Smoky Survivor Refuses to Fold : For a while the chips were down, but Pinky Donohoo’s 50-year-old Player’s Poker Club in Ventura remains the only game in town.

It is the last of its breed, residing in a nondescript concrete block building the size of a trailer on the corner of North Ventura Avenue and East Barnett Street in Ventura.

It’s the Player’s Poker Club, and its neighborhood is nothing to write home about, either: It sits across the road from Elliot’s Unfinished furniture store and a muffler shop, and nearby are a former burrito place, now the Teriyaki Express, and the Derrick Room, whose dead neon sign still promises live music. Up the street is the Fountain Of Life Center Church, from whose open doors a preacher’s booming voice calls out while a choir sings.

All these places may come and go, but the Player’s Poker Club--a holdout among other card clubs that have up and folded--has been a Ventura County institution for 50 years.

Still, it almost became history recently.

Last spring, Owen Cornett, manager of the Player’s Poker Club, was not returning phone calls. And, when finally reached, he wasn’t in the mood to talk.

“Call me after the 10th,” snapped Cornett in his thick smoker’s voice. “That’s when we’ll know if the city is going to shut us down. If that’s the case, I’ll be out on the street looking for a job.” He added that 26 other employees also were concerned about their fate.

Then came the reprieve.

Monica Donohoo, the 31-year-old wife of the club’s 85-year-old owner, Henry (Pinky) Donohoo, petitioned the Ventura City Council to change the law so that the city’s last legally licensed poker club could remain open after her husband, who is suffering from throat cancer, dies.

Under a 1958 morals code, the city banned all gambling houses except for those already in operation. Under the law--designed ostensibly to eradicate the clubs by attrition--the clubs must be shut down after their owners die.

On May 10, the council voted to extend the Player’s license for 10 years after Pinky Donohoo’s death.

After the decision, Cornett’s mood had changed.

“I’m 10 miles high,” he said.

Pinky Donohoo said in May that he expects Cornett will run the place after his death because his wife doesn’t know how to manage the club.

“I feel like hell,” Pinky said in a raspy voice. But, he said, “If I kick the bucket, she’ll be the owner.”

Monica Donohoo, a native of Mexico who became an American citizen last October, stood beyond a heavy screen door of the neat, one-story house she shares with her husband of eight years in a quiet, affluent neighborhood in Ventura. In the driveway were his-and-hers blue Lincoln Town Cars.

“My English is terrible, we can’t talk,” she said, shortly after the decision.

But Monica, who met her husband while he was vacationing in Mexico, indicated that her involvement in the club after her husband’s death would remain as peripheral as it always has been.

“I don’t play cards,” she said.

ALL PLAYERS WELCOME

It is a Wednesday evening at 6 p.m. A half dozen dusty mid-range cars and pickups occupy the few spaces outside the fading walls of the two-story club. The club’s landmark red, white and green neon sign glows steadily in the early evening light. The Ventura Avenue wall side is painted with a sign that says “Play Cards--Open To the Public--Ladies Welcome,” while the side-street wall advertises the same slogan.

Clearly, everyone’s money is good here.

Just then, a gaunt-looking man, perhaps 40, exits. He stands on the concrete steps, lights a cigarette, sighs deeply and fixes his eyes in a meditative stare. Either he’s won big or wonders what he’s doing here.

What he’s here for is probably what all the others--mainly middle-aged to elderly men and women--have come for: a “Cheers” TV show ambience, where everyone knows each other’s names. Inside, the room’s music is the constant clinking of poker chips, boisterous joking, loud laughter, “hurrahs” at wins, “ohhhs” at near-wins and players conversing with people at their tables and with others across the room.

Voices in a steady stream call out “Ron! More chips,” and “Lisa! Chips!” and “Chips, chips, chips!”

It’s a four-table club, which can only accommodate about 40 players at a time, all of whom appear to be praying intently over their cards. Above them, two gigantic ceiling fans flank an aviation hangar-sized air conditioning unit. Both succeed only in circulating the dense fog-like cigarette smoke around the fluorescent-lit room but don’t make a dent in cleaning the air.

