ESPN poker column...
This is an interesting story. While its been done before no doubt, a writer has decided to test his abilities to grind it out for a year as a pro, keeping track of all his movements in a log on espn (and a book deal to be sure).
He is starting at the WSOP and going right through to the '05 series.
Here is the link:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=lovinger/040428
AK
He is starting at the WSOP and going right through to the '05 series.
Here is the link:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=lovinger/040428
AK
Comments
ScottyZ
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/archive?columnist=lovinger_jay&root=page2
I will also post the articles for all the lazy, don't wanna waste a click, carpal-tunnel drone types....
Who said poker isn't a contact sport?
My very first day as Page 2's high-stakes poker pro was about to end with a whimper -- after 14 straight hours of battling over pots worth thousands, I was up a measly $70 in a no-limit hold 'em game at Foxwoods Casino in southern Connecticut -- when the grouchy guy at the other end of the table suddenly threw his hole cards at the dealer. One of them hit her in the face, and she let out a yelp, then screamed for a floor supervisor.
"Either he goes or I go," she said, in a rage. "I'm not dealing another hand with that guy in the building."
The floor supervisor arrived and, before escorting the defiant ex-player off the premises, gave our table the kind of look a librarian reserves for an invasion of teenage boys who don't know how to whisper properly -- 50 percent exasperation and 50 percent contempt.
And who could blame her? We were a rogue bunch, sitting there in our own stench at 3 a.m. on a Thursday morning, tired, ornery, desperately trying to ... well, who knows what. There was "Frenchy" (who I think is actually from Canada), whose favorite move was to slap down a huge roll of $100 bills and grunt, "All in." There was tattooed "Mikey," whose favorite move was to complain about the lack of alcoholic beverages available in the poker room after midnight.
There was the guy whose favorite move was to advise his girlfriend about how to play her hands ... while she kept slipping him chips to keep him in action. There was the self-adoring college student from Boston, whose favorite move was to stare in disbelief at anyone with the chutzpah to bet into him. And there was the usual assortment of flotsam and degeneracy, whose favorite moves were either to whine or bemoan their unimaginably unlucky fates.
My favorite move? Scratching various parts of my body while I wondered what I had let myself in for.
This wasn't the first time the floor supervisor had been called over to straighten out "a problem" at our table, and it wouldn't be the last.
Sure enough, about 15 minutes after the kamikaze card-throwing incident, the dealer noticed that a bunch of cards had been "marked" (that is, defaced in various ways). And the floor supervisor was in no mood to be merciful.
"There are 23 cards marked in one deck, and 15 in the other," she said. "We're putting the surveillance camera on this table to see who's doing what."
That pretty much ended Day 1 of my long year's journey into the weird world of poker. I didn't know what the surveillance camera would show, but I did know this:
Less than 24 hours into it, I didn't want to start off my new career with a rap sheet. I don't believe in luck, but I do believe in bad karma.
A game whose time has come
I know what you're thinking:
1.) Since when does Page 2 have it own high-stakes poker pro, and what do they need one for?
2.) Why me?
Poker can be the cruelest of games -- even when playing with complete neophytes.
The first question is easy. Poker is exploding into the American consciousness like a combination of "You're fired!" and Paris Hilton. Despite a total lack of promotion, last year's telecasts of the World Series of Poker, which were shown -- over and over -- in seven one-hour segments, averaged nearly a million viewers per showing, including reruns.
It surely didn't hurt that last year's championship event was won by Chris Moneymaker, a twentysomething accountant from Tennessee who had never played in a live tournament of any kind before. In other words, the 2003 WSOP was generally perceived as the most realistic "reality" TV show of them all -- no bugs to eat, no 'The Donald' to put up with, no fat guys to go out with, no snarky English judges to denigrate your singing ability. Just a no-chance amateur beating the best players in the world out of a life-changing $2.5 million.
Previously-unknown shadow figures like Phil Hellmuth Jr., Gus Hanson and Phil Ivey ("the Tiger Woods of poker") are becoming rich and recognizable cultural icons.
Real authors, like James McManus, are churning out bestselling books on poker, like "Positively Fifth Street."
More than 50 million Americans are playing, and there are million-dollar tournaments all over the calendar. As a wise man once said, "When in doubt, follow the money."
As for "Why me?" ... actually, there are a lot of good reasons. Here's my back story, and my action plan.
Gambler, heal thyself
"Always remember, the first thing a gambler has to do is make friends with himself. A lot of people go through this world thinking they're someone else. There are a lot of players sitting at this table with mistaken identities."
-- Puggy Pearson, professional poker player, from Jon Bradshaw's "Fast Company"
Who doesn't have the delusion that he'd like to know who he really is?
Well, a lot of people, I guess.
Not me. I'm on a mission here. If it works out, I make friends with myself, sort through my mistaken identity and turn myself into the cool, independent operator I've always wanted to be. I've been working for The Man my whole life, and it's time to find out, once and for all, if I've got what it takes to live on my own terms outside the suffocating support of modern corporate life.
My back pages
America is the mother country of reinvention. Has been since the arrival of the Pilgrims, transforming themselves overnight from stubborn religious outcasts into America's first royal family.
Ever since, we've been in love with the makeover, culminating in the '60s, when, to be cool, every girl I knew was changing her name from Suzie to Sunshine; and every guy had turned in his button-down shirt for a leather vest with little purple stars hand-sewn all over it.
The one chip that did Jay Lovinger in.
In fact, it was during the early '60s that I reinvented myself the first time, and poker was the lever that shifted my world. I entered the '60s as the son of paranoid second-generation Eastern European immigrants, weaned on my parents' conviction that the American Dream would forever stiff-arm stiffs like us. I exited that decade as someone with a sense of possibility, with the faith that I would be able to grab my share.
How out of it were my parents? They didn't know you were allowed to visit a college before you actually attended it. So, feeling a little bit like the Dormouse being forced to leave the tea party at the point of an AK-47, I left my safe-if-limited world behind -- six-feet, two-inches of wide-eyed, tremulous, obedient, alcohol-and-drug--free nerd -- to attend Harpur College in Binghamton, New York, the town that time forgot.
Harpur was crammed with brilliant one-of-a-kinders -- many of them Jewish kids from New York City who, if they'd had more money or been less socially maladjusted, might've been terrorizing the Harvard faculty. Before long, I found myself mesmerized by Mike, a kid supplying me and my dorm with LSD samples stolen from a U.S. military experiment and running a 24/7 poker game. Mike was a prodigy, a card shark raised by card sharks -- Mom was a world-class gin rummy hustler, Dad a national bridge champion. He was also the ringleader of young men with little money and big mouths, who knew how to inflict pain with killer poker moves and skin-ripping putdowns. Either you learned to fight back, or ... off to the library!
In a misguided attempt to develop a strong "table image" early on -- hey, I was only 17 -- I cultivated two annoying habits:
1.) I'd eat donuts whenever I played, nibbling and nibbling with rabbit-like bites until the lower half of my face and most of the playing surface was covered with bits of sugar; and ...
2.) Whenever I had a sure winner -- or was representing a sure winner -- I'd scream out, "Ming the Merciless!" and slam the maximum raise into the pot, sending all those sugar-flecked quarters and dollar bills flying.
Once, Mike had to decide whether to call one of my Ming raises. He stared at me until I became uncomfortable enough to ask, "What're you waiting for -- Christmas?"
"I'm just wondering," Mike said.
"Pay your money and find out," I said.
"No," Mike said, peering at me over the top edge of his glasses, a classic tell that he was about to try to psyche me out, to put me on tilt. "I'm not wondering about your hand. I'm wondering about those donuts. Aren't you supposed to eat them inside your mouth?"
Too late, Mikey. That game heralded the dawn of my self-knowledge, learned on the fly. I learned about the power of the mind, self-preservation and self-reliance, about who you could trust and under what conditions, about wit and predatory behavior. Most important, Mike, I learned that what my parents had spoon-fed me was all mush:
The meek shall not inherit the earth.
