She’ll hand you candy and take your chips. ‘Poker granny’ the star of South MS event
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Linda Hammons, 88, entered the Beau Rivage 2026 Heater poker event, paid $500.
- She finished 14th from 2,628 entries, earning about $10,000 in prizes.
- Her run drew spectators and staff support; Beau Rivage covered her next buy-in.
She didn’t find the slot machines she usually plays on the casino floor of Beau Rivage Resort and Casino, so Linda Hammons headed up to see what the action was all about on the second level.
The game underway there was the 2026 Beau Rivage Heater poker tournament. Once the organizers determined she indeed knew how to play poker, she paid the $500 buy-in and was seated at one of the tables that filled the sprawling ballroom typically set up for weddings and conventions.
Her cherry-red nails and golden white hair were in sharp contrast to the blue jeans, sweatshirts and baseball caps worn by most of the other poker players, most of them men and all of them seemingly clicking poker chips, a skill Hammons said she hasn’t mastered given her long nails.
But what really differentiated her from the other players was her years of life, if not poker experience. She’s 88, and said she hasn’t played poker all that long.
This grandmother — a great-grandmother, actually — from Dadeville, a tiny town of just over 3,000 people in east central Alabama and previously from an equally small Ellenwood, Georgia, had found her game.
Event 3 was a $1 million guaranteed mystery bounty game, with total prize of more than $1 million and envelopes full of more money for those who progressed in the no-limit hold-‘em game.
“The first day, we played ‘til almost three o’clock in the morning,” she said. When they returned about eight hours later, Hammons was already a social media darling.
“Go get ’em gramma,” one person wrote as they followed her progress on Facebook.
“Now that’s a poker face,” another responded to Hammons’ determined stare.
She played on all day, made it into the top 15, the only woman still in the game. A growing group of people gathered around her table, said Adam Nash, Beau Rivage poker room manager, like the stacks of chips grew in front of her with each winning hand.
Then her luck turned, and her first tournament was over. She was out of the game just short of reaching the final table.
Applause and accolades
From a field of 2,628 entries, she finished 14th.
The players who remained in the tournament and others throughout the room applauded her.
She won $8,400, the amount determined by her finish in the tournament, and $1,700 in bounty prizes.
“Almost $10,000,” she said. But she played to win it all.
The top two players split and won $115,136 each.
She wasn’t intimidated by a room full of poker players from as far as Oregon and Spain, just as eager to win.
“There was nine of us,” she said. The room might have started full, and she didn’t realize there were more than 2,000 in the game.
“They move you all the time, and add people and take people,” she said. She concentrated on the nine at her table and the eight she had to beat.
Unlike those around the room who likely play poker and other games on their phone or computer, Hammons has trouble using a cell phone and played Dominos when she was a kid. They only had one set, she recalls, so the kids had to wait until the adults finished and went to sleep before they could play.
She has no advice to share on becoming one of the top finishers in a $1 million poker tournament, other than the ability to concentrate and “Do it before you get old like I am,” she said.
Ready to play again
When Nash learned of her top finish and her social media following, he directed his staff, with the intensity of Tommy Lee Jones in “The Fugitive,” to “Find me Linda.”
They found her easily, since she was still at the hotel with her daughter and son-in-law, who she came with to the Biloxi casino for a few days.
Nash had a 14th-place certificate made and presented to her as a salute to her incredible game.
Since she wanted to keep playing, but was only staying another day, the Beau Rivage picked up her $400 buy-in for a seat at Event 8, a one-day event that started at 4 p.m.
“I gotta win. I got to out-do yesterday,” she said.
The poker tournament continues at the Beau Rivage through Jan. 19, with the Main Event set to restart at 1 p.m. Sunday and the final table expected on Monday. Spectators are welcome to observe but not interact with the players.
While most Coast casinos have only video poker, “Our poker room stays busy every day,” Nash said. The January tournament continues to grow, he said, with 5,500 competitors this year, an increase of 1,000 over last year, and more than $5.5 million in guaranteed prize pools.
This story was originally published January 16, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
