Kindergarten Poker Champ

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January 23rd, 2017
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Glassport, PA. is a small manufacturing city about halfway between my hometown of Sutersville and Pittsburgh.

The city is home to glassworkers and steelmill workers like my late father. Some coal miners who worked at the Warden Mine and other mines in the area also lived there.

I remember Glassport from my childhood as a rather unattractive community with tall drab buildings and factories. The high school would stage Friday night dances that attracted my two younger brothers, me and the other young swain who wanted to go where the girls were different.

Dewey Tomko grew up in Glassport. Like a lot of young people in that community, he hung around the pool halls after school and on weekends. He learned to play pool, golf and poker.

After graduating from high school, Tomko went to college and learned to teach. He found a job teaching kindergarten. But his real passion was poker and there were plenty of games to be found in a city of factory workers.

Teaching didn't pay much, and Tomko became bored. He began spending more and more of his time playing poker and learned how to win. After wrestling with his conscience, he turned in his resignation and moved to Las Vegas to pursue poker on a full-time basis.

I lived in Las Vegas for two years but never met Tomko on the poker circuit. However, I heard from poker-playing friends how good he was and one of them remarked, 'He comes from your part of the world. Pennsylvania. You should look him up.'

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After I won some big money in a poker tournament in Tunica, MS., I flew to Costa Rica for a week of gambling and sightseeing. Unbeknownst to me, Tomko was also in Costa Rica, negotiating to buy a gambling casino. There were hundreds of poker players who were competing for cash prizes at Europa Europa, the casino that was hosting several poker tournaments, and, again, Tomko and I never met.

Tomko, who is 70, today is worth an estimated $15 million from his poker winnings. He lives in Winter Haven, FL. and owns Dewey's Golf and Sports Grill in Orlando, a business he set up in February, 2014.

Dewey's dlaim to fame as a poker player includes being runner-up in the 1982 World Series of Poker to Jack 'Treetop' Strauss. He also made runner-up to Carlos Mortensen in 2001.

He won his first WSOP bracelet in 1979 in a $1,000 buy-in no-limit Hold-em event and pocketed $48,000.

In 1984, Tomko won two more gold bracelets -- a $10,000 deuce to seven draw tournament and a $5,000 pot limit Omaha event.

The kindergarten teacher from Glassport was runnerup in the 2003 Five Diamond World Poker classic, winning $552,853. He also managed to place fourth in the Costa Rica Classic and picked up $14,850. In 2005 he placed third in the WSOP deuce to seven low ball event, winning $138,160. And he set a record of sorts by playing in every WSOP main event since 1974.

In 2006, Dewey made the final table in the first WSOP H.O.R.S.E. tournament. It cost him $50,000 to enter it and he walked away with $343,200.

Tomko, who is married and has three children, is an above-average golf who plays regularly with Phil Ivey and Doyle Brunson. One player said, 'If I had to choose a player to putt to save my life, it would be Dewey Tomko.'

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