Despite once being the refuge of many pirates and ne’er do wells’ (the pirate trio of “Calico Jack” Rackham, Mary Read and Anne Bonney called Charleston home), the history of the game of poker in the state of South Carolina is puzzling. While providing several poker champions (2011 World Series of Poker Championship Event “November Niner” Phil Collins, among others), the state’s law enforcement is more than likely to clamp down on any “neighborhood” game with a violent raid rather than let it operate in peace. One of poker’s notable writers has detailed out the story of one of those attempts at “clamping down” on the game, a night which became one of the darker moments in South Carolina poker history.
At the website Bitter Southerner, PokerStars Blog scribe Brad Willis has written a four-part expose on that dark night in question. Entitled “Bust: An Insider’s Account of Greenville’s Underground Poker Scene,” Willis relates the story of a poker game held just a couple of weeks prior to the 2010 WSOP Championship Event’s conclusion, which bore little resemblance to the glitz and glamor in Las Vegas. On this particular night in Greenville, instead of cards and chips flying around the tables, bullets and blood filled the air.
In the first part of the tale, Willis details the story of 72-year old Aaron Awtry, the operator of the poker game, and Deputy Matt May, a part of the team of officers raiding the game. Through Willis’ keen investigation of the incident, he is able to reconstruct that dangerous night in all its explosive detail. While telling this story, he is also able to humanize both Awtry (who would eventually earn jail time for operating the game and shooting May) and May (who would face months of rehabilitation from his arm injuries) beyond their potential “black hat/white hat” personas.
In the second part, Willis demonstrates how, at least in the South, the way to be successful at poker is to actually leave the region. He details out the great players that have come from the South – including seven-time WSOP bracelet winner Billy Baxter, two-time “November Niner” Mark Newhouse, former $50K Poker Players’ Champion David Bach and 2004 WSOP Championship Event final tablist Josh Arieh – before returning with more details from that evening in South Carolina. It is here that Willis exposes that one of the deputies that had been involved in the raid on that night was actually the stepson of Awtry.
After continuing with the details of the aftermath of the dangerous altercation on that night, Willis also brings out how the courts eventually handled the case. Despite his age and that his wife was near death, Awtry was sentenced to five years in prison in South Carolina after pleading guilty to several charges including attempted murder of the law enforcement officers (who testified they identified themselves to the players, a point under quite a bit of dispute). The aftereffects of that fateful game and how it impacted the major participants is something that Willis grasps excellently.
In the third part of Willis’ expose, he talks to two men who are currently at the forefront of the poker “Exodus” from South Carolina. Hank Sitton, who has earned over $500,000 in tournament poker since 2006 (despite withdrawing from the game for five years to concentrate on his businesses) is interviewed along with Collins. Willis also tells the story of Tim Watts, who is regarded as one of the best dealers in the South Carolina scene. He was a part of the game that fateful night in South Carolina and tells his side of the story.
Willis wraps up “Bust” with the fourth part an appropriate finale. He mentions his own involvement in poker, but explains how he came to know this story so well. Previous to his poker writing career, Willis served as a news reporter – particularly the crime beat – for a television station in Greenville. Because of poker, he knew both sides of the line in this story with no winners – the police and deputies who conducted the raid and the players behind that barricaded door – and tries to inform the reader of what it all means.
“There are bigger problems in the South than its prohibition on poker,” Willis writes in concluding the series. “If lawmakers never find their way towards granting people the freedom to play a card game, the South won’t collapse. If those legislators can’t find their way around the hypocrisy of supporting Powerball but outlawing one of America’s most revered and popular pastimes, poker will continue in the shadows while lottery tickets get sold by the millions under fluorescent gas station lights. Meanwhile, we people of the South will continue to talk about liberty and freedom as sacred values while we watch and wait for another bust to go bad.”
