Mr. Lavelle Jones

[Jeff sparks]

I worked in the car business from 1972 until 1992... I learned the trade at the foot of a master... Mr. Lavelle Jones, Lavelle was a shonuff coonass from the backwoods area of the Atchafalaya swamp in Louisiana... Lavelle knew nothing about cars, his product knowledge was zero, and yet if he was talking to a real buyer, not a tire kicker, he always closed the sale...100%... He was the best closer I ever saw in the 20 years I was around the car business..

His method was simple, and yet complex... He never talked about the car, never...He simply talked about people and places and sports and fishing and hunting and just life in general, until he found some common ground with the person sitting in the buyers chair... Then he would expound on whatever the common ground happened to be, they would exchange thoughts, share people they knew or just visit for a while, and before you could say Jumpin Jack flash, he had made the customer a friend, not just a customer... And more importantly, he had become a friend, not just another guy trying to sell them a car...

It was the damnedest thing to witness firsthand, he would never bring up the car, the customer would always end up being the one to bring up the car, and of course they would always end up buying it from Lavelle, how could they not, Lavelle was now their friend...

He was truly a one of a kind... He was the best... Wherever you're at Lavelle, thanks for the lessons, they served me well in the car business, and in life...

Rip Mr. Lavelle Jones

 

[Jeff sparks]

I met a fellow in Victoria at a poker game, we became good friends and traveled together for awhile... We would go to Corpus Christi, Ingleside, Beeville, Cal Allen, and several other little towns in the area that had illegal poker games in the beginning... Later we would travel to tournaments around the country and take a piece of each other's action... It was a good deal for both of us...

Roger Guerrette was born in Woodsboro, Texas an even smaller town... I have threatened to go there just to drink some of the water or roll in the dirt, because I have never seen or even heard about anyone luckier than Roger...He caught what he needed time after time, over years of playing poker, and he held off monster drawing hands whenever the pot got out of shape...

Roger always got the perfect match-up hand with the mark seated at the table... He would invariably catch hand over hand against him or if he happened to get it in bad, he'd just draw out in the river.. Roger was a likable guy, I hardly ever witnessed him upset...

There was a couple of times though where I thought he would lose it, and go off on the offender, but he managed to control it and continue the game...

Here is one example of a hand where he had a right to get upset, but he ended up laughing about it along with everybody else at the table...

There was a black gentleman that we played with in Marksville, La. And also in Kinder, La. at the Coushatta Indian tribe casino.. Everybody referred to him as Black Jerry.. He was a retired barber who had hit the Lottery... He would routinely lose $15,000.00 on the weekend and sometimes more... Roger got a lot of his money over the years, and Jerry had no love for Roger because of it...

One day in Marksville we are playing and Roger gets involved with Jerry in a big pot.. Roger flopped the nut straight, with a royal flush draw... I believe he held Ace/10 of spades.. The flop came K/Q/J, with two spades... They went to war once again... The turn card was a blank and Roger made a big bet and Jerry called... The river card paired the K and Roger said "All-in" which wasn't a lot of money, because the bulk of the money went in on the previous bet...I think the pot had something like $4000.00 in it and Roger had about $500.00 left...

Jerry tanks for at least 5 full minutes, with slight hand movements like he might toss in his cards, then setting the cards down and mulling it over, then counting out the required amount of chips for the call, and putting his hand behind the chips as if he were going to push them into the pot, then stopping and tanking again for periods of a minute or more...

Finally Roger got pissed and called out to Jerry, saying something like, "Dammit Jerry c'mon, you're taking all f---in day to make a decision!!!" "Do something!!!" Well, Roger naturally thought he had Jerry because of the time Jerry had tanked over the decision and he was trying to intimidate Jerry into calling that last $500.00 bet...

Well when Roger scolded Jerry like that in front of everybody, it just made Jerry take a little more time... Jerry said, " When you push me like dat, it makes me wanna call all the more!!!" And he thought about it another minute or so...

Now Roger knows with absolute certainty that he's got Jerry beat, so he let's Jerry alone and hopes he makes the call...

Finally Jerry counts out the chips one more time and ever so slowly pushes em into the pot and says, "I call."

Roger quickly rolls over his straight, and then Jerry revels one King and then slowly turns over the other King...

Roger turned pink, then the blood red...
Everyone was waiting for Roger's reaction, holding their collective breath to keep from laughing uncontrollably... Roger stood up and chewed Jerry out...

Jerry said, "I been waitin for dat hand to come up for a long time, I wanted to savoy it for awhile." You is beat me for years, n laughed bout it, now it's my turn, how do it feel?"

Everybody knew that was true, and Roger had beat him unmercifully over the years.. Roger realized it too, so he sat down and started to laugh, that started the entire table laughing... Not just a snicker or a giggle mind you, but everybody was doubled over, belly laughing at the biggest and probably the most deserved slow roll in the history of poker...

 

[Jeff sparks]

More about Mr. Lucky, Roger Guerrette

More about Mr. Lucky, Roger Guerrette

How lucky was Roger... We were partners for a time, and I got to see how lucky he really was on a daily basis... We were in Natchez on the Mississippi River, on our way to Vicksburg, Mississippi to play in a private poker game... A judge we met in Tunica, Mississippi at the Horseshoe tournament took a liking to us, and it was his game and we were invited...

Natchez had a riverboat tied up at the dock, and Roger says,"Lets go see if they have poker on board and we'll kill a couple of hours until the game starts at the Judge's place."

