main Event: 2nd in 1993, 114th in 1995, 200th in 2008. Cozen has a total of seven cashes at the WSOP and has competed in various other poker tournaments through the years, he won the $1,000 Limit Hold'em event at Amarillo Slim's Super Bowl of Poker in 1989 in his first tournament cash.
He won the $1,000 Ace to Five event at the Queens Poker Classic IV in 1994. Cozen's most recent tournament win was the $2,500 Pot Limit Omaha event at the Five Diamond Poker Classic in 2004, earning $105,000. During his career, Cozen has cashed in more than thirty tournaments and has tournament winnings totaling over $860,000, his seven cashes as the WSOP account for $521,090 of those winnings
John Bonetti
John Joseph Bonetti was an American professional poker player from Houston, Texas. Born in Brooklyn, New York City, Bonetti began playing poker at the age of 54, won three bracelets at the World Series of Poker in the 1990s. Bonetti made several notable finishes in the No Limit Texas hold'em WSOP Main Event: 1987 23rd place - $10,000 1989 16th place - $12,500 1990 8th place - $33,400 1992 12th place - $10,100 1993 3rd place - $210,000 1996 3rd place - $341,250Bonetti finished on the television bubble, 7th place, of the World Poker Tour Fifth Annual Jack Binion World Poker Open, winning $86,377. Between May 1987 and February 2003, Bonetti won more than 40 poker tournaments. On June 27, 2008, Bonetti died at the age of 80. Bonetti's total live tournament winnings were $4,188,332, his 32 cashes at the WSOP accounted for $1,743,993 of those winnings
Ted Forrest
Ted Forrest is an American professional poker player residing in Las Vegas, Nevada. Forrest won three bracelets at the 1993 World Series of Poker. After the mid-1990s, Forrest turned his attention full-time to cash games, he made a triumphant return to the WSOP by winning 2 bracelets at the 2004 World Series of Poker. Since he has moved his focus from seven card stud to hold'em with some success, including reaching 5 final tables on the World Poker Tour and winning a championship on the Professional Poker Tour. Forrest competed in the second season of Poker Superstars Invitational Tournament, where he advanced to the quarter-final stage, he did not fare as well in season three. He played in the first two seasons of the GSN series High Stakes Poker. In March 2006, Forrest won the annual National Heads-Up Poker Championship, defeating Erik Seidel, Chad Brown, Ernie Dureck, Sam Farha, Shahram Sheikhan and Chris Ferguson to win the $500,000 first prize. Continuing with his history of tournament success, in March 2007 Ted won the Bay 101 Shooting Stars Tournament, outlasting J. J. Liu in the longest heads up duel in World Poker Tour history.
For the victory, Forrest collected the first prize of $1,100,000. In June 2014 Ted defeated notable poker player Phil Hellmuth in the final table of the WSOP Razz event, bringing his total number of WSOP bracelets to 6; as of August 7, 2015, his total live tournament winnings exceed $6,200,000. His 31 cashes as the WSOP account for $1,922,990 of those winnings. Forrest's no-limit Texas hold'em strategy vastly differs from that of many other established pros who believe that pre-flop one should always raise or fold, Forrest has stated and demonstrated in his play, that limping, or calling a raise, is not a bad play and should be employed. Forrest is well known as a competitive high-stakes gambler, he has been a key part of a consortium of poker players who pooled their money together to play Texas billionaire Andy Beal in a series of high limit, heads-up, Texas hold'em games, with limits ranging anywhere from $20,000/$40,000 to $100,000/$200,000. Forrest's first three bracelets were stolen, he gave one of the remaining two to his daughter.
Ted owns one WSOP championship bracelet that belonged to Hamid Dastmalchi, which he purchased from Dastmalchi after the 1992 World Series of Poker world champion complained that the bracelet wasn't worth what the Binion family claimed. Hamid told him, “They say it’s worth $5,000, but I’d take $1,500 for it” to which Forrest replied "Sold" and tossed him three $500 chips. In September 2016, Forrest was charged in the Las Vegas Justice Court with two felonies: drawing and passing a check without sufficient funds with the intent to defraud, theft
Binion's Gambling Hall and Hotel
Binion's Gambling Hall & Hotel Binion's Horseshoe, is a casino on Fremont Street along the Fremont Street Experience mall in Downtown Las Vegas, Nevada. It is owned by TLC Casino Enterprises; the casino is named for its founder, Benny Binion, whose family ran it from its founding in 1951 until 2004. The hotel, which had 366 rooms, closed in 2009. TLC plans to reopen 81 of the rooms as a boutique hotel called Hotel Apache, expected to open by summer 2019. Benny Binion bought the Eldorado Club and Apache Hotel in 1951, re-opening them as Binion's Horseshoe; the casino's interior had a frontier flavor, like an old-style riverboat, with low ceilings and velvet wallpaper. It was the first casino in downtown Las Vegas to replace sawdust-covered floors with carpeting, was the first to offer comps to all gamblers, not just those who bet big money. Binion instituted high table limits; when Binion first opened the Horseshoe, he set the craps table limit at $500—ten times higher than any other casino in Las Vegas at the time.
