Really, really sad news that George Passed away earlier this week, not sure how many of the younger guys will have heard of him/played with him but for any of us who grew up in the North playing cards/gambling George was the absolute kingpin.
I remember very clearly first time I span up a bit of money and took the big lads on in Faz's game in Leeds, George, Lawrence, Andy O'Flaherty etc, I was so intimidated and nervous, afterwards George came up to me and asked me who I was, what I was doing etc (I'm sure he had his sharky reasons too!) but we became good friends and he went out of his way on numerous occasions to try and help me as I was growing up in gambling. You could find a lot of technically better poker players but not many who have stood the test of time to the tune of nearly 50 years, and never had a losing year!! Takes a lot of discipline and work ethic to survive in gambling for that long and I always had an enormous amount of respect for that. One of the great lessons George taught me was that you always gotta know your place in gambling, if you know where you can win, where you can't win, who you can beat, and who you can't beat then you'll be ahead of 95% of the guys in gambling.
Amazing how much respect he commanded from people he's been wining money gambling from for decades, conducted himself with a lot of class and was a true gentleman at the tables, and real great bloke off them. Legend of the northern gambling scene would be an understatement, insane to think of the Monday
PLO game without him.
Will be sorely missed, hope his last ever hand of poker was a winner.
R.I.P mate x