By Sean Chaffin
It’s a Saturday night in West Texas and the music is thumping with plenty of people on the dance floor working up a sweat at Basin Nights. A few cowboys battle it out at a pool table at the club in Odessa, Texas, and a few other partiers wait to man the mic when karaoke kicks off later.
Club owner and poker player Stacey Jones (pictured) is in the middle of all this – and not afraid to sing a George Strait tune himself if the mood strikes him.
“I’ve been an entertainer for years,” says Jones, who’s owned the club for 14 years. “We play all kinds of dance music.”
Jones has also been a poker player for decades and was one of the chip leaders in the later stages of Day 2 at the WPT Choctaw. Before becoming a club owner, Jones could be found on stages all over West Texas as a country act – belting out tunes for those looking for some two-stepping or just an ice cold beer.
Basin Nights (named for the Permian Basin in which Odessa lies geographically) also hosts another of his passions – poker. He learned the game from his grandfather as a young man, and The 55-year-old now hosts bar league poker at his own club, awarding cash prizes to winners and even manning the dealer’s box on occasion.
As a teenager, Jones was introduced to Texas Hold’em while watching horse races at the Lubbock Downs. Horse racing wasn’t legal at that time, but ever the gambler, he and his friends wagered among themselves on the ponies.
“They’d usually have poker games around the track,” he says. “They ran recognized races, but there was no gambling. But we were gambling.”
On one trip to the track, a friend’s father told him about a $50 Texas Hold’em tournament and Jones was hooked.
Poker has plenty of Old West traditions. A trip to play poker in Oklahoma inevitably includes a few cowboy hats in the field – harkening back a bit to that history. There have been a few here this week at the WPT Choctaw and Jones’s Stetson stands out. Heading into Day 3, Jones starts play with 788,000.
Growing up in a ranching family, his father always raised cattle and Jones learned plenty about the job. But the life on the stage with a microphone always interested him more.
“My dad’s kind of a cowboy, more so than me,” he says. “I learned how to work those cows, but I did enough of that to know I wasn’t much of a cowboy. I wanted to do music instead – I’m a singer.”
And apparently a pretty good poker player too. Jones has more than $42,000 in live tournament winnings as a recreational player, and makes the six and half hour trip occasionally to play cards here in Durant.
“I try to make all the circuit events here at Choctaw,” he says. “The Choctaw put on a good tournament and the staff is always friendly. Of course, I always like to play a few slots and gamble. I wish I could play more but time is always an issue with handling my business.”
What’s it like running so deep here in Durant with a room filled with top players? He credits the competition he’s seen in recent years with improving his own skills.
“These young guys, they’re great players and I take nothing away from them,” he says. “They’ve made me play poker differently. I have to have a little bit broader opening hands and sometimes I’ll make a call for a bluff on the turn or something. They’ve actually made me a better player, so I’ve got total respect for them.”
Those lessons on the fly appear to be paying dividends as shown by his progress here this weekend. Ever the showman, Jones plays a major role in his club’s Facebook videos, often noting what’s on tap that weekend and giving updates on the poker league.
As he continues to battle, a trip to Vegas for the final table becomes closer and closer to a possibility and is certainly something he craves.
“I would really enjoy it and it would be cool to be on TV,” Jones says. “I always felt like I could play poker. But what it would mean more than anything to me is just that I get another chance to play some more poker.”
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