I played in the Harpur game for 10 years, flunking out twice in the process. For the last five years, I actually made my living playing poker, a feat which could be accomplished in Binghamton in the '60s on 30 bucks a week.
But all good things must come to an end. In 1971, the year my oldest daughter was born, I had to reinvent myself yet again, this time as a grownup.
Goodbye to pot and acid, seven-card stud, group sex and listening to "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" 12 times a day. Hello to fatherhood, responsibility, therapy and despair.
I started off slowly as a sportswriter at the dying Binghamton Sun-Bulletin. I could type, the Sun-Bulletin was paying $60 a week and, voilà , a journalist was born. For two years after that, I was a field editor at Discount Store News, an existential hell beyond Sartre's wildest dreams. Then my career began to pick up speed with my first legit job as an editor at Inside Sports. By 1985, I found myself in the nation's capitol, where I had been hired to start a slick weekly magazine for The Washington Post -- my first experience with what my wife likes to call "Big Boy Journalism."
For the first time in my life, vitality, luck, creativity and wisdom converged. I was flying. You know how people always say, "God only provides what we can handle"? God provided me with my first high-stakes poker game, a golden opportunity to test myself at the height of my newly-discovered powers.
This is how not to mark the cards.
I hadn't played in 15 years; but soon after arriving at the Post, I was invited to sit in for an evening in a legendary game that featured several major D.C. insiders, including Bob Woodward, several other journalists, a federal judge, a couple of congressmen, and Richard Viguerie, the conservative fund-raiser and inventor of the NICPAC. By my standards, the stakes were astronomical -- you could bet up to $50 at any time, which, considering we played mostly seven-stud high-low with betting after the declaration, meant pots of over $1,000 were common and a player could easily drop three grand in an evening. As by far the smallest paycheck in a crowd of guys from the two-comma income bracket, I had a lot more at stake ... and a lot more to gain.
I was a regular winner during the three years I played. Yeah, the hourly wage was good, but the most valuable thing I took from the game was a more sophisticated worldview. One night, Viguerie was among the losers, and he wrote me a check for $600. As he did, I chuckled to myself, thinking I'd write on the memo line something like, CONTRIBUTION TO N.O.W. before I cashed it. In mid-pen stroke, Viguerie looked up and said, "Jay, before I give you this check, you have to promise me that you won't deface it in any way."
An impressive display of mind-reading, no? But here's the scary part that occurs to me now when I think about where I've been and where I want to go:
If a man who can read minds had to write me a $600 check for one evening's losses, then imagine what I'm letting myself in for.
In 1989, I returned to New York, eventually working my way to the top of the editorial heap at Life magazine, where I was named managing editor in 1997. By the end of the year, I was fired when I refused to gore the staff that had delivered the magazine's most profitable year since 1968.
I soon discovered that, professionally speaking, there's no life after Life. So I became a consultant. Creative starvation ensued.
I bumped into a few poker games, but they were strictly penny-ante and satisfied nothing I was craving. A quiet desperation set in, and all the fears I'd felt as a 17-year-old burbled up.
I began, without consciously being aware of what I was doing, to plan for a future without me in it. Maximizing investments. Agonizing over savings. Gathering life insurance, anal as an ant, against the encroaching winter.
Jay, I told myself one day, this is not good.
Luckily, during my years at Life, I'd noticed something that quickened my heart and the hearts of the magazine's readers -- stories about people who chuck away their tired lives and remake themselves in the image of their dreams. As Life disappeared in my rearview mirror, I had a sudden yearning to reinvent myself, too. But how? And as what?
And then it hit me: If a past-his-prime guy who drools while he sleeps can become the new-millennium equivalent of a lone gunfighter at high noon -- or, at least, go broke trying -- isn't there hope for us all?
"Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?"
So, no, I won't sit here and rot, living off the crumbs of what I stored up during my ripe years. I'm not going out like that. I'm starting off with a triple-gainer into the deep end of the pool -- at the 2004 World Series of Poker, which begins next week in Vegas -- and even if they expose me for what I am, a rank amateur, I'm going to find a way to keep swimming, to stay afloat through the 2005 World Series of Poker, where I'll show everybody what you can accomplish when you make friends with yourself.
I'm going to find out how it feels to be my own boss, to work when I want to, where I want to, and as hard and as long as I want to. In other words, I'm going to try to grab a huge slice of what everybody wants. I'm vowing not to be stuck on the periphery of my own life, to be a free man when most men become most dependent on the kindness of a-holes.
Looks like Jay's been dipping into Page 2's budget.
I'm going back to where I first found myself, for better or worse -- to the poker table. I've got no clue whether it's the dumbest idea of my life, or the best. But along the way, I'm going to tell you about the metamorphosis poker has undergone, how it's wormed its way from the shadows into the klieg lights of American entertainment, and how the faces of its central characters have changed. How guys named Chan and Nguyen replaced road warriors like Amarillo Slim and Texas Dolly, how the game was wrenched from the hands of high school dropouts and pool hustlers and bootleggers by millionaire marketeers and mathematicians.
I'll find out what I'm made of, and what 21st-century poker masters are made of, by challenging them to $1,000 freezeout Q & As -- interviews designed to reveal what's at the heart of a great poker player while we're playing hands worth a grand each -- a sort of double-barreled baring of the souls. I'm going to find out who they hate to play, who they love to crush, who cheats, who trash-talks, and where there's still romance left in the game.
I'm going to find out how it feels to play a game -- perhaps the only game -- where a last-chance stiff like me could get on a roll and bring down its Michael Jordan, its Roger Clemens, its Muhammad Ali, even if just for one night.
I'm going to go wherever the game is thriving. I'm going to cruise the cruise ships steaming toward exotic ports and ride the riverboats with the descendants of Mississippi River card sharks. I'm going to play all over the world like the adventurer I've always longed to be, and I'm going to play the game holed up in my bedroom on the Internet like the geek I've always feared I am, and like 4.68 million other American geeks are doing this very minute.
I'm going to play with a pack of local desperadoes, fascinating flotsam like the guys I played with in college, and with the beautiful people in high-stakes games like the one Larry Flynt hosts four times a week in his L.A. mansion, where a man can take a celebrity to the cleaners -- or be taken by one -- for a quarter-mil a night.
If I can't do it all on my own, I'm going to find a guru, a poker-playing Carlos Castaneda to guide me through the strange new world of this game that an astonishing 50 million Americans have taken up and that millions more have watched from their bar stools and living room sofas during the 14 championships that were televised on ESPN and the Travel Channel last year. Maybe somebody like Phil Hellmuth, Jr., best-selling author of "Play Poker Like the Pros," who has generously made it known that he'll teach you and your best pals how to play Texas Hold 'em for a mere 25 grand.
So it's off to Vegas next week, where I'll begin writing a regular column for Page 2 about my adventures and the strange people, rituals and customs that characterize the world of poker in 2004.
Along the way to the 2005 WSOP, I'll keep tabs on how my bankroll is holding up, what it's really like to go head-to-head with the legends, what if feels like to live a dream.
I'll also answer questions, give unasked-for advice (some of which may actually be useful), and pass along a few tales, some of which may even be true.
But not all of them. Because -- and here comes my first piece of advice -- what separates the men from the boys in poker is world-class bluffing ability. And I figure it's safer to try my moves out on you first than on a guy named Amarillo Slim.
Jay Lovinger, a former managing editor of Life and a founding editor of Page 2, is also writing a book on his poker adventures for HarperCollins.
All life is 6-5, against.
-- Nick the Greek
LAS VEGAS -- The late Nick the Greek was a degenerate gambler, for sure. He also said, "The best thing is winning a bet; the second best thing is losing a bet." But he was not without wisdom. If the feeble first stirrings of my career as Page 2's high-stakes poker pro are any indication, all life is truly at least 6-5 against.
