David Edward "Chip" Reese (March 28, 1951 – December 4, 2007) was an American professional
poker
Poker is a family of Card game#Comparing games, comparing card games in which Card player, players betting (poker), wager over which poker hand, hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, with varying rules i ...
player and gambler from
Centerville,
Ohio
Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...
. He is widely regarded as having been the greatest
cash game
Cash games, also sometimes referred to as ring games or live action games, are poker games played with "real" Poker chip, chips and money at stake, often with no predetermined end time, with players able to enter and leave as they see fit. In co ...
poker player.
Early life
Reese suffered from
rheumatic fever
Rheumatic fever (RF) is an inflammation#Disorders, inflammatory disease that can involve the heart, joints, skin, and brain. The disease typically develops two to four weeks after a Streptococcal pharyngitis, streptococcal throat infection. Si ...
during his years at elementary school and had to stay at home for almost a year. During this time, his mother taught him how to play several board and card games. Reese later described himself as "a product of that year." By the age of six, he was regularly beating fifth-graders at poker. In high school, he was a
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...
player and was on the debate team, winning an Ohio State Championship and going to the National Finals.
Reese attended
Dartmouth after turning down an offer from
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...
.
At Dartmouth, he became a member of
Beta Theta Pi
Beta Theta Pi (), commonly known as Beta, is a North American social Fraternities and sororities in North America, fraternity that was founded in 1839 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. One of North America's oldest fraternities, , it consist ...
fraternity, played freshman football briefly, participated in debate, and majored in
economics
Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...
. Reese also had tremendous success in poker games against students and some of his professors. He taught his fraternity brothers to play a variety of card games, including
bridge
A bridge is a structure built to Span (engineering), span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or railway) without blocking the path underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, whi ...
as well as many poker variants. Reese played bridge occasionally at the Grafton County Grange. His fraternity later named their chapter card room, the "David E. Reese Memorial Card Room" in his honor. Reese had a brief interest in Stanford Business School but decided instead to play poker professionally after winning $60,000 in a high/low split game in
Las Vegas
Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...
.
Reese's first visit to Las Vegas was so financially rewarding and so much fun, that he never left. He is thought to have hired someone to fly to Arizona to clean out his apartment and drive his car to Las Vegas.
Poker career
Shortly afterwards, Reese collaborated on the
seven-card stud
Seven-card stud, also known as Seven-Toed Pete or Down-The-River, is a variant of stud poker. Before the 2000s surge of popularity of Texas hold 'em, seven-card stud was one of the most widely played poker variants in home games across the Unite ...
section for
Doyle Brunson
Doyle Frank Brunson (August 10, 1933 – May 14, 2023) was an American poker player who played professionally for over 60 years. He was a two-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) List of World Series of Poker Main Event champions, Main Event champi ...
's ''
Super/System
''Super/System'', one of the first books about poker strategy, was written and published in 1979 by Doyle Brunson, a professional poker player and multiple winner at the World Series of Poker.
History and title
''How I Made Over $1,000,000 Playin ...
'', the best-selling poker book of all time. In it, Brunson describes Reese as "one of the two finest young … poker players in the world" and the best seven-card stud player he had ever played. He won the $1,000 Seven Card Stud Split event at the
World Series of Poker
The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is a series of poker tournaments held annually in Paradise, Nevada, and since 2004, sponsored by Eldorado Resorts, Caesars Entertainment. It dates its origins to 1970, when Benny Binion invited seven of the best ...
in 1978, and the $5,000 Seven Card Stud event in 1982. Reese decided to concentrate his efforts on cash games, however.
He later became the card room manager at the
Dunes casino. Brunson says he once lost $6 million to Reese. In 1991, Reese became the youngest living player to be inducted into the
Poker Hall of Fame. By 2006, he was still playing poker, also betting on sports.
At the
2006 World Series of Poker
The 2006 World Series of Poker (WSOP) began on June 25, 2006, with satellite events, with regular play commencing on June 26 with the annual Casino Employee event and the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions, Tournament of Champions held ...
