Vietnam Vet, Cancer Survivor & All-Around Badass Jerald “Otis” Williamson Crushing WSOP Big 50
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Jerald “Otis” Williamson is a survivor, both in life and in poker.
Regarding the latter, he fired Day 1b of 2019 World Series of Poker Event #3: Big 50 - $500 No-Limit Hold’em and was one of 1,580 of 5,972 entrants to find a bag. On Sunday’s Day 2b flight, those 1,580 players returned to action with 321 making it through the night. No one bagged more than Williamson, who finished as the flight’s chip leader with 4.105 million chips.
“I steadily worked my way up, and then in the last hour I went from a little over 2 million to 4 million,” Williamson told PokerNews the following day. “I would catch a card and nobody would believe it.”
Williamson, a retired pipefitter from Allison Transmission, is in prime position to make a run on Wednesday’s Day 3, and that’s just the latest chapter in a remarkable life.
Good Run of Bad Luck
While Williamson is flying high in the Big 50, his start to the 2019 WSOP started with heartache. You see, Williamson traveled from his Cloverfield, Indiana home to Las Vegas not only to play some poker but also to see an old friend.
“My best friend was shot and murdered the day I got out here,” Williamson said as he began to well up. Unfortunately, the prospect of death was something the 63-year-old Vietnam vet had to deal with over the years.
"They got me talking again by injecting the stuff they put in women’s lips to blow them up.”
“In 2006 I was out here and came in fourth in a shootout,” Williamson explained. “I was having trouble with my throat while I was out here. I went home and kept going to the doctor. I found out I had throat cancer. I battled that, just about didn’t make it, ended up in the hospital with sepsis. But I made it, I’m a survivor.”
Unfortunately, the health troubles weren’t over for Williamson.
“I had a couple of strokes and that was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me because I couldn’t walk or talk for five months,” he explained. Making things worse was the fact his health complications impacted his personal life.
“My wife left me after 44 years,” he revealed. “She couldn’t take all the stress, she’s a worrywart, but it was the best thing that ever happened for both of us.”
Indeed, Williamson didn’t seem bitter over the sour turn of events, of which he eventually recovered.
“They had cut the nerve going to my vocal cord during the operation. They had to break my jaw and cut me from my neck to the top of my head to cut all the junk out,” he said of recovering from the strokes. “They got me talking again by injecting the stuff they put in women’s lips to blow them up.”
Full Circle at the Golden Nugget
Williamson is healthy enough to get back out to Vegas, a pilgrimage he’s made for decades.
“My father brought me out here in 1981. He used to play at the Golden Nugget at the big table,” he said. “That’s when they used to snort cocaine right there at the table and you could walk up to the rail and watch. It was a black-chip game. That week I went to every casino. We drove out here, he was afraid to fly, we did that until he passed. He was a big poker player.”
“I started with bottlecaps and moved up to pennies.”
He'd follow in his father’s footsteps becoming a poker player himself.
“I learned to play poker at five years old,” he said. “I started with bottlecaps and moved up to pennies.”
Williamson, who has a son, daughter, and five grandkids, has since kept the tradition alive and last year even shipped the 2018 Grand Poker Series Event #8: $150 NLH for $28,969 at Golden Nugget. All told Williamson has just over $47k in lifetime earnings, a total he’ll add to in the Big 50.
Fortunately, Williamson is only in for a single bullet and managed to avoid the massive lines as a friend helped him preregister the tournaments. Now, he’s hoping to spin that single buy-in into a big payday.
“If I win this thing I’m here for the whole summer,” he said with a laugh. “It’d be a life changer.”
Be sure to follow Williamson’s run in the Big 50 in the dedicated PokerNews Live Updates from the 2019 World Series of Poker.