The worst came early on. In my first tournament at Binion's legendary Horseshoe Casino -- a $225 buy-in, super-satellite, no-limit event with about 200 entrants (the top 8-to-10 finishers would win free seats in the $10,000 World Championship event with a first prize of about $3 million) -- I was sitting with one lonely chip in front of me when management decided to break up our table. They sent the survivors to fill out other tables where various players had been busted. Since everybody but me would be moving along to their new tables with 10-to-100 chips each, the potential for embarrassment was already great.
Moreover, to make matters worse, the Horseshoe has a rule that you cannot just pick up your chips -- or chip, in my case -- and move to another table. No, you have to use a rack, which has room for 100 chips.
So I looked pretty amateurish showing up at my new table with one lousy chip, which was rattling around in a plastic slotted rack the size of a small beer cooler. To make matters worse, I noticed that the empty seat at my new table would place me right next to Chip Jett, only one of the 25 best players in the world. At the same table sat Mel Judah, a former hairdresser from Australia who had recently won a $1 million-plus World Poker Tour event, patiently nursing a short stack until he could eliminate T.J. Cloutier, only the biggest tournament money-winner in history, and dot-com multi-millionaire Paul Philips, himself the recent winner of the second-most lucrative tournament in poker history.
As I attempted to slide into my seat while attracting as little attention as possible, my chip slid toward the edge of the rack. Before I could grab it -- I was also clutching my note pad, a pen, some PR handouts and other accoutrements of the journalist's trade -- it fell to the floor, bounced once or twice and landed under the chair of the startled Jett. Reaching down, he retrieved the chip, looked at my empty tray, and said, "What, they only gave you one rack to bring that pile over here?"
Have you ever heard Emo Phillips' classic stand-up routine about the definition of infinity? I'll paraphrase:
You're on the checkout line at a supermarket. There are 100 people in front of you at the only checkout counter that is open. They are all at least 80 years old, have four carts full of groceries, and are clutching hundreds of discount coupons apiece. It's the first day on the job for the checkout girl, and she doesn't speak any English. Add 15 minutes to that, and you've got "eternity."
Well, excuse me, but I estimated my chances of winning this tournament at about infinity-to-1. And, sure enough, after I pulled a couple of miracles out of my ... oh, never mind where ... to run my sad little stack up to about $800, I went all-in on a pair of threes before the flop. Judah picked me off with a pair of sixes that held up.
Nothing amazing about that -- pocket sixes will beat pocket threes more than 80 percent of the time. But did he have to take me down without even a sideways glance? (He was talking to a rather attractive onlooker, perhaps making elaborate dinner plans that would be paid for with my entry fee.) And I thought the great poker players were supposed to be distinguished by, among other things, their ability to let nothing at the poker table escape their notice. That's what the literature strongly suggests.
The one chip that did Jay Lovinger in.
I slunk (or is that slinked? or slank?) away unnoticed, blissfully unaware that things were about to go downhill. Fast.
The next day, I stopped at a Bank of America branch to cash a personal check from my bankroll account. Because it was a Fleet Bank account, I figured there would be no problem, since Bank of America owns Fleet. Silly me. Though any bank in the world can wire any amount of money to any other bank in the world in nano-seconds, Bank of America's computer system apparently is not hooked up with Fleet's computer system; and so the largest check they would cash was for $250. And they made that sound like it was some kind of personal favor just for me. Somehow, I failed to persuade the manager to whom I spoke that this was absurd.
Luckily, however, the Horseshoe was willing to cash a much larger check for me ... as long as TeleCheck guaranteed it. After a few anxious moments -- the address on my New York State driver's license does not match the address on my checks, because I just moved -- TeleCheck okayed the transaction.
And so, under the delusion that my checking account was in good standing with the almighty TeleCheck, I returned to the Horseshoe two days later, planning to enter my first major tourney -- a $1,500 buy-in, no-limit event -- by cashing a $2,000 check.
TeleCheck said no.
We tried a $1,000 check.
Again, TeleCheck said no.
A $500 check, perhaps?
TeleCheck would not be moved.
They sent back a "Code 3." Never heard of Code 3? Neither had I or anybody at the Horseshoe. But, as it turns out, a Code 3 says, in part, "TeleCheck has no negative information related to you in its files ... (however) your check has exceeded the maximum dollar amount, the maximum number of checks written (during) a certain time period, or otherwise falls beyond the parameters set by TeleCheck's decisioning system for acceptance (author's italics).
Yeah, I have no idea what it means, either. But when I called TeleCheck for an explanation, all I got was a recorded message that suggested I write them a letter if I had any problem with their service.
Unfortunately, my ATM card also has a daily limit, which was nowhere near enough to get me into the tournament in time. I could have taken a cash advance against my company credit card, but the interest rates would have made Shylock blush. And, if I tried to expense one of those babies, it would undoubtedly cause the entire Disney bookkeeping system to implode.
So, in desperation, I went to Nolan Dalla, the media director for the World Series of Poker, who is not only a very nice man but a poker player himself. I was sure he would be only too cognizant of the need for a high-stakes poker pro (such as myself) to actually possess some money. And, as I expected, he was most sympathetic to my plight.
Chip Jett's hands look in no mood to give.
But he sadly explained that the Horseshoe had been purchased from the understanding Binions by the far-more-corporate Harrah's, and, "Jay, in the old days, I could have gone right down to the cage and gotten your check cashed; but I'm afraid I don't have any juice with the new people."
So here I was, a poker player without the one absolutely essential tool -- money -- and no obvious way to get any. (To fully appreciate my predicament, imagine Joe Horn without his cell phone or Hef without a nubile 20-year-old.) I searched my memory bank for someone, anyone, who might be convinced to wire me, say, $20,000. Quickly. The answer came back "none." How about my old pal Chip Jett, I thought? After all, we had shared an intimate moment of humiliation only days earlier. Seemed like a bit too much of a stretch.
In desperation, I threw myself on the mercy of the manager of one of the Horseshoe's cashier cages. I explained the whole deal -- the column, the book, the year I am supposed to spend as a high-stakes poker pro, the importance of getting off on the right foot, the fact that my checking account really has plenty of money in it, etc., etc., etc. He said nothing, and I have to admit that my story sounded fishy even to me. But when I finally sputtered to a conclusion, he said, "No problem. We'll check with your bank, see what the average balance is on your checking account and set up a line of credit. How much do you need?"
"Ten thousand?"
"Are you sure that's going to be enough?" he asked.
"Okay, make it twenty thousand," I said, feeling, for the first time since I'd arrived in Vegas, like a winner.
(It is interesting to note that the Horseshoe is able check the balance in my checking account, while the bank that actually "owns" the account cannot. When I mentioned this to my wife, she snorted and said, "Don't be naïve. It's in the interests of the Horseshoe to get as much cash into your hands as they can. The bank doesn't care if you get access to your own money, because it does them no good." Well, duh.)
Whatever. I was back in action, and that's all we high-stakes poker pros really care about.
NEXT: My dinner with the Devilfish, and other brushes with poker greatness.
Jay Lovinger, a former managing editor of Life and a founding editor of Page 2, is filing weekly columns on his poker adventures for ESPN.com and also writing a book for HarperCollins.
* * * * *
ATTENTION, IRS: HOW JAY IS MAKING OUT IN HIS NEW CAREER
Lost $1,125 the first day; lost $545 the second day. On the third day, I rested. Good move. On Day 4, I won $1,547. Won $117 the next day, won $1,740 on Day 6, then dropped $1,200 on the seventh day. Perhaps, like the Lord, I should have rested on that day.
LAS VEGAS -- Just as it appears on TV, the World Series of Poker is nothing but glamour and cool. I can testify to this from personal experience.
It was about 6 on a classically lovely Vegas morning, and I was sitting at a half-empty table in an almost completely empty Horseshoe, marveling at the beauty of the sunlight streaming in.