, Reese won the inaugural $50,000
H.O.R.S.E. event, taking home the $1,716,000 first prize when his held up against
Andy Bloch's in the final hand, on a board of . This event was notable for having the largest buy-in (at the time) in WSOP history, as well as the longest heads-up battle with Reese and Bloch playing for seven hours and 286 hands. By comparison, the final table of the
2005 World Series of Poker
The 2005 World Series of Poker opened play on June 2, continuing through the Main Event No Limit World Championship starting on July 7. The conclusion of the Main Event on July 15 marked the close of play, and the largest prize in sports and/or t ...
Main Event lasted for a total of 232 hands.
As a tribute, the "David 'Chip' Reese Memorial Trophy" was inaugurated in
2008
2008 was designated as:
*International Year of Languages
*International Year of Planet Earth
*International Year of the Potato
*International Year of Sanitation
The Great Recession, a worldwide recession which began in 2007, continued throu ...
as an additional prize for the winner of the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event at the World Series of Poker. The trophy depicts his winning hand of . Starting in
2010
The year saw a multitude of natural and environmental disasters such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the 2010 Chile earthquake. The 2009 swine flu pandemic, swine flu pandemic which began the previous year ...
, the trophy was awarded to the winner of
The Poker Player's Championship
The Poker Players Championship is a $50,000 buy-in (poker), buy-in event at the World Series of Poker (WSOP). Added in the 2010 World Series of Poker, 2010, it replaced the former $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. World Championship as the highest-stakes Poker ...
, the replacement for the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event. Retaining the $50,000 buy-in, the event added no-limit hold 'em, pot-limit Omaha, and limit 2–7 triple draw to the five H.O.R.S.E. games, which culminated with a no-limit hold 'em final table in the first two years for tv (2010 and 2011), since which the mixed game format is played until the champion is crowned
Reese's total live tournament winnings exceeded $3,900,000.
Death
Reese died on December 4, 2007, at his Las Vegas home. Some sources state that Reese died in his sleep from the effects of
pneumonia
Pneumonia is an Inflammation, inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as Pulmonary alveolus, alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of Cough#Classification, productive or dry cough, ches ...
, while friends of Chip, including
Barry Greenstein and Doyle Brunson, speculate that his death might have been related to an earlier
gastric bypass
Gastric bypass surgery refers to a technique in which the stomach is divided into a small upper pouch and a much larger lower "remnant" pouch, where the small intestine is rearranged to connect to both. Surgeons have developed several differen ...
that caused a
blood clot
A thrombus ( thrombi) is a solid or semisolid aggregate from constituents of the blood (platelets, fibrin, red blood cells, white blood cells) within the circulatory system during life. A blood clot is the final product of the blood coagulatio ...
.
Upon learning of Reese's death,
Doyle Brunson
Doyle Frank Brunson (August 10, 1933 – May 14, 2023) was an American poker player who played professionally for over 60 years. He was a two-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) List of World Series of Poker Main Event champions, Main Event champi ...
stated, "He's certainly the best poker player that ever lived." World Series of Poker commissioner
Jeffrey Pollack
Jeffrey Pollack (born 1965) is an American sports executive and business consultant. After a brief career in politics, Pollack moved into the industry of sports business where he's held executive roles with the NBA, NASCAR, World Series of Poke ...
said upon his death that many consider Chip "the greatest
cash game
Cash games, also sometimes referred to as ring games or live action games, are poker games played with "real" Poker chip, chips and money at stake, often with no predetermined end time, with players able to enter and leave as they see fit. In co ...
player who ever lived, but he was also a World Series of Poker legend."
Reese's house in Las Vegas was put up for sale on June 8, 2008, at a price of $5,699,500. He purchased the house with winnings from sports betting in baseball and from an investment in
Jack Binion
Jack Binion (born 1937) is an American businessman and was chairman of Wynn Resorts (2006–2018). He is the son of casino magnate Benny Binion. Jack worked for his father at Binion's Horseshoe, a casino and hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, Las Vegas ...
's
Tunica casino
A casino is a facility for gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shops, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos also host live entertainment, such as stand-up comedy, conce ...
.
World Series of Poker bracelets
References
External links
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Hendon Mob profilePokerNews profileWSOP profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Reese, Chip
1951 births
2007 deaths
Dartmouth College alumni
American poker players
American gin players
World Series of Poker bracelet winners
Super Bowl of Poker event winners
People from Centerville, Ohio
Poker Hall of Fame inductees
Deaths from pneumonia in Nevada