RIP Johnny Hughes

The legendary poker historian and writer, Johnny Hughes, has passed away in his sleep at the age of 78, leaving behind a legacy of work which lays bare the journeys, the grand schemes the pitfalls of almost every character from old school poker pros to Wild West gamblers.

Hughes was a tireless source of tales from the olden days, writing for Bluff Magazine, Bluff Europe, Player Europe and a host of other publications and websites, as well as being an avid forumite on the likes of 2+2, where he was banned although he admitted that:

"I probably deserved it. I made fun of mods, a no-no. Humor is calling levelling, and as a comic writer, I can't live without it.”

Upon news of his death, the ban was lifted, one poster commenting:

"I see that he's been posthumously unbanned. Nice gesture. RIP,’ while another stated: “RIP Johnny. I enjoyed his writing style blend of fiction and non. Whether the BS meter was high in some posts more than others, the man entertained. Hope you win in the big game on the other side.”

As an author, he wrote ‘Texas Poker Wisdom’ and also ‘Famous Gamblers, Poker History, and Texas Stories’ – the latter a collection of his previously-published articles and short stories – and he also published many shorter novels and stories with poker and gambling as the main theme.

Having lived a full and very colorful life, including stints as “a gambler, a salesman and a university lecturer”, Hughes writing style was inevitably unique, Nolan Dalla stating that:

"Scrolling the pages of a Hughes narrative is like lighting a lantern into the darkest recess of poker’s subculture. [Hughes] brings the legends of the past and present to life and often provides the very best portrait of these unique, real-life characters of anyone on record.”

Johnny Hughes often used his forum posts to argue about or even ‘revise’ certain events in poker history, once writing:

"I am certain the big match between Johnny Moss and Nick the Greek took place in 1949 at the Las Vegas Club. Critics now say it did not because it was not in the newspapers. There was only one newspaper, the Senator McCarran and Mob controlled Review-Journal.”

It was always difficult to argue with Hughes, his personal knowledge of the greats being almost unrivalled. As he wrote of himself:

"I love to write poker history, often writing about folks I have known: Benny Binion, Johnny Moss, Amarillo Slim, Doyle Brunson and more. I met Johnny Moss and Sarge Ferris in 1959 on a road trip with gambling legend, Curly Cavitt. They were playing in a huge razz game in Longview, Texas. Thousand dollar bills and five hundred dollar bills were in circulation then.”

His attention to the details of the period he lived through, long before the poker boom hit in the early ‘noughties’, brought alive a completely different time to that which we know now, and his stories never failed to entertain, such as when he wrote:

"In 1960, I went to Las Vegas, and Curly Cavitt, my mentor, one of the greatest cheaters of all time, "vouched" me in and Benny Binion got me a job shilling at poker at the Golden Nugget in the "snatch" games, huge pot cut $1 limit five-card stud.”

"We cheated by signaling the other shills if we had a pair by placing our cards at a forty-five degree angle. The only time I ever cheated. Moss, Sarge Ferris, Benny Binion, and Bill Boyd were later inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame. I watched the broke man, Nick the Greek shooting dice at the Sands. I had played poker with Amarillo Slim. That is five hall of famers I met, and one I observed. I was 21.”

With his passing, poker may have lost another part of its long history, but Johnny Hughes’ writings have ensured that the tales and fables will be here for much longer.

RIP Johnny Hughes