The occasion? The usual -- five or six evil-smelling, serial-yawning, projectile-flatulating desperados praying for one last chance to throw some hard-earned money away, in this case at a $225 buy-in one-table no-limit hold 'em satellite mini-tournament, winner take all. How desperate were we? One clean-cut-looking kid in his early 20s was offering sleepy-eyed passersby $5 rebates on their buy-ins.
An unapologetic leftover from the '60s, in a Cuba logo T-shirt, Army camouflage hat, jeans, sneakers, long hair and unkempt beard made a counter offer: If anyone waiting for the game to fill would buy a silver dollar from him for $15 -- "Hey, the silver alone is worth seven or eight dollars" -- he would stay and play. While waiting to see if we would take him up on his proposal, he whiled away a few minutes doing pushups with his feet on the ground and his hands on facing chair seats. Finally, Rebate Kid bought one, whereupon the '60s guy announced he'd stay ... for 10 minutes. If we couldn't get a quorum by then -- 10 players -- it was adios, amigos.
The six of us who had fully committed -- me, Rebate Kid, Chuck (a dealer from another casino with an encyclopedic knowledge of lame poker jokes -- "What's the difference between a puppy and a poker player? Eventually, the puppy stops whining."), the sulky and menacing Hamid, a hyper kid from the Philippines and Mike, who, despite his wispy beard looked like he might be underage -- were into some serious weenie waggling.
Chuck: "The greatest thing about this place is the wall of champions. Man, I'd love to have my picture up there."
Mike: "I've taken money from all those guys."
Chuck: "What the (bleep) are you talking about? A couple of those guys were dead before you were born."
Mike: "So. I took some money off guys who took money off the dead guys."
As we waited for our satellite to fill, Sammy Farha wandered by, his big-money pot-limit Omaha side game having just broken up. "Hey, Sammy," Mike yelled. "Want to try some real players for a change?"
"How much?" Sammy asked. When he heard about the $225 entry fee, he snorted with contempt. To put it mildly, Sammy's a major player. How major? The runnerup in last year's World Series of Poker (winnings: $1.3 million or so), he'd famously said in an interview with ESPN which ran during one of its WSOP broadcasts, that he'd have to win the WSOP (first prize: $2.5 million) just to break even on his 2003 trip to Vegas.
Finally, at about 7:30, we got our minyan. Six of us were in our 20s, one about 30, another about 40, Chuck (who's in his 50s) and me. Among us, there were five baseball or golf caps festooned with the logos of poker internet sites, and two pairs of Louisiana state trooper reflective sunglasses. Two of us were Asian (one from the Philippines, one Chinese) and two Middle Eastern (Hamid and the 30-year-old guy, who bore an eerie resemblance to George Clooney, if Clooney were a Palestinian).
Wonder if the guy's signature move is the Clooney head nod.
Early on, Chuck the voluble and Hamid the ominous got into a disagreement about a weird situation nobody had ever seen the likes of before. Suffice it to say that everybody else at the table, including the dealer, thought Hamid had tried to pull a move that, if not technically against the rules, was at the very least deep into a gray ethical area. When Tony, the veteran floor man, made a ruling that wound up costing Hamid the pot, things got a little ugly, with Hamid darkly accusing the other players, the dealer, Tony and even a few onlookers of having "turned on" him.
No sooner had Hamid busted out, much to the relief of all, then Chuck and the kid from the Philippines decided to indulge in a long bout of macho posturing. Chuck claimed some early-life greatness in the fine art of pool playing -- supposedly, in his youth, he had played some of the greats, like Earl Strickland, to a virtual standstill (according to Chuck, Strickland had once spotted him the break in nine-ball and lived to regret it).
The kid, undaunted, kept barking at Chuck, "Let's play something for money right after the game. C'mon, I've got a car. I'll drive. Want to play one-pocket? Nine-ball? Ping pong? Billiards?" And no amount of ridicule, sarcasm or out-and-out rudeness could shut him up.
When he couldn't get a rise from Chuck (who kept indicating that he would have been thrilled to play for any amount of money, if only he had thought to bring his special cue with him to the Horseshoe), the kid turned on the kid from China, whose grasp of English was still in its formative stage. After an innocuous but hard to understand comment from the Chinese kid, the other kid turned to the table and asked, unkindly, "What language is he supposed to be speaking?"
Needless to say, this irritated the Chinese kid. They got into a huge argument, with violence threatened on both sides. Thankfully, just at that moment, I went all-in, got busted by the kid from the Philippines on the river, and got to head back to my hotel for some peace, quiet and much-needed shuteye.
Poker. I LOVE this game.
Oh, but why not be generous? Why not think of these young poker players as identity-seeking pilgrims who have been given the twin gifts of speech and chip shuffling? Who among us wouldn't do almost anything to get into the Cool Guys Club?
Still, as one dealer pointed out, things were different in the old days -- like five years ago -- when the big-money tournaments and side games were dominated by good ol' road warriors who long ago had figured out who they were.
For example, I was sitting at a table with a couple of experienced vets who began discussing a promotion offered by a poker internet site.
"Hog, you going to Paris?"
"Ron, I got to be honest with you ... I'd rather go to prison."
* * * * *
ATTENTION, IRS -- HOW JAY IS MAKING OUT IN HIS NEW CAREER:
Days 1-7: plus $434.
Day 8: minus $135; Day 9: DNP; Day 10: plus $2,745; Day 11: DNP; Day 12: minus $2,750; Day 13: DNP; Day 14: plus $5,175.
Las Vegas total: plus $5,469
Jay Lovinger, a former managing editor of Life and a founding editor of Page 2, is writing on his poker adventures for ESPN.com and also writing a book for HarperCollins.
LAS VEGAS -- I'm not sure I like poker very much anymore. In fact, I hate this game. HATE, HATE, HATE! I'd like to kill poker, but first, disembowelment. In fact, even before disembowelment, using a flaming pair of ThunderStix, I'd like to ...
Question: If you had to guess, how would you say I was doing lately at the gaming tables?
All the poker books stress one thing: Do not get caught up in short-term results. Luck is a big factor in the short term, but over the long term, luck will even out and good play will prevail. So don't let a short run of bad results get to you, blah, blah, blah.
To which I say: Uh-huh.
Early on, I decided not to play in the Big One -- the $10,000 buy-in no-limit hold 'em world championship -- unless I could win my way in. Two reasons:
1. I wanted to feel like I earned it.
2. As a big-money tournament virgin, I had no shot, and I didn't want to flush a major part of my bankroll for the whole year down the toilet. (For all of you who have asked -- and all of you at home that have wondered -- ESPN is not funding my year-long journey through the weird world of 21st Century poker. I'm using my book advance -- thank you, HarperCollins -- to fund my misadventures.)
Actually, there are a number of ways to get into the championship besides plunking down 10 grand. The easiest and quickest is to win a $1,030 buy-in one-table no-limit hold-'em satellite tournament (10 players pay the $1,030 and play until only one is still standing, or, more accurately, still sitting). You can enter a $1,030 buy-in no-limit super-satellite, in which the final 10 percent still alive at the end get "free" seats into the championship. You can enter one of the twice-daily $225 buy-in no-limit super-satellites, out of which, for every $10,000 in prize money, a "free" seat is awarded (the low cost of getting in via this tournament is a bit deceptive, since, for the first two hours of these tournaments, you can rebuy $500 worth of chips for $200 every time you go broke, and you can add $500 worth of chips -- for another $200 -- or $1,000 worth of chips -- for $400 more -- at the end of the rebuy period, so it's not uncommon to wind up spending close to $1,000 if you want to qualify for the championship via this "cheap" route).
