Chip Reese Profile

Chip Reese is considered one of the legends of poker. Before his passing in December 2007, he was considered one of the greatest cash game poker players who ever lived. Although mainly a cash game player, he won three WSOP bracelets with 21 WSOP cashes. His final bracelet was winning the 2006 $50,000 HORSE World Championship for $1,784,640. Reese was considered one of the biggest winner for years in the Big Game in Bobby's room winning untold millions. In a limited schedule, Reese won over $3.5 million in live tournament winnings and was voted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 1991 as the youngest ever accepted. Reese was born March 28, 1951 in Centerville, Ohio and lived in Las Vegas, Nevada up until his passing on December 4, 2007.

Things you might not know:

Reese suffered from rheumatic fever as a young child, missing a year of school to stay home.
Reese, during high school, was a football player and member of the debate team that won the Ohio State Championship and went to National Finals.
Reese went to Dartmouth College after turning down an offer from Harvard.
Reese was active on campus, majoring in economics, doing debate and crushing his fellow students and professors in poker and bridge games.
Reese declined admission to Stanford Law School to play poker professionally after winning $60,000 in a Las Vegas tournament.
Reese visited Las Vegas in 1974 with $400 in his pocket, building it up steadily to $20,000 in moderate-stakes games.
Reese's initial Las Vegas playing was so successful, he quit his Arizona day job several days later and hired someone to fly to clean out his apartment and drive his car to Las Vegas.
Reese was particularly gifted at 7 Card-Stud, contributing a chapter in Brunson's Super/System, the best-selling poker book of all time.
Reese took a job as the cardroom manager at the Dunes Casino (now the Bellagio) when he was 28, a position he held for five years.
Reese settled down in his mid-30's to raise a family.
Reese and Doyle Brunson often invested unsuccessfully in schemes to find the Titanic, Noah's Ark, oil wells, race horse, television shows and the like.
Reese played publicly in his later years only so his children could see him on television.
Reese's 2006 WSOP $50k HORSE win faced a final table that included Doyle Brunson, Phil Ivey, Dewey Tomko, T.J. Cloutier, Patrik Antonius, David Singer, eventual runner-up Andy Bloch.
Reese bought his Las Vegas home with winnings from sports betting on baseball and from an investment in Jack Binion's Tunica casino. It sold after his passing for roughly $5.7 million.

Chip Reese was always low-key and a gentleman at the table. He was known for his emotional control and generosity at and away from the table.

His best friend, Doyle Brunson, stated "He's certainly the best poker player that ever lived."

"He was a family man like no one else in poker," said Barry Greenstein. "No matter what the situation was, if his kids had something going on - a baseball game, a recital, whatever - he would quit to go to it.

"Probably a lot of us were jealous of him that he was able to do that - that he had done well enough in poker, that he could always take time off of poker to be involved with his kids."

“I can bet $100,000 and feel nothing,” he said in an interview with People magazine in 2003. “If you think about the money and what it means, you’re gone.”