Binion's raised the table limit to $10,000 and eliminated table limits at times, an immediate hit. Unlike other casinos, the emphasis at Binion's was not on big performing acts; the casino was very egalitarian. Other members of Binion's family were involved in the casino, his sons and Ted, supervised the games, while his wife, Teddy Jane, kept the books until her death in 1994. Benny served time in Leavenworth Penitentiary from 1953 to 1957 for tax evasion, he sold a majority share of the casino to fellow gambler and New Orleans oilman Joe W. Brown to cover back taxes and legal costs, it was understood, that Brown was only a caretaker, Benny regained controlling interest in 1957. He did not regain full control, until 1964. While Brown operated the casino, he installed the famous $1 million display on the casino floor, he sold the display in 1959 and it was recreated using 100 $10,000 bills by Benny in 1964. The display became one of the casino's attractions; as a convicted felon, Benny was no longer allowed to hold a gaming license, so his sons took over day-to-day control when the family bought out Brown.
Jack became president. Benny assumed the title of Director of Public Relations. In 1970, Jack began hosting the World Series of Poker at the Horseshoe; the WSOP became the largest set of poker tournaments in the world. In 1988, the Horseshoe expanded by acquiring The Mint, a high-rise hotel on the west side of the casino; the expansion of the casino from this purchase provided room for Binion's first poker room. Ted was under constant scrutiny from the Nevada Gaming Commission from 1986 onward for drug problems and associating with known mob figure "Fat Herbie" Blitzstein, he would be banned from entering his family's casino. In 1998, he was stripped of his gaming license for his continued association with Blitzstein, he was forced to sell his 20 % interest to Becky. In 1998, Becky Behnen acquired controlling interest in the casino following a protracted legal battle with her older brother Jack; the battle ended with Jack being bought out while retaining a 1% interest in the casino so that he could retain his Nevada gaming license.
Jack moved on to focus on Horseshoe Gaming Holding Corporation, running other casinos under the Horseshoe brand. Behnen became president of the Horseshoe while her husband, took over as manager. Behnen implemented several cost-cutting measures. Among the most notable was the removal of the Horseshoe exhibit that held $1 million, having been sold to collector Jay Parrino, that had served as a backdrop for free pictures of visitors, she made changes in the distribution of the money from the entry fees in the World Series of Poker that were unpopular with the casino dealers, closed a popular restaurant in the casino. Benny had used one of the tables in the restaurant as his office. Despite these measures, the Horseshoe became bogged down in debt. Under her father and brothers, the Horseshoe had been the most profitable casino in Las Vegas. Behnen attracted the attention of the state regulators by failing to keep sufficient funds available to pay winners in the casino cage. Bob Stupak drew negative publicity to the casino when he tried to redeem his $5,000 casino tokens, some of which were stored in the casino's own safe deposit boxes, Becky refused to honor them.
Behnen's undoing, was a dispute with the unions that represented some of the Horseshoe's employees. In November 2002, the Culinary Workers Union and Bartenders Union filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board alleging that Behnen hadn't signed a collective bargaining agreement and had fallen behind on medical insurance and pension payments; the parties reached a settlement in March 2003 in which the Horseshoe signed the collective bargaining agreement and agreed to pay the owed money. However, the Horseshoe fell behind on its payments, leading a federal judge to issue two separate judgments ordering the Horseshoe to pay over $1.5 million. The judgments gave the union the right to seize the money. However, the casino stopped making payments in June. After holding off numerous times, on December 5 the Culinary Union obtained a court order authorizing the seizure of up to $1.9 million from the Horseshoe casino cage. The seizure took place on January 9.
Billy Baxter (poker player)
William E. Baxter, Jr. is an American professional poker player and sports bettor. He has won numerous tournament titles in his career as a professional poker player, including seven World Series of Poker bracelets, he was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2006. Born in Augusta, Baxter started his gambling career like many others of his age by gambling in the pool halls. At the age of 14, he discovered. At the age of 16, Baxter had saved $5,000 from his hustling money. At the age of 18, he was old enough to head to the taverns. In 1975, he took a honeymoon trip to Hawaii and ended up in the Las Vegas Valley, Nevada on the way back, he and his new bride lived in a hotel there for nine months. It was there that he met fellow legends Doyle Brunson, Puggy Pearson and Stu Ungar. Baxter has won seven World Series of Poker bracelets. All of Baxter's bracelets are in lowball games, notably Deuce-to-Seven and California Lowball, he ranks second all-time in non-Hold'em bracelets behind Phil Ivey. Baxter is known for staking Stu Ungar to the buy-in for Ungar's victory in the Main Event of the 1997 WSOP.
Thereafter, he entered into an arrangement to stake Ungar in tournaments, but this was cut short by Ungar's continuing personal problems which led to the latter's death in 1998. As of 2017, his total live tournament winnings exceed $2,600,000, his 35 cashes at the WSOP account for $1,093,044 of those winnings. Although Baxter is best known for his on-table poker accomplishments and staking Stu Ungar, he is known for the case of William E. Baxter Jr. vs. the United States. It was the judge's ruling that Baxter's poker winnings should be classified as "earned income", contrary to its previous classification of "unearned income", taxable up to 70 percent. Thus, in the process, Baxter's victory in this case has helped all American poker players by providing equal tax status to those earning a living as professional poker players