Kathy Raymond at Foxwoods

We once had a very large pot-limit game here,” says Kathy Raymond, Director of Poker Operations at Foxwoods, “which involved a certain player (and I’m not naming names) who had quite a reputation for exploding. He and another player were involved in a huge pot – it must have been $70,000 at least. The board had come up, and I had the opportunity to see both players’ hands. The ‘explosive’ player had the nuts and made a huge bet, and his opponent called with nothing more than a gutshot possibility. The moment that river card came up and he hit his gutshot, I remember running to the table and removing ashtrays, chairs, glasses, anything that could end up flying around the card room. No one knew what I was doing, but I cleared the whole area because I knew there was going to be a nuclear explosion when those hands were shown. Strangely enough, there was no explosion. The player just got up, walked to the corner and mumbled to himself for a while.”

The story illustrates that female insight, when applied to the running of a card room, is clearly no bad thing, and it’s a point that Kathy Raymond has proved again and again throughout her career. When she took over as director, Foxwoods poker room was successful, but this was pre-poker boom. Foxwoods has since seen 88% growth under Kathy’s watchful eye and now employs double the staff it used to.

And when a guy called Steve Lipscomb came knocking one day with some ‘crazy idea about putting poker on television’, she immediately recognized the potential, and Foxwoods became the first casino to sign
up with the newly formed WPT, prompting everyone else to follow suit. And today Foxwood’s World Poker Finals, with the help of Kathy’s tournament director Michael Ward, has grown from 96 players in 2002 to an extraordinary 674 in 2004, one of the largest tournament’s on the circuit.

Kathy used to be a successful accountant until sometime in 1992 when, feeling burnt out, she walked. She walked straight into the newly opened Foxwoods to pursue her lifelong love of poker. “I wanted to do
something crazy and different, so I went to Foxwoods and became a poker dealer.”

Her talents were soon spotted and, on her rise to the top, she held just about every position on the card room floor. Ten days into her new position as director of poker operations she was involved in a serious car crash, but her dedication was such that she spent the next six months directing operations from a wheel chair.

Kathy loves her job and flushes with pride when I put it to her that she’s played an important role in the flourishing popularity of the poker; the game that she’s adored since the age of eight.

“It’s great to see the young people coming in,” she says. “I think poker is the new extreme sport. The adrenalin rush you can get from no-limit poker competes with jumping out of an airplane or driving sports cars. It’s that same kind of absolute rush.”

“I disagree with people who call it all a craze,” she smiles.

“Poker is a huge part of so many people’s lives, and it always will be.”

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