This is not a place for anyone trying to quit smoking. On the other hand, one could conceivably arrive, having forgotten to bring cigarettes, and simply take puffs of the fog.

The club makes its money by taking $3 from each player every 30 minutes, with bets ranging from $3 to $20, except on no-limit games. And for those who build up an appetite playing cards, there’s Archie’s Cafe, a five-table coffee shop in an open-area beside the cashier-manager’s office. With a paper banner boasting a morning steak-and-eggs special for 49 cents, it’s no wonder it does a booming business.

Ron Carbaugh, a former Lompoc business owner who lives in Santa Barbara, says he’s been a regular at the Player’s for more than a decade and has played cards “since I was a kid.” He’s now employed as a part-time floor manager. Carbaugh darts from the cashier’s cage, weaves around packed tables and patrons, cruises the narrow walkways and services the tables with the currency of fate.

He is assisted by two waitresses, who serve up poker chips along with exceptionally good coffee. Lisa Wheatly, an Ojai resident in her “early 20s,” has been working at the Player’s for five years. “It’s a fun job,” said Wheatly.

The waitresses wheel the dinners to the players’ tables on small chrome carts. Other players belly up to the small counter that separates the action from the restaurant but still provides a view. Some players can’t or won’t be separated from their game.

Player’s manager Cornett, 52, scoots his lanky, 6-foot-plus frame nimbly around the corner of the cashier-manager’s office to speak to a few well-wishers who have come from Los Angeles to pay their respects, maybe even play a few hands. Cornett greets most patrons by name. He’s been accepting congratulations regarding the news about the club’s 10-year license extension for several days now, and there’s no sign of that letting up.

With the club’s fate secure for at least another decade, and with Pinky Donohoo bedridden, Cornett is now eager to talk.

PINKY’S GOOD HAND

According to Cornett--who prides himself on being both the Player’s manager and its resident historian--Henry (Pinky) Donohoo came from a farming family in the Imperial Valley. In the late ‘30s, when drought and the Depression turned farmland to dust, Donohoo’s father moved the family to Ventura and opened a card room downtown.

“You know he (Donohoo) only has one hand?” asked Cornett, who says he knows Donohoo as well as anyone. “When Henry was 13 years old, he was hunting down at the river bottom. He went to go under a fence, put his rifle down, it fell and blew his right hand off.” Donohoo made his way up to the railroad tracks and then to the bridge where he hitched a ride to the hospital. “Quite a man,” said Cornett, “I would’ve probably just passed out.”

As a young man, Donohoo developed a reputation as a skilled, professional gambler--with his one-handed shuffling and dealing adding to his renown. In 1943, along with a partner, he opened the Player’s Poker Club and eventually bought his partner out.

“Back then, where we’re sitting now, was a grocery store and the card room was upstairs,” said Cornett. “There were three other clubs in town--the Airways, the Colony and the Red Dawn.”

During their heyday, all the clubs provided recreation for Ventura’s oil workers, who, Cornett said, often were not as genteel as the patrons of today. They played variations of poker, games called Lo’ Ball and Panguingue (pan-gae-nee), and the pot totals were around a dollar or two.

Then came the passage of the city’s morals code in 1958. “And one by one, over the years, as the owners died the clubs just shut down,” Cornett said.

But not the Player’s, whose fate rested on an owner who claimed that his penchant for two or three martinis before dinner, a daily four-mile walk, big-game hunting and a young wife kept him healthy.

Now, Pinky Donohoo is playing the hand of his life. And Cornett, reflecting on the precarious health of the card club’s founder, hopes Pinky’s luck holds out a lot longer.

“I sure hope,” said Cornett, that the day when Pinky finally cashes in is “not for many years to come.”

ACE OF CARD CLUBS

Cornett pauses to kibitz with Rose--a Ventura grandmother who’s taking a fried-chicken dinner break between hands--before turning back to continue telling tales of the past.

He first met Pinky, he said, when he was 5 years old. When he was 10, he delivered papers to Donohoo’s house.

