I might have met Roger Moore in the lavish, red velvet and leather, Pullman car of Maverick's train playing heads-up draw poker against Bart or Bret, but instead I interviewed him in Puggy Pearson's Oriental-carpeted, technologically perfect, motor home parked outside Binion's Horseshoe during the World Series of Poker. You see, Moore would fit right into either setting: He is part past and part present. One of only a few of the remaining legendary Southern gamblers who made their names playing high-stakes poker in smoky backrooms, Moore (like Puggy Pearson, Doyle Brunson, and Cowboy Wolford) has made the transition from yesterday's poker parlors to today's mega-casinos. Perhaps only another Southerner can appreciate many of the subtle nuances of Moore's downhome humor (delivered in a Georgia drawl that puts my North Carolina twang to shame), but anyone can appreciate his impressive poker background and tournament accomplishments. In 1994 Moore won the $5,000 seven-card stud event at the WSOP, and although no-limit hold'em is not his main game, he finished 10th in the 1995 world champion event. He also has won pot-limit Omaha tournaments in the original Amarillo Slim's Super Bowl of Poker, and no-limit hold'em titles two years in a row in Bob Stupak's America's Cup tournaments. This year, he raked in $16,250 when he took sixth place in the $5,000 seven-card stud event at the WSOP a far cry from the wages that he used to make as a sharecropper in the farmlands of the deep South. Roger Moore: Where I'm from, poker was frowned upon in my younger days, but I started dabbling with it a little bit when I was in the service and then when I got out, I just kept playing. I ended up out in Vegas (where I lived for 15 years), and started playing $3-$6. I moved up to the highest-stakes games in town in the 70s and early 80s. I played "regular" with Puggy, Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese, Bobby Baldwin all of them.
Dana Smith: Do you still play high-stakes poker?
Roger Moore: Yes, whenever I "come to town." I've been playing in the WSOP for nearly 20 years now. My favorite games are seven-card stud and pot-limit Omaha. I've played limit and no-limit hold'em, of course, but I seem to do better at stud and Omaha.
DS: What about your life in Georgia?
RM: I've got two sons, Tim and Ted, and four grandchildren, but I'm a single parent. I've got a golf course in Eastman that I opened three years ago, and my sons help me run it. It's called the Pine Bluff Golf Course and Country Club. (I was born in a little town outside of Eastman where the elevation's higher than the population.)
DS: Do you have a favorite poker story?
RM: No, there's too many of them to pick one out. For years, I played in the side games, not the tournaments, and they were big-money games at that time. You know, each game you get in is a challenge. You might be playin' with money that you don't really need to be gamblin' with. I've had some ups and downs, and I've had some good wins. When I was just startin' to play in the big limits, I'd wake up feelin' like Rockefeller and go to bed feelin' like a dish washer. You start to thinkin' how smart you are, and then you lose your tail and realize how dumb you are.
DS: How did you begin your career as a poker player?
RM: I quit school in the eighth grade and started sharecropping. Then when I got old enough, I went into the service. When I got out, I worked at a civil service job and started playing poker on the side. Pretty soon, I was making more money playing poker than I was earning on my job, so I quit work and came out here to Las Vegas.
DS: What was it like when you first came to Vegas in 1968?
RM: It was the most amazing thing that I'd ever seen and it still is. All these lights I thought they'd charge $100 to walk in the casino door.
DS: Were you an immediate smash at the tables?
RM: I became a winning player. I started out at the Golden Nugget playing limit hold'em and stud (which was the big game at that time). But then I'd go out on the Strip and move up to higher stakes and they'd knock me down, and then I'd play back up again. But at a certain point, I became stable.
DS: Who are some of the famous players you've played against?
RM: I've played with all of them. In his day, Danny Robison probably was the best seven-stud player that I've ever played. Chip Reese is great at all games; Stu Ungar, Sarge (Ferris), Pat (Callihan) they were all great. We used to play $400-$800 pretty regularly. I played a lot at the Dunes with Johnny Moss when he had that room
DS: What do you think it takes to make money at poker?
RM: You've gotta love the game, and have desire and control. Skill and luck are the prime factors. Anybody can be lucky, but knowing how to handle yourself when you lose that's the big test. You know, if two equal players start playing, it's gonna be whoever gets lucky. Maybe today it's Joe Blow, but maybe tomorrow you'll get lucky. It's how you do when you're losin' that makes the difference.
DS: Do you miss living in Las Vegas?
RM: Not really; it controls me too much. When I'm here, I play just about every day, you know, and that's not good for me. The golf course has been going well and although the green fees aren't what they are out here, we make enough to eat well turnip greens and corn bread and the like it's a good life.
DS: What is your advice to someone who wants to become a professional poker player?
RM: You've got to have desire and hunger and a love for the game. It's one of the best lives in the world if you can control it, but it dominates you while you're playin'. It takes away from your family life. If you've got a dinner date for 6:00 and you're losin', you don't want to get up. You need a good, understanding mate to put up with all of that. If I'm winnin', I can find a lot of reasons to quit, but if I'm losin', I can't find any; I'm bad about tryin' to get even.
DS: Is it ego that keeps you playing when you're losing?
RM: Well, it's partly ego and it's wantin' to eat, too.
DS: Not too many people have come from very humble beginnings, made it in the poker world, and then left it.
RM: Right, and I'm pretty proud of that. Poker has been very good to me, but I don't have the hunger today that I had to start with, and I also want to do other things now. I've learned to value things back at home, things that I used to tend to forget. So it's more of a thrill now when I come out here and win because I don't play poker all of the time and because I have some other interests.
Postscript: Roger Moore was inducted into Binion's Poker Hall of Fame in 1997.