In fact, if you want to take the long way around to the championship while investing a minimum amount of money, you can enter a mini-one-table for $50, finish in the top two and win a "free" seat in a $225 buy-in super, finish high enough to qualify for the Big One, and, with a little luck, be on your way to fame and fortune. Last year's winner, Chris Moneymaker, actually took a somewhat similar route, winning a $40 buy-in internet site qualifying tourney, then sweeping through the championship to take home the top prize of $2.5 million. (This year, hundreds of people from among the record 2,000-plus entrants -- easily breaking the record for the world's largest live tournament -- qualified through various internet site events.)
Chris Moneymaker earned a cool $2.5 million by winning last year's World Series of Poker.
To make a long, sad story short, I tried them all -- except the internet tourneys -- with a noticeable lack of success. Got close a couple of times -- once when I finished 13th in a $225 buy-in super (they were giving out seven seats that night), and once when I finished about 90th in a $1,030 buy-in super (the top 43 finishers got "free" seats). The hard part about the latter failure for me was not so much missing out on the "free" seat, but the fact that it brought into sharp relief just how much I have to learn about this game just to get up to "okay" ... never mind "great," or even "good."
As is usually the case in poker tournaments, the key hand was the last one. I was the big blind (for $800), and everybody else folded around to the small blind, who went all in for about $5,500. I had about $4,000 worth of chips, so if I called and lost, I was out. However, if I called, I would be getting about 3-2 pot odds (putting in $4,000 to win almost $10,000). Since I held K-Q suited, I figured to be about an 11-10 underdog to most hands the small blind was likely to have -- any underpair, which is to say, any pair Js or lower -- and a favorite to any hand the small blind was holding if this was an attempt to steal the blinds, which was possible. I wasn't worried about dominating pairs -- aces, Ks or Qs -- because I figured, with those hands, the small blind would have made a more modest bet -- maybe $1,500 or $2,000 -- in an attempt to keep me in. An all-in bet suggested the goal was to have me fold. The only possible hands to worry about were A-K or A-Q, which would have huge advantages over my K-Q.
More important, I needed to gamble at that point, since $4,000 was about a third the bankroll of what the average player had left. If I folded, I had about enough money to get through one round -- blinds were going up to $600-1,200 on the next hand, plus we had to put in $200 antes on every hand. So there was a pretty good chance I'd never be in this good position again -- head-to-head with a decent hand against a possible blind stealer -- before my stack was blinded into oblivion.
On the other hand, the small blind was a woman who, though I had only sat down at the table five or six hands earlier, was someone I was pretty sure would not have gone all-in without a pretty good hand. And, more than that, I hate to be the caller in that kind of situation -- that is to say, a horse race where it's about 50-50 who will win the hand and get to keep playing. It's much better to be the one who makes the raise, since then you have two ways to win -- showing down the superior hand, or having the other player fold. If you are the caller, you can only win by showing down the best hand.
However, beggars can't be choosers. So, after agonizing over what to do for about three minutes -- an eternity in hold 'em -- I called. She turned over the A-K, five meaningless non-face cards showed up on the board, and it was sayonara, baby for yours truly.
That night, I had trouble sleeping as I thought about the hand for hours, and rethought it, and rethought it, and RETHOUGHT it. The next day, trying to maneuver on about three hours sleep, I ran into Jim McManus in the press room. McManus is the author of "Positively Fifth Street," one of the two great poker books ever written (along with A. Alvarez's "The Biggest Game in Town"), the book which inspired my own current Don Quixote-like journey away from economic solvency and toward divorce.
I asked McManus what he would have done with my hand. He quickly asked me one question: "How many seats were they giving out?" And when I said, "43 or so," he said, in a nanosecond, "Call." Now, you can say this is a confirmation of my growth as a player, since I made the "right" decision, even though it ended badly. I prefer to see it as a confirmation of how far down the bottom of the hill I still live, since I spent a few minutes trying to figure it out -- not to mention a night worrying about -- and McManus, (who is only an author, for Chrissake!) came up with the same answer in less time than it took Lyle Lovett to say "yes" to Julia Roberts.
Later, to put the cherry on top of my perfect ice cream sundae of a day, I was knocked out of the media charity no-limit event by someone who wasn't sure whether a straight beat two of a kind. By coincidence, I had K-Q again and he had an A-x. For historians, the flop came K-x-x, giving me a short-lived smidgeon of hope. The turn, however, was an ace and, as I walked forlornly away, I heard World Series of Poker media director Nolan Dalla announce, "And Jay Lovinger of ESPN just busted out." Oh, Nolan, you Judas.
Did I mention that the Vegas singer Clint Holmes, either Penn or Teller (I can never tell those two apart), a couple of Elvis imitators and the lawyer for Bob Varkonyi (winner of the 2002 WSOP) were among the "media" contestants? No wonder nobody trusts the media anymore.
* * * * *
ATTENTION, IRS -- HOW JAY IS MAKING OUT IN HIS NEW CAREER:
Days 1-14: plus $5,469
Day 15: minus $700; Day 16: plus $360; Day 17: DNP; Day 18: minus $1,725; Day 19: DNP; Day 20: minus $1,700; Day 21: plus $2,455; Day 22: minus $1,800; Day 23: minus $935; Day 24: minus $2,060.
Las Vegas total: minus $636
Jay Lovinger, a former managing editor of Life and a founding editor of Page 2, is writing on his poker adventures for ESPN.com and also writing a book for HarperCollins. You can watch the 2004 World Series of Poker starting July 6 at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN.
You can't spend five weeks playing high-stakes poker in Las Vegas without learning a few things, no matter how numb you might be. Here are a few things -- some of value for would-be poker tyros, others just useless curiosities -- that I picked up during my eventful stay:
Be careful what you wish for.
In the middle of a key hand in this year's world championship, Barny Boatman, one of England's top players and a member of the Hendon Mob (a group of four friends sponsored by PrimaPoker.com, the largest online poker network in the world), found himself thinking, "How am I going to get all my chips in the pot and get this guy to call me?"
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here was the situation: There were about 350 players left of the original 2,576 entries, and Boatman had about $50,000 in chips -- an average amount per player still in action. He was in the small blind (the blinds were $600-1,200), holding J-J. Everybody folded to the guy before the button, who limped in (poker jargon for "just called"), as did the button.
Boatman bet $6,000, and the button called. The flop came J-3-2 rainbow (poker jargon for "three different suits"). In other words, Boatman not only had the nuts (poker jargon for "the best hand at the moment"), it couldn't even have been close. The best hand the button could have was a set of 3s or a set of deuces. He couldn't even have a flush draw. The problem was this: He almost couldn't even have a good enough hand to call any kind of bet. So Boatman checked, trying to figure out a way to get all his chips into the pot and have the button call.
Even as this thought was richocheting around Boatman's brain, the button pushed all $100,000-plus of his stack into the middle of the table. Boatman smiled, and happily called.
The button turned over the 4-5 of diamonds. He was on a big-time semi-bluff (poker jargon for a big bluff that contains a few possible outs if the bluff is called -- in this case, either an ace or a 6 to complete the straight). So Boatman was more than a 3-1 favorite to win the pot. Even in the unlikely event that an ace or 6 came up, Boatman would still win the pot if a 2, 3, or matching ace or 6, or the last J fell on the river.
Ask Jackpot Jay!
Got a poker problem or want more details about Jay's Vegas adventure? Send in your questions and comments.
Neither an ace nor a 6 came on the turn or the river ... and Boatman still lost. Diamonds fell on the last two cards, giving the button an extremely unlikely backdoor flush, about a 25-1 shot.
By the time I talked to him about it a couple days later, Boatman seemed pretty calm, which makes sense because a Zen-like detachment is an important weapon in the arsenal of any top poker player. Unfortunately, I was only too aware of the level of detachment necessary to survive poker, having suffered a mini-version of the Be-Careful-What-You-Wish-For syndrome myself about an hour earlier.
I was playing in a $230 buy-in, one-table, no-limit, hold-'em satellite mini-tournament, where the top two finishers, regardless of stack size, would split about $2,200. There were three of us left, and we had similar-sized stacks -- about $3,000-$3,500 in chips each. What I was wishing for was obvious: That the other two guys would go all-in against each other, which would eliminate one of them and leave me as one of the two guys still standing.
