RGP,  or rec.gambling.poker,  is one of the oldest places online for talking poker strategy,  sharing stories,  and getting advice on play.  I first made my way to the newsgroup about 4 years ago,  and while more non-poker content and less-than-courteous behavior has made its way to the newsgroup of late,  there are a lot of interesting posts on the game made daily.  Many of the posters on RGP are solid players,  who have been playing for years and posting since RGP began.

One of the most frequent and controversial posters on RGP is Russ Georgiev.  You can tell when Russ posts because one of his messages will always have  “GCA”  preceding the post,  standing for  “Gambling Cheating Analysts”  (not an actual consulting firm,  but the name Georgiev gives to his posts).  Georgiev has countless posts on RGP,  having to do with alleged cheating in the game of poker,  and also on poker strategy. His own site with poker strategy is PokerMafia.com.  If you read one of the threads from his posts,  you’ll find some comments on his strategy,  but many more heated opinions from people who call him every name in the book.  I first took an interest in him after reading his posts on my favorite game,  seven card stud eight-or-better.  After reading his posts and talking to him about the game,  I certainly wouldn’t want to run into him at a final table in a stud 8 tournament.  He clearly knows his stuff.

But it isn’t stud 8 that makes Georgiev controversial.  Anyone following his advice would be on the path to success in the game.  It’s his numerous allegations of cheating in high-stakes poker,  and of shady practices in the online poker industry that has made Georgiev the target of wrath by many in the poker community.  I’m certainly not a Georgiev apologist,  but I could not help but be intrigued by him.  Everyone has a story;  I suspected his would be an interesting one,  to say the least.

"We do scam and have for years. I have reached a point where I don't like it. I have never really liked it. I am too egotistical to like it. I confessed to the LA Times over 20 years ago and nothing was done."

Early Loves: Poker & Bowling.  Georgiev was born in Washington state in 1947,  and developed an affection for poker at an early age.  Like many card players,  he said he altered his ID to get into games:  “When I was 17,  I altered my license to make it look like a 1943 birth date,  so you had a good chance of getting by with it.  I was playing cards all the time.”  He also says that he was a pretty solid player,  but unfortunately found out about cheating in poker the hard way.  Because of his fake ID not always being accepted,  Georgiev had to find other games in back card rooms,  where he found widespread cheating.  Back then,  5-card stud was a very popular game,  in which sometimes,  he said,  he’d get a dynamite hand that was only second-best:  “I’d get kings,  and they’d have aces.  I’d lose ten or twenty bucks,  and went out there for a couple of months,  and I saw what happened.”  He said that after taking his money,  the players who cheated him taught him about cheating,  and how to protect himself from it.

Knowing how to protect himself from cheating didn’t mean that he was always safe.  Georgiev described being victimized in a game by a police sergeant  --  after Georgiev had bled him out of several thousand dollars.  “This police sergeant used to have a game.  I’m up two grand,  and we are playing pot limit dealer’s choice.  He must be stuck a grand or two and the game breaks up and as I’m leaving,  he asks me if I wanted to play some more.  I beat him out of another grand and the guy pulls out a gun and robs me.”  Even though the sergeant’s wife walked in,  that didn’t help Georgiev get his money back.  He pointed out:  “Who’s going to take my word against a police sergeant and his wife?  I told a few people the story and the guy never played again as far as I knew.”  He says that this was just one of six times that he has been robbed.

At the same time he discovered his poker talents,  Georgiev said he was an excellent bowler as well.  He stated he regularly was beating professional bowlers at the age of 17,  had an average over 200,  and that it was impossible for anyone to beat him.  However, he said what happened was a change in handicapping that prevented him from enjoying the success he deserved on the bowling alley.  Several other professional bowlers in the northwest at the time were classified as 210-average bowlers,  while he was classified as having a 220 average.  This meant he had to spot other professionals pins for a three-game set.  “You are a kid who is 6'1”,  and guys don’t want to believe you are superior to them,”  said Georgiev.  Describing his later teens,  Georgiev said:  “I’d bowl for money,  and always played cards anyway;  at the time I was 17 and gambling all day.  I had a straight-A average until my junior or senior year of high school,  and when I graduated I hardly went to school.  I gambled and bowled.”  While he believes he still could have become a pro bowler,  Georgiev said there was far more money in poker

DONT BE THE FISH. PLAY AT POKERROOM

Early 20’s – Raking in the Money.  By the time Georgiev hit his 21st birthday,  he said he was living the good life with a  $25,000 bankroll and a girlfriend.  “Limits weren’t that high but they were for the time.  I’d sit at a $1/$5 game and you could make yourself 200 bucks a day,”  he noted.  He soon moved up to an $8/$16 game,  and won $3,000 to $4,000 playing legitimate poker.  When a change in laws closed Washington card rooms in the late 60s,  Georgiev made his way to California,  where his bankroll would suffer a big hit.

