'look Up And He's Got Your Money'

" Japan . We went to Japan ."

"Yes, for a fight."

"Don't knock the fights. They take us places," says Billy. He grins. "In Osaka the Japanese Mafia picked us up in a limo. You could tell they were Mafia because their little fingers were cut off at the first joint."

" Japan , but never New England ."

"If you get too far from the action," says Billy, "you'll lose your shirt. Gambling's not for everybody. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to my son. I've been robbed at gunpoint. One night I had to grab my money and jump out a second-story window when a guy put a .38 on the table in a gin game. I've been betting since I was in the fourth grade, playing marbles for keeps. I got myself a Champagne Velvet box full of marbles doing that. And that's what this is all about, really—playing for keeps."

Early on, he says, he knew he wanted to play only for the highest stakes, "not with guys who couldn't pay the milk bill." Pool hustling was out—"the biggest waste of time there is. You may learn a little about life from pool, but you'd be better off spending the time on the golf course, with people who have lots of money. When I was still a youngster, I'd get invited to the country club to play golf and into the back room of the country club to play poker. And that's not bragging, that's just a fact. You don't get invited to the country club to play pool."

His mother wanted him to be a doctor or a dentist. There were three doctors and a dentist on his father's side. Billy wanted to play poker. He tried college—Augusta College—for a year and a half, but it didn't take. His mother helped him get a job selling The Book of Knowledge encyclopedias. Soon enough, Billy was the best Book of Knowledge encyclopedia salesman in three states, and bored stiff.

Coming home in the afternoons, he would stop off at the Alpine Club in downtown Augusta , where Robert Dickens, his friend and mentor, was the proprietor. Billy played gin on the bar and poker in the back with a group of regulars. "When the encyclopedia people tried to take away half my territory I took a leave of absence and started gambling full time," Baxter says. "My first year I made $40,000. I was 22. I never looked back."

Dickens, who now owns the Purple Onion Lounge, a two-wood from Augusta National , says that Baxter "could have been anything he wanted to be, with his mind and his personality. He was bound to be a great gambler because he was a genius at numbers—he remembered every card played. He'd play dealer's choice, $20 limit, and he'd win at that, and he'd win at gin and betting on sports, and everybody liked him, so when he started making book on his own around Augusta , everybody wanted to bet with him. He was honest, and he trusted people. One afternoon he came into my place and tossed a paper bag over the bar—'Here, hold this for me.' It was $70,000 in small bills."

"Robert Dickens taught me a lot," says Baxter. "When to fold 'em, when to hold 'em. At first you go crazy for the action, but as you gain control, you lose some ego and you realize it isn't personal, and that the essence of gambling is winning. When you learn that, it isn't gambling anymore, it's making a living—like owning a shoe store. I don't get the dry heaves if I can't make a bet. I just know I've got to do it to make a living."