And that's almost exactly what happened!
Unfortunately, when the hand was over, the loser still had two $100 chips ... which, though that wasn't even enough for a full blind and thus he had to play whatever he held, he then improbably proceeded to double up four hands in a row. And he never had better starting cards than J-8. So, we were back to where we started -- about $3,000-3,500 each. After a half hour of back-and-forth, I busted out, walking away from the table with nothing, where, only 30 minutes earlier, I had $1,100 about one inch from my pocket.
Oops.
The old guys are still cool.
During the senior no-limit hold 'em event ($1,000 buy-in, open only to the 50-and-up set), our lady dealer cheekily asked: "The question is, are they going to give you guys more potty breaks than usual?"
At which point, a good ol' boy from Kentucky in a PokerStars.com hat deadpanned, "I didn't take a chance. I wore a diaper."
Mothers, don't let your children grow up to be dealers.
They have to take a lot of crap -- people throwing cards at them, cursing them out and the like. And sometimes, they have to take a ton of crap. One lady dealer, who, after dealing a losing hand to one ungracefully-aging poker legend, overheard him complaining to her supervisor that she "smelled bad." What did the supervisor do? "He came over and smelled me," the dealer said, cringing at the memory.
Casinos have their own peculiar sense of values.
One of the dealers hired by the Horseshoe had recently been released from prison after serving time for a manslaughter conviction. As a WSOP insider explained to me, "The only thing that can disqualify you from getting work as a dealer in Vegas is if you've ever been convicted of stealing from a casino."
There are a lot of poker players that need to learn how to say, "Hell-ooo," to Mr. Salad Bar.
Moneymaker didn't have the same luck as last year, when he won the WSOP.
It ain't easy being the New Face of Poker.
Poker cover boy Chris Moneymaker -- he was featured on two magazines that debuted during the WSOP -- was eliminated after less than three hours of play on Day 1 of the championship. Though his out-of-nowhere run to the title -- and $2.5 million first prize -- last year is widely credited (along with great poker ratings on ESPN and the Travel Channel, and the invention of the card cam) for the current poker explosion, Moneymaker is not a great player. Of course, as is customary in these cases of instant cultural sainthood, he is nowhere near as bad as many people think, either.
Though I could not possibly care less about your bad beats -- yawn! -- for some reason, I'm totally convinced that you are fascinated by mine.
Actually, since the worst beat I saw while I was in Vegas didn't happen to me, I feel OK about passing it on. During the first hour of the senior hold 'em event, a woman with a short stack went all-in with the 9-4 of hearts and was called by a guy with J-J (apparently, the bad luck hand of this year's WSOP), including the J of spades. The flop came K-Q-10 of spades. This meant that the guy with J-J had by far the best hand . . . and an even better draw -- to a royal flush -- while the woman with the 9-4 had to hope a third jack came up (which, though it would give the guy a set, would give her a straight), and then that no ace, none of the remaining three kings, queens, 10s or 9s, or the last J, nor the 8-7-6-5-4-3-2 of spades fell on the river. Needless to say, a J came on the turn and a blank on the river.
Hey, nobody ever said this poker thing was going to be a picnic.
Advice you can take to the bank.
Play every hand like it's the first one you ever played and the last one you ever will play.
After a bad beat, go for a short walk, even if it means getting up from the table and missing a hand or two. (Feel free to ignore this advice if you are one of two people left at the final table.) After a really bad beat, go for a long walk -- and consider not coming back until the next day.
From Dave "The Devilfish" Ulliott, who should really be The New Face of Poker since he's got the entire package (genius ability, a great nickname and the perfect look -- kind of an emaciated Eric Clapton thing, with just of a touch of John Lennon, circa the late '70s): "Don't raise in early position, unless you can stand a re-raise. Because if you raise, and then go out when you are re-raised, people will remember that -- or, at least, it'll be in the back of their minds -- and they'll take advantage of you by picking on you constantly."
Never apologize, never complain. I ran into Adam Schoenfeld in the press room the day before the Big One, which only brought him more grief (more on that in a later column).
"How's it goin'?" I asked.
"Pretty good," he said. "I'm down $70,000 for the trip, though some of that was from the Bellagio."
Now that, folks, is a pro's pro.
* * * * *
ATTENTION, IRS -- HOW JAY IS MAKING OUT IN HIS NEW CAREER:
Days 1-24: minus $636
Day 25-28: DNP; Day 29: minus $585; Day 30: minus $355
Total for Vegas trip: minus $1,576
Or, as Nolan Dalla, media director for the WSOP, put it: "Real value of WSOP experience (last year at the Horseshoe): Priceless"
Jay Lovinger, a former managing editor of Life and a founding editor of Page 2, is writing on his poker adventures for ESPN.com and also writing a book for HarperCollins. You can watch the 2004 World Series of Poker starting July 6 at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN.
That JsJd hand where it lost to 9h4h on a TsQsKs flop is SICK. Almost as bad as my KK losing to QQ on a KxTx3x flop...
I totally agree with him that the Devilfish would make an excellent ambassador for poker. Moneymaker has the fairytale story, and he conducts himself in a very nice, very humble way, but the Devilfish is the type of player a 'real' poker player wants to be, and he's funny as hell to boot.
AK*1, maybe the fact that you've been reading these articles will help you get into the money tomorrow night? I know, I know, 2nd place in the first one blah blah blah... You bringing the mechanic again? That guy's hands are bigger than my head.
Regards,
all_aces
I feel like I've heard a line like that before... It's probably somewhat common.
And my overall favorite was:
ScottyZ
After reading all about Dangerous Dave and his WSOP run, and knowing full well that you have recently banked a gigantic roll of your own - I am bringing out all the stops tomorrow.
For a quick preview, think about the Dave vs. Annie Duke hand, and then substitute me for Dave and you for Annie (BTW your figure is pretty noice for having popped out 4 kids bro...), and then think about the last hand of the Cincinnati Kid where Slade gets the straight flush and busts out Steve McQueen, and then also don't forget the scene in Revenge of the Nerds, where Booger is teaching the Japanese dude how to play poker, and the Japanese dude has a flush, and he tells Booger "I think I have a frush" and then Booger tells him, "What the fvck is a frush?"
Ya - thats gonna be U!!!!!!!!
ScottyZ
Anyhoo - I was thinking about Poker popping up in cool movies and TV shows (like Booger in ROTN) and I vaguely recall an excellent episode of Cheers from the early 80's, where some hustler plays a high stakes game of Poker in the bar against the Judge from Night Court. Man, I wish I could see that one again - although I remember that Judge Harry pulls some sick manouever and beats this guy - who for some reason, I think looked exactly like the Texas Dolly.
Anyone remember this episode? Cheers was so classic.
Another favorite was the one where Woody is picking football games, and he asked Sammy to bet his life savings on a 14-team parlay, and Sammy doesn't - thinking he is gonna save all of Woody's cash, and Woody ends up going 14-0!!!
Or the one where Sammy and Coach bet against the Celtics, and everyone in the bar is pissed when they lose, except Coach and Sammy, because they won a bundle. That one is jokes!
Or even the one where Sammy is playing chess against some guy, and Norm is in the backroom, running a computer program to simulate the game, and is relaying the moves back to Sammy through an ear-piece, but then they get busted anyways...Cheers rules all shows!
P.S. Devin, tomorrow night you're going to the rail! (of your balcony, where you'll have a great seat to watch all of the action. Heck, you can even bring a banana out their for a microphone and make like Norman Chad as I steamroll the rest of the boys on route to my first B.I.P.C victory!)
Al, you do realize that you now have a "please try and take me out of this tournament all_aces" sign on your back now, don't you? Correction: you have a "please try and take me out of this tournament AGAIN all_aces" sign. My bad.
