Convict Poker champ has guts

Harry Kersey has sat at 19 tables in the famed Convict Poker event and won seven

By Michael Dobie | Staff Correspondent

July 18, 2004

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ANGOLA, La. - Harry Kersey is not quite 6 feet tall. He weighs a slimmed-down 260 pounds. He's not ever going to ride anything smaller than a Clydesdale. Even if he could, he has no rodeo skills whatsoever.

But Kersey can sit at a card table with three other inmates as a bull runs roughshod. That's something he can do with the best of 'em. That's how he's been a regular participant in the Angola Prison Rodeo.

Kersey has sat at 19 tables in the famed Convict Poker event and won seven since arriving in Angola in 1996 with a life sentence for aggravated rape. The most memorable competition was his first.

Terrified, Kersey froze as the bull wreaked havoc all around him. Bodies were splayed. The table was demolished. When the bull was done and trotted to the other end of the arena, Kersey did not realize he was the only inmate still in his chair.

"Everybody says, 'Hey, get up, get up, get up, you won, you won, you won,'" Kersey said.

Their cries did not register. Kersey never moved.

"The bull came back and he stood right here," Kersey said, motioning to the side of his head, "and when I turned my head to look at him, that's when he hit me and I went about 10 feet across the ring."

In 2002, a notorious beast named Black Beauty tossed him 15 feet in the air. Kersey did a somersault and got knocked out when he landed on his head.

"Ever since then, I kind of lost my nerve a little bit, because I've never been hit that hard," he said. "What got my nerve back was I put myself in another world away from here, put my mind on the outside, sitting on a beach maybe, or sitting on a horse overlooking some cattle, or a pleasant place where I can keep my mind off of this place here."

Kersey looked spiffy in his cleaned-and-pressed cowboy outfit and white hat, but he was not chosen to compete in last fall's finale. As he peered at Black Beauty through the slats of a pen, it was hard to tell whether that made him happy or sad. He loves the excitement, the thrill and the $200 prize money, but he also understands the bulls.

"All they know is the hit," he said. "They mean. They mean."

Kersey proudly offered a newspaper photo that showed a bull's horn appearing to enter Kersey's butt.

"What sells the tickets mostly, I believe, is the Convict Poker table and the Guts 'n' Glory because, you see, everything else is just another rodeo," Kersey said. "They don't have this on the streets. You're not getting no free people sitting at a table that the bull runs over. The thing of it is: This is Angola's event, they invented it here. That's why they call it Convict Poker."