Longtime Card Player Columnist And Poker Author Bob Ciaffone Passes Away

Bob Ciaffone, maybe finest often called the writer of Robert’s Rules of Poker, handed away Friday on the age of 81.

Nicknamed ‘The Coach’ as a result of he was one in all poker’s first lecturers, Ciaffone was a longtime columnist for Card Player and wrote a number of books on the sport, together with Omaha Poker: The Action, Middle Limit Poker, Pot-Limit and No-Limit Poker, and Improve Your Poker.

He labored with the New Jersey Casino Control Commission to determine poker site guidelines and his guidelines e-book was used as a suggestion by Florida officers for his or her legal guidelines.

Ciaffone was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1940. He spent a few years touring the world enjoying video games earlier than settling down in Saginaw, Michigan.

He turned an professional in poker dwelling sport statutes, and even introduced a paper of his findings on the London International Gaming Conference. He later established FLOP, in any other case often called Fair Laws on Poker, to push for state legal guidelines which can be friendlier to poker gamers.

As a poker participant, Ciaffone got here near successful a WSOP gold bracelet on just a few events, and even completed third within the 1987 major occasion that was finally received by Johnny Chan.

Ciaffone was additionally a standout chess, backgammon, and bridge participant. Not solely was he the previous president of the Michigan Chess Association, however he was additionally awarded the title of Life Master by the U.S. Chess Federation. It was an honor he would additionally obtain from the American Contract Bridge League.

His demise was reported by Ben Finegold, a chess grandmaster with whom he co-wrote the Smith-Morra Gambit, Finegold Defense.