Business in the Gaming Space

A course in Fortran programming led to reading Professor Edward Thorpe's revised and updated book "Beat the Dealer," considered the quintessential source to win at the blackjack table.

In 1967, Wendeen began in earnest to test the ability to follow Thorpe's advice effectively, and attempted to refine his counting calculations with the use of Fortran programming. She failed to improve on his work!

The Pacific Stock Exchange hired Eolis for an assignment to search for special counsel. Ken Usui (Uston) was an executive at the company. By happenstance she met Ken while visiting a client. Six months later, totally unplanned, Ken and Wendeen met eyeball-to-eyeball elsewhere at a London Blackjack table, playing their cards very similarly.

Ken and Wendeen teamed up to to hit casinos and play a little jazz music together on the piano. They hit casinos from Las Vegas to to Biarritz and by the end of 1971 had amassed hundreds of hours and a small fortune together at 21 tables hither and yon. 

While toiling, Wendeen was introducted to Cliff and Stuart Perlman, Chair and Vice-Chair, respectively of Caesars World. She worried that they might put her on notice on playing at their 21 games. Instead they invited her to a sitdown, having learned she had connections to a lot of lawyers and might know more than they did about fair legal fees.  The introduction led to Caesars World hiring Wendeen as a headhunter to find a high-powered lawyer for the company and invited to talk about legal fees at a board meeting. 

Caesars World then hired Wendeen to interview potential outside counsel for a “bet the ranch” matter. The gig ended with Caesars hiring counsel Wendeen recommended and asking Wendeen to become special advisor to the board of directors. She left her blackjack career behind.

Following a long separation from her former teammate, Wendeen accompanied Ken Uston to Monte Carlo for blackjack games at the new Loews Casino.  The couple looked like honeymooners, but their joy was limited to taking down their biggest score ever.

In 1976 Wendeen parted company with Kenny at the blackjack tables for good and firmed up her relationships with newfound gaming clients seeking both inside and outside counsel.

As Caesars got close to opening a casino in Atlantic City,  their chairman appointed Wendeen as chair of a special committee to consider hiring counsel as it faced prospective litigation over its rights to operate in New Jersey. Wendeen hired the well-known constitutional lawyer Peter Fishbein in a bid for certiori before the US Supreme Court. Ultimately the Perlmans ceded control of the company and made a killing on the sale of their shares of stock. 

By the beginning of the new decade, Eolis gaming clients seeking inside lawyers and outside specialists in the growing corporate gaming space, included the Coral Leisure Group and the Victoria Sporting Club in London, and the Dunes, the Sands, and MGM, as well as Caesars. 

Wendeen crossed the pond from London to New York on a flight from her in London to her business in New York with a well-known bridge and backgammon player, Oswald Jacobi.  He tolde her to go to the Mayfair Club to learn backgammon, but she quickly discovered backgammon was best left to emergencies only. At 40, she had yet to learn the meaning of "being in the blind" but happily joined the Mayfair Club's first limit Texas Hold'em poker game.  

In May of 1985, Mayfair gamers included included serious poker pros that had just returned from the World Series of Poker. They were hot-to-trot at a high-stakes poker table. The Mayfair obliged by offering its first big no-limit game. Wendeen was too naive to understand the danger. She accepted the envied invitation she received to join the boys for the club's first high-stakes no-limit cash game. And so began a whirlwind relationship with more than a deck of cards. 

Wendeen entered the arena for the 1986 WSOP with New York's best known businessman/poker pro with a "no-promises" diamond ring on her finger. and a lot of sneering around her by the good ol' boys that expected to beat her cards every time. Instead she became the first woman in poker history to take down a piece of the purse in the main event of the most prestigious poker competition in the world. 

Wendeen returned to the WSOP main event as the darling of mainstream and gaming media only to learn that winning was not in the cards the second time around. Newsday's headline said it all: "Rising Star Fell Flat on her Face." For good measure they added "Forget Her." The falling star was not ready to leave the poker world or the most competitive tournaments. 

Wendeen sidled up to the second biggest tournament in the poker universe: Binion's Hall of Fame. No one paid her entrance any mind until she beat the infamous poker brat, Phil Hellmuth and became the first woman in poker history to reach the final table of a major poker championship. She went out in 6th place. 

Wendeen took advantage of her celebrity status a second time around at the poker table to further cement relationships for her executive search business. With a doting media describing her business and the fact that she was an amateur at the poker tables but a winner to be reckoned with, Wendeen got referrals with from her friends at Caesars and made meetings with senior leadership at other casinos to talk about her business and poker if she had to! Her headhunting and legal consulting business in the gaming world began to grow quickly. 

