Early Life
Reese suffered from rheumatic fever during his years at elementary school and had to stay at home for almost a year. During this time, his mother taught him how to play several board and card games. Reese later described himself as "a product of that year." By the age of six, he was regularly beating fifth-graders at poker. In high school he was a football player and was on the debate team, winning an Ohio State Championship and going to the National Finals.
He attended Dartmouth College after turning down an offer from Harvard University. At Dartmouth, he became a member of Beta Theta Pi Fraternity, played freshman football briefly, participated in debate, and majored in economics. He also had tremendous success in poker games against students and some of his professors. He taught his fraternity brothers to play a variety of card games, including bridge as well as many poker variants. He played bridge at the Grafton County Grange, one of his regular bridge partners was Jim Ryan. His fraternity later named their chapter card room, the "David E. Reese Memorial Card Room" in his honor. He was admitted to Stanford Law School, but decided instead to play poker professionally after winning $60,000 in a tournament in Las Vegas. By the time he would have started at Stanford, he had made $100,000. His first visit to Las Vegas was so financially rewarding and so much fun, that he literally never left. He called his day job in Arizona several days later to quit and hired someone to fly to Arizona to clean out his apartment and drive his car to Las Vegas.
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