My name is Sandy Terry, and I recently found your site (tropicanabowlingalley.com). I met Steve Mizerak, the high stakes gambler often found at the Tropicana Bowling Alley in the late 196o’s. Steve and I were close, and he taught me how to gamble professionally. Please do not confuse my Steve Mizerak with the famous pool player, they are different people. Fascinated with the game of pool I was a session “sweater”, who just loved to watch the action. At some point in time the guys decided that since I was able to spend all that time sweating the games, I was also the perfect person to hold the stakes! I enjoyed playing 9-ball at the Trop and occasionally Richie Florence would humor me with a three ball spot and the break. Steve and Richie were close friends and visited Las Vegas on a regular basis. Japanese Mike spent time teaching me to play pool and I got proficient enough to hit the bars in my mini skirt and hustle 8 ball for $5.00 a game. Steve and I spent most of the day gambling in and around Gardena living the dream. But his real passion was playing pool. Unfortunately, he wasn’t good enough to be called a “player”, but he never quit trying. Occasionally he’d get a pool match and create a handicap which allowed him to win. This made him happier than making a score in the big lowball game at the Horseshoe Casino. “Mad Dog Mizerak” was his “nick name”. If you knew him it did not take much imagination to figure out why. He had so much gamble that his friends claim it sometimes made him crazy. Steve and I actually started a very successful business until he started gambling again and I ended up leaving him. We met in the 1980’s when I was a prop player and a dealer at the Oaks in Emeryville. Ten years later he showed up at the race track close to me. We had dinner and he told me about his wife, the twins and her tragic passing. He was running a phone solicitation business across the country and playing high stakes poker. Last year I contacted his brother in hopes of reliving those old days, but Anton told me he had passed on. The last 6 years of Steve’s life he lived in Oregon playing poker at the local card room. The time I spent with him was some of the most exiting years in my life.
Sincerely, Sandy Terry.