ScottyZ:
I don't know about you, but that sums up a lot of 4:00 am thoughts at the poker table. $3/$6 or $10/$20... doesn't matter. The bottom line is that you're up or down fifty bucks or so and who cares and why don't you just go home after this round... but then you stay for another hour...
Awesome quote.
Regards,
all_aces
NEW YORK -- I have seen the future of poker, and it is the Unabomber.
I hope I am wrong about this.
Of course, we're not talking about the real Unabomber, the eco-terrorist who maimed and killed for years in the name of environmentalism. We're talking about Phil Laak, a poker pro who earned his nickname the old-fashioned way -- via his wardrobe. He always wears a gray, hooded sweatshirt while he plays; and often, while under duress, he hides inside it like a relationship-phobic turtle.
After five weeks in Vegas, playing 12 or more hours of high-stakes poker a day, I was determined to get away from the game. But last Wednesday, I heard -- and heeded -- the irresistible siren-song of my TV.
At the Celebrity Invitational, a World Poker Tour event on the Travel Channel, the card-playing Unabomber not only displayed his signature disappearing move, but showed that he has significantly expanded his puerile and infantile repertoire since his last public appearance:
1. When feeling feisty about his hold cards, he often jumped up in the middle of a hand and began shadow-boxing, a la Rocky in training;
2. Whenever he was all-in, he scurried around behind the dealer, leaned over to the height of the table and tried to get "the first look" at the flop before it hit the felt -- just one of his many cute "superstitions," we were told;
3. On a couple of occasions, after outdrawing somebody on the river -- invariably somebody who put him all-in with an inferior hand -- he dropped down on the floor and rattled off a half-dozen crunches, or just rolled around like an epileptic armadillo;
4. And, after knocking out an opponent, he applied a big, gooey hug to the victim ... because, you know, why just cause some poor bastard to suffer by busting him out of a tournament when you can also make him squirm with embarrassment?
Ask Jackpot Jay!
Got a poker problem or want more details about Jay's Vegas adventure? Send in your questions and comments.
What's next ... a sloppy, wet soul kiss?
Okay, I know what you're thinking: Oh, Jay, relax already. Don't be such a tight-ass. So the guy's a little colorful, maybe a touch flaky. What's the matter, there aren't enough expressionless embalmers playing, we need one more?
You've got a point. But here's the first problem: The guy is setting a bad example for the kids. How long do you think it'll be before the poker rooms of the world are run over by mobs of Junior Unabombers?
You think not? At the Celebrity Invitational, the younger members of the audience were enthralled, howling like werewolves in heat at the Unabomber's antics.
And worse, though not at all surprising, the TV cameras loved him. The WPT announcers -- Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten -- acted as if this was just the coolest thing they'd ever seen, as opposed to a serious cry for help. (The other players were obviously quite uneasy, though they went along with it manfully; clearly, they did not want to look like bad sports.)
So what, you ask? Never forget the first rule of pop culture creation: TV giveth, and TV taketh away.
Nor the cardinal rule of TV: Too much of a good thing is never enough.
TV is a user, a parasite that inhales whatever it needs, sucks it dry, spits out the husk and quickly moves on to the Next Great Thing.
"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" was a weekly sensation, then a semi-weekly sensation, then a daily sensation ... then a former sensation. If eating bugs for a million dollars was good, doesn't it figure that supermodels eating bugs would be even better? ... and, coming soon to a 21-inch box near you, ALIENS EATING BUGS FOR A BILLION DOLLARS!
If a six-pack of "Friends" looking for sexual satisfaction in New York City was good, then four women looking for good sex in the city was even better -- though not as satisfying as a bunch of unusually attractive lesbians, soon to be followed by ... what, an entire football team on the prowl? (Come to think of it, ESPN has already been there, done that.)
In other words, if broadcast history is any guide, here's where we are: Today the Unabomber, tomorrow entire squadrons of imaginatively-accoutred poker terrorists.
Do you actually remember Dave Foley and "NewsRadio"?
I hope I'm wrong, though that would be a first.
By the way, the Celebrity Invitational raised a few other troubling questions:
1. Though none made the final table, a bunch of poker-loving celebs (mostly B-level and down, though the usual top-tier suspects -- James Woods, Ben Affleck, Lou Diamond Phillips -- also showed up) was invited along with the pros. The last celeb to be eliminated -- in 11th place -- was Dave Foley, who, I cheerfully admit, I have never heard of, though hipper friends tell me he is a comedian/actor who was in "The Kids in the Hall" and "NewsRadio." Though I have no idea how gifted an artist he might actually be, his response to being the last celeb standing was, I thought, instructive: He attributed his fine showing to the fact that he didn't know what he was doing and so nobody else could figure out what he was doing, either.
I guess my first question is: Does the average American really want to watch a B-level celeb stumble his way through a poker tournament while knowing nothing about the game -- and being damn proud of that fact?
And if so, here's my second question: What does that say about the average American?
2. Did anybody notice how poorly the Unabomber actually played?
This was easily the poorest performance by a winner I've ever seen on a televised event, and I've seen them all. Not only did the Unabomber pull at least five key hands out of his you-know-what, but he made several plays where he actually acknowledged on air that he had no idea what he was doing.
One example: Holding a Q-9 suited, he called an all-in raise after the flop (which contained two more cards of the matching suit) even though he "knew" it wasn't the right play. He did it just because he "felt like it." (The reason it wasn't the right play: He was getting only about even odds on his money, when the odds against filling his flush and winning the pot were actually 2-1 against. Do that often enough and you will go broke.)
However, the worst play of the final table -- at least, the worst play they showed -- was made by the other finalist, Humberto Brenes of Costa Rica. With nearly a 2-1 chip lead, Brenes called the Unabomber's all-in bet of about $700,000 with a K-8 suited. Think about that for a moment. What hands could the Unabomber possibly have had that K-8 suited would be favored against? K-7 suited? 8-7 suited? Some kind of complete bluff? But why would the Unabomber, as unstable as he obviously is, risk all his chips on a complete bluff when there were only the blinds and antes in the pot?
Now consider the possible hands the Unabomber more likely held:
Any pair from 7s down to 2s? He'd be about a 6-5 favorite over Brenes' K-8.
Any pair from Qs down to 8s? He'd be at least a 2-1 favorite.
Watch out for Unabomber-types when you sit down at a poker table.
Ks or aces? A huge favorite.
A-K, K-Q, K-J, K-10, K-9? A prohibitive favorite.
Any A-x? A strong favorite.
In other words, any hand the Unabomber was likely to be holding would be a small-to-huge favorite over Brenes' K-8 ... and even in the unlikely event the Unabomber was holding a truly silly hand (like Q-J suited, or J-10 suited), Brenes would be only slightly favored.
Nonetheless, Brenes said, "Let's gamble," and called -- which led my teenage daughter, Woo (who is still not sure whether a straight beats two pair), to mutter: "How did those guys ever make the final table?"
Sure enough, a couple of hands later, when the Unabomber hit an ace on the river to go with his A-2, he sent Brenes back to Costa Rica for good.
Sadly, he also sent an army of immature poker players back to the drawing board to flesh out their own distinctive versions of Unabomberism, all the better to unleash them later on an unsuspecting poker world.
What's my point? I guess it's that poker, which is still in its innocent fad-of-the-moment infancy, deserves better.
Of course, that subject always reminds me of a scene near the end of "Unforgiven," when the notoriously ill-tempered mass killer William Munny (played by Clint Eastwood) is about to dispatch the helpless sheriff, "Little Bill" Daggett (played by Gene Hackman) to his eternal reward.
"I don't deserve to die like this," Hackman says.
And Clint, sighting down the barrel of his Spencer rifle, replies: "'Deserves' got nothin' to do with it."
Jay Lovinger, a former managing editor of Life and a founding editor of Page 2, is writing on his poker adventures for ESPN.com and also writing a book for HarperCollins. You can watch the 2004 World Series of Poker starting July 6 at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN.
