Slim's Good Life

Women with money to lose seek him out; he looks like a cross between Hud and Nathan Detroit. Wealthy businessmen challenge him, knowing that they will lose; it is something of a distinction to be skinned by one of the world's best poker players. Last week Thomas Austin Preston Jr., 44, better known as Amarillo Slim because of his home town and his build (6 ft. 2 in., 165 lbs.), had no time for the sheep.

He was in Las Vegas doing what he likes best--playing against other professionals in an event that the promoters call the World Series of poker. Because of his reputation, because he won last year's "championship," worth $60,000, Slim was clearly the man to beat as the 13 players began the event that would clean out all but one of them. TIME Correspondent John Austin sized up Slim before the first deal. Austin's report:

He talks country and plays cutthroat, so the last contest of the Las Vegas marathon is his kind of game.

Each entrant posts $10,000 and is expected to play until one man has won everything. The game, called "hold 'em," is unfamiliar to most kitchen-table poker nuts--a variation of seven-card stud in which each player is dealt two cards face down. Five cards are then dealt face up in the center of the table as a "community pile." The winner must make the best high hand he can out of his two hole cards and three from the community pile.

Hold 'em is Amarillo Slim's best game. "It's fast," he says, "and it's a real strong bluffing game. Ah like that."

But he takes neither the stakes nor the rigors of the Las Vegas competition very seriously: "It's a big game, okay, but there are a lot bigger." Four weeks ago, he played elsewhere in Nevada.

Knowing that he would be late, he took 25% of another professional's action until he could get there. Amarillo arrived 45 minutes after the first hand and found himself $41,000 down--one-quarter of his friend's losses in that time.

The game lasted 17 hours," he says.

"The big loser lost $312,000. Ah ended up a winner, but you could have stuck my winnings in a chigger's eye and never seen 'em. It was 'bout $19,000."

Young Hustler. It has been a long time since $19,000 meant much at Slim's level in the demimonde of professional gambling. He has been at it for more than 30 years. He began hustling pool in Texas as an adolescent and later graduated to craps and cards in "country games." By his early teens, he was an acknowledged billiards expert.

After an honorable discharge from the Navy following World War II, Preston was recruited for a Special Services tour in Europe to entertain troops with his pool skills. " 'Bout the only good will Ah created was for myself," he recalls.

"Ah took those G.I.s for every dime they had at cards, craps and pool." But the first night back in the States, he dropped $71,000 at poker, probably the worst hiding he has ever suffered.

With what was left, Slim returned to Texas to build the largest bookmaking operation in the state, and with the profits he began playing high-stakes poker in earnest. How much has he played for over the years? "Jillions," he says.

He claims to have played for pots containing $80,000 to $90,000 "oh, 'bout 8,000 times. But," he notes, "any pot with more'n $100,000 in it is a big one.

Don't let anyone tell you different."

His gambling is not limited to cards.

He bets on most professional and collegiate sports and horse races. Last year he bet $30,000 that he could run the rapids of Idaho's treacherous Salmon River, a hazardous but successful publicity stunt.

His weirdest wager is that he can make any cat pick up a soft-drink bottle from the floor and deposit it on a counter. The gimmick: grab the cat by the tail and pull it around the floor. In desperation, the cat will grab with its claws for anything, including a bottle.

Then pick the cat up by the tail, the bottle still clasped in its claws, and put it on the counter. Locals claim that the stunt works.

How to Win. Amarillo's great strength at the poker table is his ability to stay loose and observe his opponents keenly. No matter what the stakes, he keeps up an amiable chatter with other players. "Some of these guys play the games real uptight," he says; "it's so quiet you could hear an ant pee on cotton. But Ah like to shake 'em up, put a rattlesnake in their pocket and ask 'em for a match."

He argues that there is little difference in skills among the top 15 pros.

What gives him an advantage is his ability to spot "tells," minute tics or mannerisms that telegraph an opponent's hand. "Sometimes," he says, "Ah watch the vein in their neck or wrist. Some players, when they get a big hand, get those veins just a-pumpin'." With more accomplished players, tells are harder to detect.

Amarillo's winnings have brought him, his wife and three children the good life. He owns a comfortable brick house in Amarillo, 25 custom-tailored Western-style suits with a pair of boots to match each one, horses, cattle and three new cars, including a 1973 Mark IV Continental with license plates reading A SLIM.

The IRS, card cheats and thieves are constant problems. But Amarillo Slim claims to have surmounted them all. He files his tax return as a professional billiard player and lists his income under sundry commissions. He knows the top cheats by sight and keeps abreast of the latest developments in their techniques and hardware. He has been robbed on occasion--recently he and his bodyguard were stripped naked by three gunmen--but usually the money is returned when the thieves realize that they have hit a man with some acquaintances in the underworld.

Amarillo is happy with his life. "Ah play because Ah like the competition, and because with good players it's a game of wits. Ah'm sparring with 'em," he says. "Ah like it, but Ah don't have to play, financially or psychologically.

Ah don't want any more than what Ah have." Which is just as well. After five hours of rough hold 'em, Slim was busted by Jack "Tree Tops" Strauss, another tall Texan, in a $9,000 pot. At week's end, Strauss and five other survivors were battling for Slim's title--and the total bank of $130,000.

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