• Mike Landers Poker
• Mike Landers Poker Mandalay Bay

Running with a crowd including Mike Landers, David Kopp, Rick Klehammer, Denny Axel, and Jimmy Flanagan, they ate two-dollar-steak-specials and discussed poker strategy every day at Binion’s. Despite cutting edge insight into Hold’em strategy— a game of which she had said “as soon as I heard about it I knew I’d like it”— she. Event Highlights. Dieter Dechant Takes Down Event #19: THE GIANT - $365 No-Limit Hold'em. Hrair Yapoudjian Eliminated in 2nd Place ($179,735) Vera Kuhl Eliminated in 3rd Place ($133,493). With over 1,200 slot and video poker machines to choose from, you'll find a full selection of your favorite games. Mandalay Bay offers a variety of games, ranging from $0.01 to $100.00. See Details See Details See Details.

Mike Landers Poker

Mike Landers Poker Mandalay Bay

The air at the photo shoot was likely only tense to Cissy Bottom. “It was just an article about four female poker players but she said the whole thing made her uncomfortable and she wanted it to be over as soon as possible,” says David Kopp, longtime poker pro and friend who recalls Cissy being stressed by the event. “She said that she thought Annie Duke was really pretty and she didn’t know why she (Cissy) was there.” While such events are commonplace today as female players are often giftpackaged as a hazard of their d-list celebrity, to Cissy it must have seemed bizarre. “I’m a poker player,” she often offered in explanation for just about everything.
The eventual Cecilia Stricks Russo Bottom was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1941 in a house won in a poker game. Pregnant at 16, she left Atlantic City High School to give birth to her son David Russo. She returned to finish high school but her life had already assumed an alternative track. Initially setting up household with her new husband the union was not to last. One night as they entertained guests her husband paused mid-sentence, snapped his fingers, and pointed to his coffee cup. The docile and compliant Cecilia immediately leapt to her feet to retrieve the pot of fresh hot coffee and poured it exactly where it was demanded— on Mr. Russo’s head. After this, she went about devising a means of support for herself and her son which involved the race and poker. Legal gambling came to Atlantic City in 1978 and legal poker in 1993 however there had long been a private poker circuit. The games however were not all accessible to Cissy who was constrained to playing social poker with the “ladies.” One afternoon while playing Criss-Cross high/low (a game with a horizontal and a vertical row each of five cards intersecting at the third card which is common to both. Each player is dealt four cards and may play either row) she was dealt AAAJ. She held it up in disgust, attracting the attention of one of the “ladies” who picked it up and looked at it after Cissy mucked. After the hand was exposed Cissy was no longer welcome in the games. She was 34 years old with an adult son and it was time to seek an even playing field. After a few successful trips to Las Vegas she made the decision to move there in 1979.
Establishing herself first at the Fremont in the 3/6 limit hold’em game, she easily dominated. It is here that her Las Vegas legend begins. Running with a crowd including Mike Landers, David Kopp, Rick Klehammer, Denny Axel, and Jimmy Flanagan, they ate two-dollar-steak-specials and discussed poker strategy every day at Binion’s. Despite cutting edge insight into Hold’em strategy— a game of which she had said “…as soon as I heard about it I knew I’d like it”— she was slow to move up in limits. She was early to recognize AK as a strong hand and said “What you want is for everyone to make a pair or for no-one to make a pair.” Friends pushed her to play higher but she was reticent. A statement made years later may shed some light on this: “I believe pot saps ambition.”
By the time I met Cissy she was 50ish and had been a Las Vegas icon for more than a decade. She snickered at me, took my hand limply, said “how do you do?” with —I swear—a slight curtsy, and had no further use for me. While I believe this was meant to be dismissive of me, Marsha Waggoner, a poker icon in her own right, recalls a very different side of Cissy “Cissy told me to always make the last rinse of my hair after shampooing a COLD one. It will make your hair shine, I’ve never forgotten that and I always do it and I think of Cissy. We were good friends and played at the Stardust almost every day. Loved Cissy!” Cissy’s dismissal of me said more about her desire to be left alone to play than about anything else. Even when I showed up in Vegas, oblivious to how I was seen by the locals, Cissy was still the only female pro one was likely to see in a 15/30 or 20/40 game. Coming from a market where virtually everyone called themselves a “professional” (and carried a dog-eared copy of Sklansky for Advanced players and had a high security clearance at Sandia or Los Alamos labs) but I was one of the few with no other source of income, it never occurred to me that there was any trick to getting into a game other than putting one’s name on the list. By the time I was ruining poker games by sharing my every breakthrough and folding hands face up, Cissy had already claimed her independence with that fateful AAAJ event. She had already been on the correct and revolutionary side of the J10suited debate in which she and one of her crew held the line against the rest of the pack: the proposition being whether to fold or call with J10 suited on the button after a player who certainly held AA or KK raised and was then called by seven players— Cissy’s side held that they would rather re-raise than fold in this spot, an avant garde strategy at the time. It is easy to see in retrospect why Cissy had little use for me— I was walking road which she had paved