Doc Holliday (1851-1887): Poker Troublemaker?
In 1875, Doc Holliday flees Jacksboro, Texas after administering several bullets on a poker rival one night. This rival turned out to be a plain-clothed soldier stationed in Fort Richardson. Heading northward, he stops over at Fort Griffin. To practice his card skills, he invites some locals for a friendly poker game in the process. Some time later, a bully invites himself into Holliday's game intending to make trouble - he finds it. After a couple of attempts to annoy Holliday, he successfully gets engraved with a bullet through his body. In addition to this, three more were added in his roster of gambling victims. What was going on with the Holliday games?
Born John Henry Holliday, he grew up in a respected and wealthy home in Griffin, Georgia. His father was a pharmacist, a plantation owner, and a Confederate major in the Civil War. John Henry had the opportunity to be well-schooled in the arts and sciences and values of a society of high breeding. Later in advanced studies, he chose to specialize in dentistry.
After graduation he puts up a clinic in Atlanta, Georgia, which went well until tuberculosis sets in. He may have acquired it from his mother who died of the disease when he was fifteen, the bacteria lying dormant in him until that point of his life. Attempts to conceal this detail to his clients did not prosper, his chronic coughs scaring them all away. He decides to move to Texas, where he believed its warm climate would advantage his health.
Yet his dreams of establishing a clinic in this new land were ever so strong. The drawback, however, was ever so the same. It was here, in the middle of the gold and cattle rush, where he realized the money-making power of gambling, that he could make more than his clinic could bring him. He finally decides to end his medical career and become a professional gambler.
He practiced his hand with a deck of cards day and night, notwithstanding his terminal TB. A man with a high ability to learn quickly, he soon added another major to his lonesome grinding: gunslinging - a skill that every gambler must master lest they be caught in their wiles and be slain. Holliday understood this well and became notoriously known for it.
His poker frequently got him into trouble. After the incident with the local bully in Fort Griffin, he was arrested and incarcerated. He shortly escaped and high-tailed it to Dodge City, where dealing a game of faro, he was able to save Wyatt Earp's life. They become loyal friends and was deputized as among Earp's peacekeeping cadre.
Doc Holliday drank heavily, believing that it would alleviate the pain of his condition. He frequently gambled and was involved in gunfights, the last one being in Leadville in 1884. Three years later at age 36, he lost his battle with tuberculosis. In his gambling-gunfighting career, he was almost hanged four times, five times surviving fatal bullets.