I picked up 6 of the CEC hubs in Las Vegas last week for our little group. They are not scarce as the guy had 91 of them and did not have any info on them. Not all illegal chips will return a big story but we had a lot of fun with this one so I decided to post it. Not a big story but still history of a 78 year old chip. It was issued 7 years before I was born. Most of what we have posted in the "Illegal Of The Day" series has been bigger stories. I have a number of "Smaller" stories backed up and will be posting them as time permits. The smaller operators came from all walks of American life. Not all were connected to big crime families. They are still a big part of the history of our chips.

Enough of that:

G.F. Westerfield
PO Box 323
Clovis, NM
1/9/35 – 750 chips

Email thread between Ed, David, and me.

I'm piecing this together but according to what I'm finding:
Gordon F. Westerfield (Clovis, NM) - 1904-1948

Married to Lenis M. (1917 - ???) in 1940 Census (if married in 1933 per David, she would be 16 years old at the time). I don't know what happens to her.
Married to Billy Louise (1924 - 1945) in 1941 (age 17), who Committed suicide in 1945
Gordon and Billy had a son, Gordon F. Westerfield, in 1942 (dies in 1970), (age 28).

Geez, him. several wives, and a kid all died before the age of 45.

Looks like these people married, lived and died young. The only flag I have is why he was married to one person in 1940 and remarried in 1941. I don't know what happened to his first wife. Maybe at 23 years old she was just too old for him.

What does “CEC” stand for? Maybe “Clovis (something) Club”
How about "Child Exploitation Club?"

I think I said he liked them young. The man got married 4 times? Good lord, what a glutton for punishment. I wonder if they all died young... pretty shady.

Ok, enough. Time to call in the pro!

From our Friend.

Sorry I wasn’t very quick on this. Been waiting for a response from the Clovis library on a city directory look-up. I asked if they could do a look-up in the 1935 or 1936 city directory. They didn’t have one from either of those years.

The closest they had was 1939 and it listed no occupation for G. F. Westerfield. The 1941 directory said he was the owner of the Clovis Billiard & Domino Parlor at 306 Main Street. The place was in business when the chips were ordered but I don’t know if Westerfield had anything to do with it at the time.

My note: I am going with the Clovis Billiard & Domino Parlor with an *, as the ID for now. It was open at the time of the order and Westerfield was in Clovis. Maybe they will find the 1936 city directory but in the past I've found many city directories to be lacking a lot of info. It is quite possible he was just working there and took over ownership a few years later.

Gordon F. Westerfield moved around a bit. Born 1903 in Kentucky, his parents moved to Clovis when he was a kid (father was a physician); moved to Amarillo, TX in the 1920’s, then to Wichita, Kansas in the early 1930’s and lived there up to the time of the chip order. Sometime around the time of the chip order he goes back to Clovis where he lives until the early 1940’s when he goes to Denver, CO. At Denver he marries a 19 year old (his 4th wife) and moves back to Clovis, then to Phoenix, then San Diego, then Los Angeles where he dies in the suburb of Huntington Park in 1948, age 45.

I know Clovis had a city directory produced in 1936. I’m going to try and find a copy and see if it says what Westerfield was doing.

Amarillo Slim in his memoirs says that when he was 16 (around 1944) two Amarillo gamblers took him on his first pool-hustling road trip. One of the places they went was Clovis, about 90 miles southwest of Amarillo.

My note:

I miss talking to Slim. Boy could he tell stories. I always sought him out at the WSOP's in the 1980's-90's. He was my source of info on many Texas and Oklahoma chips in my collection. Slim was a hustler. He hustled whatever could make him money. He told me stories of his pool playing and to hear him tell it, he was the best "Domino" player in Texas. Did Slim play at the Clovis Billiard & Domino Parlor in his early days of hustling? I guess we will never know for sure.

I remember Slim's appearance on the Tonight Show with John ny Carson. He was great at promoting poker. It is probably on the web somewhere.

A little story involving Slim.

Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, Amarillo Slims Super Bowl Of Poker January 1990. It had moved down from Caesars Tahoe, I think for 1989.

The players were not happy with Caesars Las Vegas. They did not think they were being treated fair with comps. A number of them started a cause. The live game players created trnt signs and put them on the tables in front of their stacks.

"BET A BUNCH" and "BRING YOUR LUNCH"

I had been very involved with the WSOP for the last 10 years hosting satellites and over flows. I wanted my own "Major" poker tournament.

In mid 1990 I pitched my idea for a major poker tournament at the Four Queen's. I had never run anything that big. Slim's Super Bowl Of Poker had moved from Caesar's to Laughlin for Jan 1991. I had already talked to Slim about moving it to the Four Queen's in 1992. He wanted too much money, IMO. To be honest, I wanted those January dates. January downtown was always notorious for being the worse revenue month of the year.

I convinced Four Queen's management to let me run with ours without a big players name. I scheduled it to start 1 day after Slim's ended in early February 1991. The Europeans in mass liked the February dates better and skipped Slim's tournament. It was a disaster. The Queen's Poker Classic opened in 1991 as the 2nd largest poker tournament in the world (beating out Binion;s Hall Of Fame for 2nd place) and held that rank until I left in 1996 to go to work for George Maloof at the Fiesta.

The Super Bowl was cancelled for 1992 and we moved into the January time slot in 1992. The rest is history. January 1992 was the 1st time in the history of the Four Queens they ever showed a profit in the month of January. I was "King" of the "Queen's." A lot had to do with the tourney crew. They were the "Best Of The Best." They came from all over the USA to ply their talents.

Rest easy friend, "Amarillo Slim," 1928-2012