“I got busted,”  said Georgiev of his trip to California at age 21.  Although he thought he had learned  --  from cheaters  --  how to protect himself back in Washington,  Georgiev had run into a new form of cheating:  collusion.  Short on cash for a while,  Georgiev was a fast learner,  and it didn’t take him long to get his bankroll back in the black.  He sold his car to have some poker money,  and started at the $1/$2 limits,  where he made about $100 a day for a month.  Within a few months he was up to the $3/$6 limits,  making $250 a day.  Soon,  Georgiev says,  his bankroll was large enough to allow him to play in the biggest game in 1968,  a $20 limit game.  It was at this point that Georgiev started looking at the method that had busted him when he first arrived in California, looking at it as a means to make big money  --  collusion.

Describing how he learned about it,  Georgiev said:  “I played legitimately to begin with,  but you become friendly with people as you go broke and I see the teams ... so instead of loaning them money we started doing what the others were doing.  Then I get to meet other professional players and got involved with other young pros (who were still older than I am but under 30),  so soon we are playing partners and before long we are playing three people,  and getting to know more and more people.”  Collusion at the poker tables brought in boatloads of cash for him.  But at this time Georgiev ran into some difficulties in his personal life.  He returned to Washington,  and his marriage ended in 1970,  taking a toll on his health.  “She broke my heart,”  said Georgiev.  “I went from 185 pounds and lost 30 pounds.”  It was at this time that some friends told him to get playing again.

Because card rooms had become illegal in the late 1960s in Washington,  Georgiev returned to the backroom games he had left.  “I started running some games for the mafia and organized crime in Seattle and Tacoma.  These were not fixed.  There was a large rake and I got 25% for running the game,  but pretty soon the local Mafioso moved down to Atlanta,  and he got himself a better piece of territory,  so I started running my own game,”  which he describes as being  “basically legitimate.”  What made Georgiev money in running his game was the use of marked cards,  which he states he used not to cheat,  but to find out if someone was cheating,  as the marked cards would be gone if the deck was switched.  He also said he played extensively in private games at this time,  where he said he played legitimate poker. Georgiev claims his play was so superior to the others at the table that he would be barred within a month.  “I don’t have to cheat,” he says.  “I’m that far superior.  I’m not a card mechanic  --  I’m just that much better than they are.”

"Card mechanics are like dinosaurs. Their time is over."

Troubles with the Law.  Despite success at the card tables, Georgiev’s life hit another bump in the road in the mid 70s when he ran into some problems with the law.  He said that during this period,  he went on trial several times.  According to Georgiev,  a banker was coming to one of his games,  losing a lot of money  --  so much that he was soon giving out personal loans of $5,000 and $10,000 that quickly mounted up.  Georgiev said this individual must have scammed the bank for a million dollars,  and that he got involved because the banker was making payments on a loan he had given to Georgiev.  Georgiev was given probation for being involved,  even though he says he received no money out of the deal.  He claims he was eventually vindicated,  however.  “It was taken off my record and I never spent a day in prison despite some gambling-related charges for playing in poker games,” he said.  Although he never did have to do time in prison,  Georgiev claimed he was the victim of repeated harassment by the police:  “It got hot in Seattle for

PLAY WITH THE PROS

Off to Big Sky Country.  Facing pressure from the law in the Seattle area,  Georgiev went east to Montana in 1975 and 1976.  Here,  he claims,  he won about a million dollars,  despite having two of the games he was in robbed.  Describing the easy money,  Georgiev stated:  “I played with a lot of farmers who got rich overnight.”  Because land values increased rapidly in the 70s,  many farmers in Montana had a lot of money.  One gets the image of Joe Namath in Georgiev’s description of his Montana excursion:  “Every one of them thought they knew how to play.  Meanwhile, I’m wearing a full-length mink and it’s about zero outside.  I cleaned up there.”

Late 70s -- Back to California.  Not wanting to linger in Montana,  Georgiev headed back to Gardena,  California,  in 1976.  Here he hooked up with a friend who worked in a casino,  and also with the local cheating teams.  “All of the casinos were in a mile-and-a-half radius,  and we were working with the team,”  notes Georgiev.  He states that he and other cheaters cleaned up on Gardena's games,  and that by the late 70s he was in Los Angeles,  where he stayed until 1982.  It was at this time that a story was published in the Los Angeles Times about professional card cheaters fleecing southern California casinos.  Georgiev stated he was one of the six individuals named in the story.  After this story broke,  Georgiev headed north of the border to British Columbia in December of the same year.

Cleaning up in Canada. Georgiev said that he enjoyed much success in Canada, destroying his opponents at the poker tables. Describing his conquest, Georgiev stated: “I used to fly all around Canada going to their games, and I butchered them.” He said he played pot limit Omaha hi-lo split and pot limit hold ‘em poker. Georgiev said he was doing so good that before long, he was told he could no longer play in games as he busted players too quickly. So, Georgiev returned to the United States, heading to Denver where poker was allowed.