We walked the gangplank onto a really old paddle wheel boat that had been converted into a casino of sorts.. They had limit poker... .50 cents and a dollar, and it looked like death warmed over... We are looking at video poker machines and trying to find a reasonable payout on a Double/double bonus poker machine, the only potentially profitable video poker game to play.. We were hoping to find 9/7, which refers to the units paid when you made a full house (9 ) or a flush (7 ) these would be very acceptable in Mississippi, but low for that time period in Vegas, which paid 10 units for a full house...However our search proved fruitless, the best pay out they offered was 8/5 and that was just throwing away money to play that machine...

We were on the top floor looking down when Roger spotted a pit game beneath us that neither of us was familiar with, so down we went to check it out... There's one seat left at the table and Roger sits down and asks the pretty young girl who's dealing about the rules.. She explains them perfectly and Roger looks at me and I say. "What the hell, go ahead, fire a couple of hundred at em, you might get lucky!"

Roger was there to try and pick up the dealer, I knew it, she was cute, and Roger loved the women...

Roger bought $200.00 in green ( $25.00 chips ) the game was called 3 card poker and it required an ante bet.. A bet of equal denomination could also be placed above the ante bet... It was called a pair plus bet I believe... Below the ante bet was another space where you could place a bet that must be the same size as the ante bet if you decided you wanted to play your hand against the dealers 3 card hand...

Roger put a $25.00 chip in the ante spot, and a $25.00 chip in the pair plus spot above the ante spot and the dealers started dealing the cards to all the players..
Roger is flirting with the dealer and asks her casually, "What is the best hand to have playing this game?" She says, " A 3 card straight flush." About that very moment, Roger gets his third card, he opens them up and they are the 7,8, & 9 of clubs!!! The very first hand he ever played, at a game he knew absolutely nothing about, he caught the biggest hand possible and the highest payday available... I forget exactly what the back bet payed and I think the ante only paid even money, but I remember the pair plus bet paid 40/1... We got $1000.00 for that hand, it took about 30 seconds...

He played a few more hands and lost a few bucks back trying to get the girl, and in the end we whacked up $800.00, $400.00 apiece--- he missed the girl... Pretty unlucky huh...

 

[Jeff sparks]

One more quick one about Roger's luck

One more quick one about Roger's luck

We are playing Coushatta in Kinder, La. every weekend, the game rocked, it was an ROE, 5/10 Omaha high only & 10/20 NLH and it would fill up at 9:30 on Friday morning and go non-stop through Sunday, with 3, sometimes 4 must move tables... It was the greatest game of it's size on planet earth for about 5 years...

Roger and I would always make the drive to Kinder on Thursday and be fresh and rested for the early AM game start on Friday... Roger's target for a good weekend was $5000.00, and many times he made or exceeded that figure, mine was considerably lower, I was happy making anything around the $2000.00 mark...

One weekend it went bad for Roger, every day he lost... The game finally broke up at 11:00 PM Sunday night and Roger was stuck $7800.00. He was sick about it, he just couldn't believe how unlucky he was!

Now here's a guy that has caught the deck for years, he's held more hands than a 90 year old manicurist... Here's a guy that thinks all his wins are simply because he's a great player, he hasn't realized how really lucky he has been... He doesn't know that fact, even today, and would not believe it if video proof was provided to him of every hand he ever played...

They say the proof is in the pudding, so here it is....

On the way out of the casino we are walking by the high stakes slot room, a place neither of us ever venture... Roger goes in, he walks around the room slowly and picks out a slot machine.. Puts in a $100.00 and hits spin... Bam!!!
A $10,000.00 jackpot...

He went from -$7800.00 to +$2200.00 in 1 second... They paid it off and he just walked out, he didn't even spin it off the machine... Said it was done, to risky!!!

 

[Jeff sparks]

I can't resist it, here's another about Mr. Lucky

I can't resist it, here's another about Mr. Lucky

We are in Tunica, Mississippi at the Horseshoe tournament one year and Roger is down $12,000.00 for the day... He's playing Omaha High $25/$50 blinds and the Mississippi straddle is on every hand, so it's 25/50/100...

I'm not in the game, but I have 25% of Roger's play, so I'm sweating the action... A 4 player pot comes up, the biggest chip movers in the game and a stuck Roger is a sure nuff recipe for a monster pot... The flop was 10/8/4 rainbow. They went to war... There was a bet, and a raise, and a re-raise, and a move-in/ move-in/ move-in/ move-in... The pot now had $18,000.00 in it... Roger had started the hand with $4500.00, so he was in for the whole enchilada...

The players asked, "Once, or Twice?" Meaning, did they want to deal the remaining turn and river cards only once for the entire pot, or twice, for half the pot each time... They all agreed to deal twice...

The first turn and river brought a 3 and a king
The second turn and river brought another 3 and an ace

Nobody moved... Nobody wanted to show his hand, including Roger, who I knew from experience, had missed his draw...

They just sat there for what seemed to me a long time, but was probably only about 7 or 8 seconds and finally one said, "I missed" followed by another who said, "Me too!" Followed by yet another who totally missed and then my man Roger, who I already knew had missed...

Then one by one they turned over their hands, the 3 losers had identical cards.. Each held 9/7/6/5...

Roger had J/9/7/6... He went from $12,000.00 loser to $6000.00 winner, and all he had was a Jack for high!!!

I never really analyzed the hand before I wrote this, but looking back on it, the hand Roger held was the nuts to win the pot, or chop it... No card could come that would beat it... All the 6's were out, and all the 7's were out!!! In spite of it looking like a monster flop for 3 players, they only had one 5, and three jacks they could tie with, everything else was a loss.. Hmmm... Was that skillful, or just incredibly lucky... Lol, glad I was in...