With an up and down winning and losing streak at the tables, Wendeen was ready to give it all up and stick to what she knew best, attorney talent optimization. She returned to London and planned to stay put for a bit when an American pro pushed her to join the action at the European Open Championship event in 1990. She couldn't resist the bait of a dinner in her honor by New York players in attendance.  She played beyond expectations, becoming the first woman to earn a blue ribbon in a major European event at the European Open Championship on the Isle of Man in 1990.

In 1993, Wendeen became the first woman to cash in the Main Event of the WSOP twice, and this time, in spite of an illness that caused her collapse at the table. She soldiered on with an oxygen mask and paramedics at her side. She bettered her finish in both standing and money and believed she would have to retire from the game.

Wendeen became the first woman appointed First Assistant to the Governor in the State of New York. Governor Pataki immediately tapped her to take on Native American gaming matters in her portfolio and relied upon her to improve a compact between New York State Indian nations and the state government. 

By the close of the 20th century, EOLIS International Group had scored more than 30 legal search and related consulting contracts with casinos, assisting them in talent acquisition and legal department management. 

In 2000 Wendeen returned to poker competition. In that same year GQ Magazine, CourtTV, the New York Times, and A&E Biography all did features on Wendeen's unique career in business, politics, and poker rooms. In July 2000, in her first poker outing at a poker pro golfing event, her blue ribbon was sweeter thanks to Phil Hellmuth who wrote the story of her success.

As a budding professional journalist, Wendeen investigated and then wrote the definitive story behind the closing of the Mayfair Club and the Diamond Club, both underground card clubs deemed illegal with a raid by the New York City Mayor's task force. She provided facts and details that revealed the real story of the permanent shutdowns of those clubs. She enlightened the genuinely curious the and put egg on the faces of naive chatters. 

Selected as a leading commentator together with Mike Sexton for the Tournament of Champions in Las Vegas, Wendeen was a key participant in the pilot video that became the impetus for the founding of the World Poker Tour by Lyle Berman (CEO) and Steve Lipscomb (COO). In 2002 she was the single player both sponsored both by the management of WPT and elected by her peers, as a participant in the Inaugural Professional Poker Tour.

Wendeen was the first poker writer for a major gaming periodical to write investigative pieces related to the business of poker, the complicated lives of poker players, the politics of poker, hot button issues timely, and stories of personal experience in the room where it happens. 

As a cover story and feature writer, some of her articles became materials for books, magazines, and judicial proceedings, but mostly she wrote for posterity and the pleasure of writing. 

Beginning in 2002 for the next five years, Wendeen was the leading advisor to TK Poker in negotiations and contractual ventures with PokerStars newly-developed live poker tournaments throughout Europe, known as the European Poker Tour.

In 2005, Wendeen was selected as one of the commentators at the last World Series of Poker tournament festivities held at Binion's Horseshoe in Las Vegas.

In 2006, Wendeen was appointed as a member of the WSOP Player's Advisory Council, and became chair of the International Poker Player's Council, which functioned as a serious adjunct in the development of poker as a recognized sport and a game of skill. 

In 2007, then-commissioner Jeffrey Pollock conferred the title "Grand Dame of Poker" on Wendeen, calling her "a unique force for good in the worldwide poker community." The media embraced the informal title has followed her ever since.  She says she'll accept the title for good!

After joining the World Poker Association as a founding member and becoming Vice-Chair of the Board, Wendeen became the President and Chair of the Executive Committee and then the Chairman in 2008. Her most distinguished contribution beyond oversight of an ethics code was her leading the collaboration with the World Series of Poker to make its first official event of the 2008 World Series of Poker the WPA/WSOP Event. 

Wendeen became a leading print, digital, and broadcast jounalist in the poker world, commentating in the WSOP, moderating the action with a panel at the United States Poker Championship which was the first live broadcast on the internet of a poker event and thereafter leading the way in evaluating and commentating on the unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act that ultimately to the shutdown of online poker from offshore sites by the US Department of Justice. Wendeen's analysis was cited in proceedings of a Casino Control Commission that delayed PokerStars' entry into the legitimate US online poker market.  In addition to her position as cover story writer for Poker Digest and Poker Player Newspaper over a period of 15 years, Wendeen was also a contributor to Card Player Magazine, Bluff, All-In, and Casino Player among many others.

Participant in televised poker fare including commentary at the World Series of Poke main event, participation in WPT's televised Ladies Night, multiple appearances on ESPN in WSOP competition, the leading scorer in GSN's televised competition between the old guard and the young bloods, and multiple appearances on Poker Night in America with poker celebrities that posted far more winnings and far more time at the table!

With outspoken concern on the slow rise in percentage of the field occupied by women in major competition, Wendeen's keynote address at the 2016 WSOP Ladies' Tournament and challenged players, sponsors, and management to up their game on promoting poker to women.

As a public speaker on the lecture circuit, an advisor to government officials and politicians, and as a teacher who oversees Eolis Institute for Leadership, Wendeen is an ebullient coach on advancing people-reading principles. She speaks from experience at all manner of poker tables.