Rip Archie Karas

Fatboy

Fatboy

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Just heard Archie passed

He was a tremendous money player, I knew him since 91/92 in Vegas. He went from $0 to $1.5M playing Bobby Baldwin over 3 days at the Run Runner on Tropicana in 94 as I recall. Corvette Lou put the game together and Archie got the cash on the bar box.

He spun that into $26M (not $40M like the documentaries say) playing poker and craps, just to blow it all back.

Over the last years he did play some big $ matches. He popped up in Atlanta about 7-8 years ago(best I can recall) looking for a game. I don’t think he found one there.

Last I spoke with him was about 4 months ago. I last saw him at Griffs about 2-2.5 years ago.

He was a casino and pool legend. He wasn’t a milk drinking robot. 🫡

Rip Archie the Greek🙏🏼

Respectfully
Fatboy 🙏🏼
 
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Ken_4fun said:
I thought he got busted for cheating at cards.......

Ken
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Yep, got caught cheating in San Diego. Got probation and was banned from Vegas. Helluva life he led, got pumped, went broke more often than you can count. RIP hi-roller.
 
Fatboy said:
Just heard Archie passed

He was a tremendous money player, I knew him since 91/92 in Vegas. He went from $0 to $1.5M playing Bobby Baldwin over 3 days at the Run Runner on Tropicana in 94 as I recall. Corvette Lou put the game together and Archie got the cash on the bar box.

He spun that into $26M (not $40M like the documentaries say) playing poker and craps, just to blow it all back.

Over the last years he did play some big $ matches. He popped up in Atlanta about 7-8 years ago(best I can recall) looking for a game. I don’t think he found one there.

Last I spoke with him was about 4 months ago. I last saw him at Griffs about 2-2.5 years ago.

He was a casino and pool legend. He wasn’t a milk drinking robot. 🫡

Rip Archie the Greek🙏🏼

Respectfully
Fatboy 🙏🏼
Click to expand...
My condolences on the passing of your acquaintance. Sounds like he was a real character.
🙏
 
The Bobby Baldwin Fatboy mentioned is from here in Tulsa. Poker legend, won one of the early WSOP's and later got rich working for Steve Wynn then later he ran the MGM CityCenter. A buddy went to high school with him.
 
j2pac said:
My condolences on the passing of your acquaintance. Sounds like he was a real character.
🙏
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Thank you, you’re read was spot on. He was an acquaintance and he was a character. We didn’t get along in the 90’s however over time we got on better.

While he wasn’t a great player he was a huge personality and life long pool player that was the biggest action-when he had money.

Fatboy 🙏🏼
 
Ken_4fun said:
I thought he got busted for cheating at cards.......

Ken
Click to expand...
He did. Putting the daub on cards in a 21 game. He was in the real “Black Book” for that. He was old desperate and sloppy. That wasn’t ever part of the storied “Big score”. It was decade’s later.

Theres a video of him on YouTube on a channel called “Soft white underbelly”. I saw him a week before it was released. It’s a good watch if your into real life stuff like that. And it’s pretty accurate from what I personally saw and heard around Vegas for years and years. Jay Helfert knew him, lots of people in pool did

-Fatboy
 
garczar said:
The Bobby Baldwin Fatboy mentioned is from here in Tulsa. Poker legend, won one of the early WSOP's and later got rich working for Steve Wynn then later he ran the MGM CityCenter. A buddy went to high school with him.
Click to expand...
Bobby didn’t have a prayer in that pool game.

Archie had be running around Vegas for about a year playing $100 sets. We tried to match up many times. I couldn’t beat him playing 1P and I was stealing playing anything else. I was broke, he was broke we both at the time were looking for a stone cold lock.

Bobby had a huge ego, not a knock-just how Bobby was and probably is to a lesser extent now. I haven’t seen him in forever.

Corvette Lou got the game made with Bobby and Archie and they fired their nuts at him. 3 days later Bobby was stuck $1.5M which is about equal to $3M these days. The money wasn’t a huge sum for Bobby back then. He was Wynn’s right hand man and they were printing at the Mirage and other properties.

Archie spun that 1.5 into just a hair over 26 playing poker and craps at the Horseshoe downtown. He had ALL the $5K chips from the Shoe at one point. Which was the highest value chip at the time.

True to being a stone degen Archie drove a little white pickup with a camper shell. He’d sleep on it sometimes. All the while he had millions and loads of comps & the rebate. When asked why? He said he needed to save money for gambling. I can’t make this up.

There will be others I expect to chime in on this thread who knew him and watched it go down.

I have an audio clip of Lou (RIP and also a black book member) recounting the way he put the game together and how it went down. Not sure what I’m gonna do with that. I recorded it when Lou was very very sick and didn’t have long. Lou didn’t get into black book trouble with Archie. That’s another story.

These kinds of guys are what I miss in pool these days. 🥲

Fatboy<———getting older and slowly becoming the old guy. Glad I saw/lived pool and the personalities I did.
 
i knew archie well was around when he won the cash. i used to chase him to get to played cards. i was with him one day next to his box at binions and he had as said all their 5000 dollar chips in his box with tons of hundreds. from the casinos mouth he was up 45 million at one point but didnt stay at that for long.
i told him to take ten mil and and buy some bonds and at 5% he would have 500,000 a year for the rest of his life.
as fatboy said, he told me it was all in action and he was going to win the horseshoe. didnt happen.

archie was good with the dice. practiced with the best for years. but couldnt control himself.

toby in vegas got him for a good score with no chance , archie was a lock player until he had a bankroll.
when he started his dice run sudan was in with him for the start. what a piece he was.
 
