Charles “Cary” Davis

MLHS March 1964 until graduation. After graduating from high school, I went to Big Bend Community Collegefor one year. I was waiting to become 18 1/2 years old so that I could join the Army and go to officer school. I joined the Army May 21, 1967. Once in the Army, I was accepted to officer school and did pre-officer school training, but they had put a hiatus on Officer Candidate School, and I went to New Jersey and went to Microwave Radio Repair school. The school in Fort Monmouth was like being in college. There was no KP, marching or standing guard. We played poker and other card games at night and on the weekends. We’d ski at West Point, have fun in New York City or hang out in Redbank, New Jersey. Weekends were so great and many memorable times. About 6 months into training, I got pneumonia and did not finish the Radar Repair School. I ended up being sent to San Antonio, Texas to be trained as a combat medic, the most dangerous job in the Vietnam war. Officer’s school was reopened and I applied immediately. In late August we were finishing our training (which was so much fun but that’s another story) and two things happened. I was accepted into Artillery Officer’s Candidate School in Oklahoma and got orders for Frankfurt Germany as a Medic. I chose Germany for the remaining 19 months of service. I had a wonderful time in Germany and spent my last six months on a ski patrol as a medic and got a lifetime membership to National Ski Patrol. It was in Garmisch Partenkirchen which is absolutely beautiful and home to the tallest mountain in Germany. In Germany I also trained as an emergency room medic and a laboratory technician. I used those skills to help me pay for college. On my last day in the Army, I found out that I could never have been sent toVietnam because I was the sole surviving male in my family In May of 1970 I returned to Moses Lake and that fall was back at Big Bend Community College while working at the Porterhouse Restaurant, our family restaurant, and a local doctor as a lab tech. In 1971 I went to Eastern Washington State College in Cheney. In the summer of 1972, I came back home and was working in our restaurant. My sister had moved to Las Vegas in March and was a poker dealer at the Aladdin Casino. She and I had run a poker game out of the Porterhouse Restaurant during the wintertime on Saturday nights. We’d also had games at home and I played a tremendous amount of poker in the Army. It was always a lucrative kind of a side hustle for me, so to speak. My sister invited me to come down to Vegas and visit that August. I came down and looked around and of course it was wonderful place after turning 21. I had been here many times with my uncle, who was the General Manager for several card rooms in Gardena, California. He and his wife had brought me to Vegas when I was younger for golf and shows. So, I was very familiar with it. But my sister, of course, was a poker dealer, and that was the interesting part of it. One day during my five day stay, when my sister got off work, she said, “come on, let's go downtown.” I had never spent much time downtown. I had only basically toured it once, I think. So off we went and ended up Golden Nugget Casino. As we walked in the door, I saw this huge poker room. There were about 12 tables, seven or eight of them were being actively used that afternoon in the summer, which was very impressive. I’d never seen anything like that before in my life. My sister’s card room only had 4 tables. When we walked closer to the poker room, she waved at an older fellow that was walking around dressed nicely in a suit. He came over and says, “Hi, Linda.” And she says “Hi. Mr. Boyd, I'd like to introduce you to my brother, Cary. I found out later the man was Bill Boyd, a world-famous poker player, along with owning the poker room. He said, “Nice to meet you Cary, how are you doing? Are you enjoying your trip? And I said, oh, yeah, very much. He said “That’s great, I'd like to hire you.” And I said, “What?” He said, “I'd like to hire you. You could learn to be a dealer, which would be a good job while you’re going to college.” This was the middle of August. And I had spent a really cold winter in Spokane, drug myself to the classes in knee deep snow. I couldn't use my car or my motorcycle and bottom line was I’d had it with the winters in Cheney. Mr. Boyd asked me when I could start to work and I said “Labor Day” which was three weeks away. And on Labor Day, I came back and by that time I'd done my research and knew that I could go to University of Las Vegas, Nevada after a year of residency and of course use my military pay toward school also. So, I ended up moving in with my sister in Las Vegas and that was the beginning of 54 years so far in Las Vegas and hoping for a few more. I spent a year playing poker for a living while going to school. 5 years and no degree. After realizing I didn’t want to be in the casino business, I got into sales and was selling office equipment. Then I got offered a job as a stock broker for a Swiss Firm and living in Cannes, France. I jumped at it and spent two years there and then in Monte Carlo for 4 months. When I returned to Las Vegas I got my stock broker’s license and worked in finance doing stock offering for startup companies. In the late 80s I was offered a job as the national sales manager with a company setting up microwave television station around the country. I got married in 1991 for the second time. While I worked as the national sales manager, we lived in Florida, Texas, Alabama and four different times in California. In 1996 the President of the company died and the company closed. My next venture was working with Oracle and Sun Microsystems helping finance the start up companies they were promoting. In 2003 during the online poker craze, I opened a company called Omni Media and Entertainment, Inc. and started the American Poker Player Magazine and The American Poker Player Championships tournaments at Binion’s Horseshoe Casino. In 2006 we started a TV show called “The Final Table Challenge”. Major casinos from around the country would send players to play in a $150,000 single table tournament. It was set to premier in December and we were actively selling advertising until the midterm elections changed everything. The US made internet gambling illegal by adding it to the Port Security Bill. Billions of dollars in advertising, that I was hoping to take advantage of, was gone overnight. In 6 months, my company was out of business. I retired so to speak in that I’d work as a consultant to companies selling different products or services and take a year off here and there. In 1995 my wife and I ended up buying a home on the Los Prados Country Club here in Las Vegas and that has been our home ever since. We've had a great time playing golf here and all over on some of the greatest courses including: Pebble Beach, Spanish Bay, Torrey Pines, TPC Scottsdale, Myrtle Beach, all over Florida, Maui Hawaii and 30 or so courses in Nevada and Southern Utah. In 2017 I wrote a book on golf called “The Bogey Golfer Handbook”. We’ve given away over 40,000 electronic copies. I’m just about to publish my book about life and times with the mob, murders, drugs, sex and a little rock and roll of Vegas in the 70s and early 80s.
Who would have ever guess we’d all live this long (though many have not) when back in our youth, people in their 70s were considered ancient!