Level 9 (600/1200/1200)
Total Entrants: 140
Let us introduce you to Thad Dilday (pictured). Or, perhaps you'd know him better by this honorary title of The Mayor of Suckerville, Kentucky.
"And don't forget the 'Kentucky,'" the West Monroe, Louisiana, resident insists.
Dilday has been playing in Bossier City and around the country for decades, and earned the sobriquet from poker legend and Bossier City native Keith Lehr. How, exactly?
"Keith called me that because I was such a sucker in the $10/$25 Omaha game," Dilday explains. But others in the room pile on with more stories of the 81-year-old grinder.
"We call him the Mayor because he thinks he's in charge of everything," Horseshoe Poker Room Manager Chad Disante tells us. "He thinks he can run the dealer and the floor staff all the time, and we let him think he can."
Dilday made his fortune in the oil and gas industry, selling his primary business in 1985, just months before the oil price crash in early 1986.
"I didn't think they were offering me enough money for it at the time," Dilday remembers, "But I went home and prayed about it and the Lord said, 'You take whatever you can get.'"
Asked what he does with his time now aside from playing poker, Dilday says he advises young people how to create wealth and old people how to retain it. "The key is to take ten cents out of every dollar you earn and put it towards something that appreciates in value. You do that from the time you're young, you'll be in the top 3%."
Dilday is confident in his advice, and equally adept at the poker table, regardless of the name you know him by, with 65,300 chips.