Russ Georgiev - Dead

A LOVE LETTER TO MY FAVORITE POKER LEGEND…

After a short, but sweet, reappearance in Vegas, Russ Georgiev
returned home to Seattle, celebrated his 62nd birthday and died in his
sleep of a heart attack.

To those of you who say, “That’s great news!” I offer this. Russ was
smarter than most of the population and was able to figure things out
from a very early age. He played bridge as a child and actually had
his master points by age 5 ½. He was an entrepreneur at age 8 and had
7 neighborhood children in his ‘employ’ making and selling custom
potholders. At 16 he was winning huge amounts of money pot bowling at
Lewis and Clark lanes. Because he ‘saw’ something no one else had seen
in greyhound betting procedures, he took advantage of his knowledge
and, legally, made a killing at the dogs – finally ‘they’ caught on
and all greyhound betting had to be revised. He was arrogant, but he
had a right to be. He was exceptionally good-looking, intelligent,
well-mannered, well-read, drove great cars, wore the best clothes, and
could out-argue and out-think almost all the people he came in contact
with. So to those of you who are glad at hearing the news, I say,
you’re just plain jealous, the normal response of those who don’t
measure up and can’t appreciate someone who does.

Was he a braggart? Yup. But, at least his stories were true. I have
printed email correspondence to him from all the guys you know from
the poker world. And I was with Russ when Ruth Streeter of “60
Minutes” called him about doing an expose. And I counted the $70,000
cash he used to carry around in a paper bag back in the 70’s. We
weren’t on the best of terms in the late 80’s, but he sent me $200-
$300 cash per week for 18 months when I was undergoing chemotherapy.
He helped countless people, some just to keep up the big shot image,
but more because he was actually a kind-hearted guy.

Was he a cheat? He admitted it. He divulged all kinds of things about
cheating, but most people didn’t believe him. Look at online poker…
Russ surely had the last laugh.

He wrote a great book, POKER UNCHECKED. To understand how brilliant a
player he was you need to know that he challenged the best to prove
him wrong and they declined. He challenged them to heads-up games, and
they declined.

So Russ is dead and I bet the posts on your poker websites will be a
lot duller without him.

To those of you who will sincerely miss him, I say he was on his way
back to the top. A long while back he came up with a revolutionary
idea for pari-mutuel betting – the Nevada Gaming authority stalled for
years before recently approving it. You should see it in action before
too long…

And before the rumors start…for the record, Russ died owing NOTHING.

I will miss him.

Vicki,
younger sister of Russ Georgiev