VIEJAS INDIAN RESERVATION – Tethered by a breathing tube to her mobile oxygen tank, Katie “Dynamite” Rahder never took her eyes off the cards as she cocked an ear.
LAURA EMBRY / Union-Tribune
Mike Witte, 71, enjoyed some chicken soup during a hand of seven-card stud at Viejas Casino. "Poker is probably the best thing for me, from a standpoint of keeping the mind sharp," he said.
|
Nearby, Bill Bruner was waxing philosophic amid fellow coffee sippers waiting for the morning Omaha high/low tournament to begin: “Confucius say,” Bruner intoned, “men learn nothing while talking.”
“Amen!” responded Dynamite, eliciting chuckles as she tossed another handful of chips into the seven-card-stud pot.
Some senior citizens stroll the beach in the morning. Some tee it up on the golf course, take the dog for its daily constitutional or volunteer at church.
And some trade $100 bills for stacks of poker chips to engage in an often friendly, sometimes fierce, battle of wits around a green-felt table.
In an era when America finds itself awash in legalized gambling, poker rooms at local casinos are elbowing aside the neighborhood coffee shop and bridge club as places where retirees come together to wile the day away.
“The main thing is the camaraderie,” said the 82-year-old Dynamite, known for her collection of colorful hats and take-no-prisoners approach to poker.
LAURA EMBRY / Union-Tribune
Dozens of seniors gather on weekdays for the Texas Hold 'Em or Omaha-high/low tournament at the Viejas poker room, where Katie "Dynamite" Rahder, with her collection of 750 hats, has legend status.
|
“We don't want to sit at home all day watching TV and getting Alzheimer's. You need to get out and keep your mind sharp; even the doctors say this is good for us.”
On weekdays, the high-ceilinged poker room upstairs at Viejas Casino is a second home to a few dozen retirees, providing the opportunity to square off in games of skill in a place where everybody knows your name.
“After I retired, I tried yard work and gardening, tried going the volunteer route,” said Bruner, who made his money investing in real estate.
“But this right here is our heaven. We come every day to socialize as much as to play poker. We love it.”
Most of the old hands in the poker room, perhaps 20 percent of them women, get to Viejas by breakfast time. They play a few hands waiting for the morning Texas Hold 'Em or Omaha tournament ($14 entry fee) to begin at 10. Upward of 100 players of all ages typically enter.
By noon, when the tournament winds down, the seniors, most of whom have played for years, retire to a handful of tables and spend the rest of the day going head-to-head at stud and other games.
LAURA EMBRY / Union-Tribune
"After I retired, I tried yard work and gardening, tried going the volunteer route," said Bill Bruner, a Viejas regular. "But this right here is our heaven. We come every day to socialize as much as to play poker. We love it."
|
“I have (multiple sclerosis), so I'm limited in my ability to do a lot of things,” said Mike Witte, 71, a retired attorney. “This is something I can do.
“Poker is probably the best thing for me, from a standpoint of keeping the mind sharp and the social aspect,” Witte said.
He started at Viejas in 1995, years before the TV-fed poker craze, and plays five or six days a week, when he and his wife aren't off on a cruise or visiting the grandkids back East.
“I know 40 or 50 people here by name,” Witte said. “It's an enjoyable way to spend the day.”
Playing competitive poker with a regular group can be beneficial to people of retirement age and older, said Dr. Mike Plopper, a geriatric psychiatrist and chief medical officer for Sharp Behavioral Health Services in San Diego.
“Clearly they are engaged in life and enjoy this very much,” Plopper said. “The social interaction, competitiveness and mental challenge are quite positive components.
“But there is a concern that with a certain percentage of these folks, gambling regularly could be a problem, jeopardizing finances and personal relationships,” he said. “There is no age limit for developing a gambling addiction.”
Poker is a pastime that demands significant levels of skill, concentration, nerve, social acumen and luck.
With stakes as high as $6 per bet (and multiple bets each hand), these are not games for the uninitiated or the faint of heart.
