Jeff Haney attends a memorial service for ‘Puggy’ Pearson, where friends and family shared stories of the ‘rounder’

Wednesday, April 19, 2006 | 7:24 a.m.

Walter Clyde "Puggy" Pearson was remembered by friends and family Monday as a talented gambler, a colorful hustler who used his wits and imagination to become a success, and "the greatest rounder this country has ever seen."

Pearson, the 1973 World Series of Poker champion and a member of the Poker Hall of Fame, died last Wednesday in Las Vegas at age 77.

At Monday's memorial service in a gracefully appointed ballroom at the Bellagio, a procession of speakers had those in attendance dissolving into laughter time and again as they recounted their memories of Pearson's one-of-a-kind antics at the poker table and on the golf course.

A high-stakes golf gambler, Pearson once famously said he didn't care what his golf handicap was because he could shoot just well enough to get the money on any given day.

Pearson's daughter, Andrea Phelan of Nashville, Tenn., said her father, a notorious "ham," would have been pleased that the service was marked by so much laughter - "celebrating who he was and not mourning his loss."

Pearson was raised in poverty in Tennessee and dropped out of school at age 11, Phelan said, and she believes that inheriting her father's natural intelligence and instinct helped her build a career as a successful trial attorney.

"The person I am today is due in large part to the fact I'm so much like my father," she said.

Longtime poker pro Eric Drache recalled tangling with Pearson, then an established star, in a poker game when he first arrived in town as an aspiring gambler. With all of the cards out, Pearson assured him he had the winning hand and made a heartfelt speech about how Drache, being a newcomer, should save his last couple of hundred dollars instead of using it to call Pearson's final bet.

"He said, 'Put that money back in your pocket and start over,' " Drache said. "So I tried to take advantage of his kindness, put it in my pocket - and he couldn't wait to show me that bluff.

"That was my first day in Vegas."

Legendary poker player Doyle Brunson said that in the late 1960s, when big poker games first began appearing on the Strip, Pearson was indisputably "the man."

"Make no mistake about it, there was only one No. 1, and Puggy was it," Brunson said. "He was the king of poker. He had the best natural instincts of anyone I've known.

"One time this guy came up, I was asking him about Puggy, about how all the games revolved around him. And this guy says, 'Oh, Puggy's a sucker. I cheat him all the time.' Now this guy didn't have two nickels to rub together, and Puggy had money falling out of every pocket.

"I remember thinking to myself, I want to be a sucker like Puggy."

Another time, Brunson asked Pearson why he continued to lend money to a deadbeat gambler who never paid him back.

"Puggy said, 'That guy owes me so much money, if he's out of action, how's he ever going to pay me?' " Brunson said.

Those in attendance watched a video montage of Pearson's life set to music, including "Puggy Pearson, King of the Gambling World," a song written by poker pro Mike Sexton, and the traditional folk song "The Roving Gambler."

In a statement read by his brother Tom Sexton, Mike Sexton praised Pearson's skill as a "rounder" - essentially a scuffler, a hustler who gets by on his gambling savvy - and noted that Pearson was an expert at gin rummy, golf and pool as well as poker.

"He was truly an original," Mike Sexton wrote. "I can't imagine we'll ever see another one quite like Puggy."