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Whenever I hear about these guys winning millions then losing it all, especially Archie's story, I just think, man, how do you go on after that? That's gotta be soul destroying. Or was money truly no object to guys like that?
 
when you are a high stakes gambler win or lose doesn't bother you much after the next day. you get desensitized to the value of money or what happened yesterday. all in a day's life.

when you are betting the value of a new car or even a house people's eyes pop out of their head but gamblers may not consider it that way but think of it as the right thing to do.
 
maha said:
i knew archie well was around when he won the cash. i used to chase him to get to played cards. i was with him one day next to his box at binions and he had as said all their 5000 dollar chips in his box with tons of hundreds. from the casinos mouth he was up 45 million at one point but didnt stay at that for long.
i told him to take ten mil and and buy some bonds and at 5% he would have 500,000 a year for the rest of his life.
as fatboy said, he told me it was all in action and he was going to win the horseshoe. didnt happen.

archie was good with the dice. practiced with the best for years. but couldnt control himself.

toby in vegas got him for a good score with no chance , archie was a lock player until he had a bankroll.
when he started his dice run sudan was in with him for the start. what a piece he was.
Click to expand...
Toby got him for around $600,000 and took the $ and bought into Cue Club. Tony’s stake horse Gentile from Ok blew a couple hundred back to Archie. Toby had Archie in his cross hairs for a good bit of time and played his ass off to get ready. He was all business.

He was never up 40 or 45 as the story goes. It was 26.5ish, either way it was a truck load of money. About half from poker and about half from craps. The Shoe had 100X odds behind the pass line which was tremendous. He flatted the line with $1000 and took $100,000 odds. Which effectively is no vig for the joint. Can’t find action like that anymore. Legendary. The big score didn’t last that long-I don’t know how long it did last, so I won’t guess. I don’t know. But it wasn’t long. That’s how it goes, the mentality to book a score like that is the same mentality that will bust you even if you have ALL the 5K chips

Gambling $ knows no home
 
Fatboy said:
Just heard Archie passed

He was a tremendous money player, I knew him since 91/92 in Vegas. He went from $0 to $1.5M playing Bobby Baldwin over 3 days at the Run Runner on Tropicana in 94 as I recall. Corvette Lou put the game together and Archie got the cash on the bar box.

He spun that into $26M (not $40M like the documentaries say) playing poker and craps, just to blow it all back.

Over the last years he did play some big $ matches. He popped up in Atlanta about 7-8 years ago(best I can recall) looking for a game. I don’t think he found one there.

Last I spoke with him was about 4 months ago. I last saw him at Griffs about 2-2.5 years ago.

He was a casino and pool legend. He wasn’t a milk drinking robot. 🫡

Rip Archie the Greek🙏🏼

Respectfully
Fatboy 🙏🏼
Click to expand...
Archie was a genuine behemoth, a monster in our genre.
For a long time.
May he rest in gentle peace with the Angels. Forever.

Will Prout
 
RIP

Archie.png
 
RIP Archie. The man had big Kahunas.

Can anyone retell the story when Freddie the Beard put him in a trap during his run? I don't remember all of the details, but I'm sure someone does here.
 
Fatboy said:
Bobby didn’t have a prayer in that pool game.

Archie had be running around Vegas for about a year playing $100 sets. We tried to match up many times. I couldn’t beat him playing 1P and I was stealing playing anything else. I was broke, he was broke we both at the time were looking for a stone cold lock.

Bobby had a huge ego, not a knock-just how Bobby was and probably is to a lesser extent now. I haven’t seen him in forever.

Corvette Lou got the game made with Bobby and Archie and they fired their nuts at him. 3 days later Bobby was stuck $1.5M which is about equal to $3M these days. The money wasn’t a huge sum for Bobby back then. He was Wynn’s right hand man and they were printing at the Mirage and other properties.

Archie spun that 1.5 into just a hair over 26 playing poker and craps at the Horseshoe downtown. He had ALL the $5K chips from the Shoe at one point. Which was the highest value chip at the time.

True to being a stone degen Archie drove a little white pickup with a camper shell. He’d sleep on it sometimes. All the while he had millions and loads of comps & the rebate. When asked why? He said he needed to save money for gambling. I can’t make this up.

There will be others I expect to chime in on this thread who knew him and watched it go down.

I have an audio clip of Lou (RIP and also a black book member) recounting the way he put the game together and how it went down. Not sure what I’m gonna do with that. I recorded it when Lou was very very sick and didn’t have long. Lou didn’t get into black book trouble with Archie. That’s another story.

These kinds of guys are what I miss in pool these days. 🥲

Fatboy<———getting older and slowly becoming the old guy. Glad I saw/lived pool and the personalities I did.
Click to expand...
Interesting about Corvette Lou. I had heard the story of Archie and Bobby Baldwin over the years. Never heard of another person. A bit of googling was interesting. What turns up doesn’t get you into the details of what was happening but is still interesting. RIP to both
 
i dont know of corvette lou. but i do know archie knew bobby real well and could arrange his own game anytime he wanted to call him.
 
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