Elements of The Cincinnati Kid are found in the plot of this Wagon Train story. A lot of people with different motives sit in on a high stakes poker game held on this Wagon Train. A lot like the game that Paul Newman took Robert Shaw to the cleaners with in The Sting.
The old gambler is Will Kulava and he's a dying man and he's trained his own Cincinnati Kid in Tom Simcox who has a young wife in Yvonne Craig and she has no liking for the gambling life. Kulava has only one reason to live, to bring Simcox face to face with the man he originally trained and who ran out on him.
As luck would have it Robert Fuller rescues that man during a poker game in a town the Wagon Train is passing. That man is Charles Drake and he's knifed during a dispute. Nursed on the Wagon Train by Pippa Scott, Drake gets convinced to join a high stakes poker game with a rich whale on the Wagon Train in Harry Von Zell. Sitting in also is Simcox and Kulava wants Simcox to clean and gut Drake worse than the knifing he got in the poker game. He's obsessed with the idea of doing this public humiliation to the man he first taught all he knew.
The last half hour of this 90 minute episode is devoted to the card game and the mixed motivations of all the guest cast members. The Wagon Train regulars have little to do in this story.
If you liked The Cincinnati Kid, you'll love this story.
The old gambler is Will Kulava and he's a dying man and he's trained his own Cincinnati Kid in Tom Simcox who has a young wife in Yvonne Craig and she has no liking for the gambling life. Kulava has only one reason to live, to bring Simcox face to face with the man he originally trained and who ran out on him.
As luck would have it Robert Fuller rescues that man during a poker game in a town the Wagon Train is passing. That man is Charles Drake and he's knifed during a dispute. Nursed on the Wagon Train by Pippa Scott, Drake gets convinced to join a high stakes poker game with a rich whale on the Wagon Train in Harry Von Zell. Sitting in also is Simcox and Kulava wants Simcox to clean and gut Drake worse than the knifing he got in the poker game. He's obsessed with the idea of doing this public humiliation to the man he first taught all he knew.
The last half hour of this 90 minute episode is devoted to the card game and the mixed motivations of all the guest cast members. The Wagon Train regulars have little to do in this story.
If you liked The Cincinnati Kid, you'll love this story.