“You can lose $100 pretty quick in that stud game,” said Paul “The Greek” Apostolides, whose T-shirt read: One Casino, Two Casino, Three Casino, Poor. “I've lost $450 in one day, but I've won nearly that much, too.
“I stopped playing for about two months one time and 10 of these folks had to go back to work,” quipped The Greek, who owns a limousine service and is one of the few regulars still working.
LAURA EMBRY / Union-Tribune
Competitive poker with a regular group can have benefits for seniors, some medical experts say. But even the players caution that the high-stakes game isn't for the faint of heart or pocketbook. "You can lose $100 pretty quick in that stud game," said Paul "The Greek" Apostolides.
|
“There are some very good players here, even though the average age at that stud table is about 75.”
Most of the seniors call it a day by 4 p.m. and then maybe head downstairs for dinner in a casino restaurant; they'd rather not drive after dark.
The weekday routine almost seems like a job.
“That's true,” said Dynamite, whose husband of 58 years, retired Navy man Dave Rahder, 79, has accompanied her to the tables at Viejas almost every day for the past 15 years.
“When somebody goes in the hospital, we all sign a card and go visit,” she said. “If Dave and I don't show up, they call the house to check on us – I have to call in sick or they get mad around here.”
She said there have been a number of funerals to attend for poker-room regulars over the years, lending a whole other meaning to the term “all in.”
The day-shift supervisor of the poker room, Dale Wolfe, said the atmosphere and clientele at night and on weekends is completely different.
That's when college students and young Turks from various walks of life take over with aggressive, flashy and undisciplined styles of play that the seniors find distasteful.
“It's really a small town in here during the daytime,” Wolfe said. “Everybody knows what everybody else does. And Dynamite is the mayor.
“Anytime we think about making a change around here, we first have to ask for her opinion.”
The nickname comes from a bowling team she used to run called The Dynamites, Katie Rahder said.
Her hat collection numbers 750 (many souvenirs from trips taken by poker dealers and fellow players), and she needs the oxygen tank because of severe asthma.
And, yes, she's not afraid to take up a petition and hand it to poker-room management if something rubs her the wrong way.
“See that wall over there?” Dynamite said, pointing to a partition that separates the poker room from the rest of the smoky casino. “I got a petition up to get that built. The smoke was real bad in here and a lot of us have respiratory problems; I got 200 signatures on that one.”
Dynamite's legendary status at the poker room was sealed with a huge payday three years ago, ironically on a losing hand.
A small amount of each pot (a dollar or two) is fed over months into a jackpot for a “bad beat,” a great hand that gets beaten.
In order to win, a player must have a full house (three of a kind, plus a pair in five cards), with the three cards being aces, and get beaten by four of a kind or better.
Dynamite had four aces and was bettered by a straight flush (five cards of the same suit in order) – a bad beat for the ages.
There happened to be an enormous bad-beat jackpot at the time: about $24,000. Dynamite's colossal loss netted her half for having the remarkable losing hand. (Under the jackpot's topsy-turvy rules, the man who beat her took a quarter of the total with the rest split among the other players at the table.)
“That $12,000 gave Dave and me a nice little stake to play with for quite a while,” she said.
The poker room memorialized the hand by establishing “Dyno's Bad Beat Thursdays,” with small jackpots throughout the day awarded for the best hands that get beaten.
Dynamite admits to a competitive streak.
“That's not unusual around here,” she said. “And some players get a little testy when they lose. But they only stay mad for a little while.”
Betty Herndon said she has known Dynamite “for 30 or 40 years.” She once competed against her in a bowling league in which Dynamite slipped in “a ringer – this gal had a 180 average in a different league but came in against us claiming to be only a 140 bowler.”
“She is out to win, period. Very competitive,” Herndon said. “She can be a bear when she loses. It's really fun to go up against her – if you win, that is.”
Herndon, who learned poker at Viejas 15 years ago and plays there three days a week, said she usually has a fine time. But once in a while she crosses paths with a sore loser.
“You know how some of us old-timers are,” she said with a wink. “We can get pretty grouchy sometimes.”
Mark Sauer: (619) 293-2227; mark.sauer@uniontrib.com