As a young man, Cornett said, he drove a Ready Mix truck, worked for Pabst, and later was involved in a pizza franchise that went under, taking his savings with him.

He started playing at the club in 1958, when the construction job he was on got hung up because of rain. Antes, he said, were a nickel, pots around three or four dollars. Cornett became a part-time floor manager at the Player’s in October, 1978, and was promoted to manager in 1986.

Over the years, Cornett has seen it all.

“When I started playing here back in ‘58, during the off-season, there was this rich oil guy that used to come in and play for a whole month,” Cornett said. “Back then, the deal was passed around from player to player, and when it was my turn to deal, well, I thought this guy was Santa Claus. He made the worst bets, pushed his luck on every hand. Man, I made a lot of money from that guy.”

But the days of high rollers and those willing to gamble away the farm are gone, said Cornett.

“We’ve got a small, regular clientele. On average, people spend maybe 20 or 30 bucks tops,” he said. “Believe me, I know; in the old days I’d sometimes lose a whole paycheck in a private game. But this place is for fun. We’ve got a lot of husbands and wives who come in once a week. And a lot of retired judges, lawyers and doctors. Quite a mix.”

And that’s clearly one of the reasons the council agreed to extend their stay. That and the $50,000 revenue it annually pays to the city.

“There have been no police problems, no complaints from businesses or neighbors,” said Everett Millais, director of community development with the Ventura City Manager’s Office. “The club has also been a supporter and contributor to community organizations and causes.”

Or as Cornett likes to say: “This place is more like a social club now.”

EVEN LOSERS WIN

Lined up along the club’s paneled walls are the pictures of more recent winners.

Each table has a progressive “Bad Beat Jackpot” brewing. Even if a player loses the pot, it is still possible to win thousands if the player has a four-of-a-kind hand that beats what the dealer is holding. When this happens the entire table shares 10% of whatever the Bad Beat Jackpot has reached ($500 is the minimum). The winner of the actual hand being played receives an additional 20%, and the lucky loser with the four of a kind hand walks with 70%.

Occasionally, outside troubles penetrate the club’s one-big-family atmosphere. Although it’s rare, Cornett said that he has caught a half dozen or so card cheats over the years.

“The procedure,” said Cornett, eyes narrowing, “is to tap them on the shoulder, tell them to put their cards and chips on the table and to leave.”

Apparently these would-be cheaters are not card sharks, nor do they possess the skills of Mississippi riverboat gamblers.

“Most of them try to take a chip that isn’t theirs or hold back cards, something really stupid like that,” Cornett said. “Not only are the dealers watching, but the players keep an eye on what’s going on as well.”

Two more men roll by to congratulate Cornett. One is Ed Stein, a former furniture store owner from Thousand Oaks, who now works, he said, as a proposition player--someone who is paid by a club to sit in on games when they are a player short--for the Eldorado Club in Gardena.

“I’ve been playing poker for over 30 years. And I’ve been coming up here (Ventura) to play for 18 years,” Stein said. “This is a friendly place to play.”

“And driving to play at the big clubs in L.A. is a pain,” added Ventura resident Bob Bloom, who, like many of the club’s 26 employees, started as a player. He was a regular for five years before becoming a card dealer two years ago.

“About two months ago, on a Friday night, the place was full, and around 6, the power goes out,” said Bloom. “Nobody missed a beat. We got candles and hung flashlights all over the place and everyone just kept on playing like nothing had happened.” The power stayed off for more than two hours.

Cornett, who has worked a full nine-hour shift, is getting tired but still wants to chat with a few more well-wishers before going home.

“You have to be a good money manager,” said Cornett, summing up the game of poker. “The State of California says that poker is a game of skill, not of chance. Most people here are pretty smart. If they’re not, they don’t stay around too long.”

And, of course, that also could go for the club.

As neighborly a place as regulars and employees say the Player’s is, the city is hedging its bets about the club’s long-term future.

“The City Council was not inclined to allow the club to open up, expand or transfer ownership after the new 10-year extension expires,” Mallais said.

“There is no crystal ball as to what happens after that.”