Tell us how you really feel, AK*1...
I've read a lot about what a dick this guy is. I just wish CityTV would hurry up with WPT Season 2 so I can get that much closer to seeing it. Another great column from Jay Lovinger. This guy should be a professional writer or something.
Regards,
all_aces
This is interesting, because I saw the episode of PTI that Jay is talking about - and it is this one where Norman Chad said Men the Master drank 11 Corona's at the WSOP....
Does poker qualify as a sport?
By Jay Lovinger
Page 2
Is poker a sport?
Before I attempt to answer that question, here's another one: What difference does it make?
A couple of times in the past few weeks, Tony Kornheiser of "Pardon The Interruption" has questioned whether the current poker boom will have legs. Kornheiser obviously believes it will not, based on the notion that people who watch poker on TV cannot expect to see any spectacular physical feats and so will necessarily become bored and stop watching.
In other words, in Kornheiser's opinion, poker is not a sport.
(In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that Kornheiser knows absolutely nothing about poker, doesn't have the slightest interest in whether or not the poker boom will continue, and is "concerned" about the future of poker only to the extent that it provides a chance to tweak Norman Chad, ESPN's poker color man and a former colleague of Kornheiser at the Washington Post.)
(In the interests of full full disclosure, I should also mention that Kornheiser and I not only worked together at the Washington Post but went to the same school -- Harpur College in bucolic Binghamton, N.Y. -- and that Kornheiser is largely responsible for my journalistic career, such as it is, because he introduced me to the man who gave me my first real editing job. Therefore, under the Fairness In Commentary Act of '99, I am obligated to publicly insult and demean Kornheiser whenever I have the opportunity.)
Okay, let's see if, just this once, Kornheiser might be right about something.
When it comes to proving a dubious point, dictionary definitions are often the last refuge of a scoundrel. So, according to "The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language," here are the first two definitions for "sport":
1.) An active pastime; diversion; recreation.
2.) A specific diversion, usually involving physical exercise and having a set form and body of rules; a game.
So far, so good ... except for a teensy bit of a problem with the phrase "physical exercise." Now, if one defines "physical exercise" as something involving:
1.) Strength; or
2.) Speed; or
3.) Coordination; or
4.) Reflexes; or
5.) Physical endurance; or
6.) Ability to play through pain; or ...
Okay, poker doesn't require any of those, unless you consider the strength needed to push large piles of chips into the middle of a pot, or maybe the manual dexterity necessary to see your hole cards without letting anybody else at the table get a clean look.
Ask Jackpot Jay!
Got a poker problem or want more details about Jay's Vegas adventure? Send in your questions and comments.
However, we have a major out -- the adverb "usually," which, if taken literally, means "sometimes not."
Plus, let's be fair: How much more "physical exercise" is required to play, say, bowling or golf or pool than poker? And nobody would question whether bowling or golf or pool are sports.
Another thing poker has going for it, sports-wise, is that ESPN and the Fox Sports Network both cover it regularly, and magazines like ESPN The Magazine and Sports Illustrated both write about it. (Of course, SI once regularly covered bridge and yachting, too, but it seems unkind to make too much of that.)
In any case, is it really true, as Kornheiser contends, that most people watch sports on TV to see incredible physical feats?
While incredible physical feats are a regular feature of some popular sports -- notably basketball -- there are many popular sports in which incredible physical feats are quite rare, and even those seldom determine the outcome of an event. Just two of many in this category would be baseball and auto racing.
While it is true that baseball has its share of web gems, for example, most of the key moments in a game are noticeable only because of the results. The difference between a swing by Barry Bonds and a swing by, say, Rey Ordonez is perceivable primarily because of the results of those swings -- in Bonds' case, often a home run; in Ordonez's case, almost always, at best, a weak ground ball.
Similarly, what's the difference between a slow curve from Mets' lefty Tom Glavine and a similar pitch from the Yankees' Gabe White? One winds up in the catcher's glove, and the other in outer space; but until those fateful moments, to the naked eye, they look pretty much the same.
In auto racing, everybody goes round and round and round and round, and the only thing that differentiates one guy who goes round and round from another who goes round and round is which one arrives at the finish line first. True, an occasional driver will show an occasional flash of other-worldly reflexes in avoiding a multi-car pile-up, but I doubt whether that's why people tune in to watch. In fact, you can make a better case that they tune in to watch, hoping to see multi-car wrecks. In other words, if the vast majority of race-watchers appreciate anything that has to do with incredible physical feats, it is most likely the absence of them.
No, people watch sports for one reason: to see who won, to see who can exhibit the most grace under the most intense pressure, and then to celebrate the winners, often by cashing a bet. (Yes, football fans, I'm talking 'bout you. Be honest now -- would you rather see a week's worth of incredible physical feats, or collect on one meaningful wager from your local bookie?) And the reality is that big-time poker provides just about the most intense pressure the fertile mind of man can create -- not to mention an endless stream of meaningful wagers.
Coaches have to make lots of intense decisions -- poker players do, too.
First of all, the money is huge. Greg Raymer, the winner of this year's World Series of Poker, took home $5 million; and to do so, he had to play thousands of hands that took 60-plus hours over six days -- without making a single major mistake.
(In that sense, I suppose, great poker players resemble great coaches more than great athletes -- they have to make constant choices, any one of which could cause the entire enterprise to collapse. Consider, for example, Larry Brown's options at the end of the second game of the NBA Finals: Guard the inbounds pass? Foul Shaq? Foul Looooo-ke Walton? Foul Kobe? Double-team Kobe? Play Kobe straight up? Poker players have to make decisions like that hundreds of times in a tournament -- and there's no third and fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh game if they are wrong.)
Second of all, in poker, if you don't win, not only do you not get paid -- unlike baseball and football and basketball players -- but they take money out of your pocket. (The entry fee for playing in the WSOP, for example, was $10,000, so you can sit there for four or five days and go home with only a huge hole in your bank account to show for it.)
Third of all, in major tournaments, there can be 2,500-plus players trying to be the last man standing -- or sitting -- and they all will do almost anything, including lie viciously and repeatedly (in poker, we call it "bluffing"), to send you home a broken husk of a man (or woman).
In other words, win and be a champion toting a life-changing roll of bills big enough to choke Shrek, or lose and go home a chump with a giant hole blown through your life savings. As the Clint Eastwood character -- a lone gunfighter, the ur-American sports figure -- tells the Scofield Kid in "Unforgiven": "It's a helluva thing, killing a man. You take away everything he's got in life, and everything he'll ever have."
Now what can be more pressure-filled, more sporting than all that? And does anybody believe the American public will ever tire of watching?
I say, "No way." What do you think?
Jay Lovinger, a former managing editor of Life and a founding editor of Page 2, is writing on his poker adventures for ESPN.com and also writing a book for HarperCollins. You can watch the 2004 World Series of Poker starting July 6 at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN.
By Jay Lovinger
Page 2
LEDYARD, Conn. --There are magical phrases every poker player needs to survive. Some are universal, like:
1.) "I think I'd better fold this crap."
2.) "I don't want to frighten anybody, but I'm gonna have to raise this pot."
3.) "Have you got a few thousand you can spare?"
And some are personal, like the one that suddenly came to me as I stepped off the flight from Las Vegas after I'd been away from home for more than five weeks, and I saw that fearsome glint in my wife's eyes:
"Yes, dear."
I used it for the first time right then and there, when she said, "I hope you're ready to get up-close and personal again with Mr. Dust Buster."
The first question almost everybody asks me when they hear about my idea to spend a year on the road as a high-stakes poker pro is:
Even the poker knight must bown down to his domestic partner.
What does your wife think about it?
The hard but true answer?
Not much.
Oh, on the surface, she is a good sport. But right about when the pipes in our Bronx co-op apartment started to leak ... which required holes to be ripped in the walls of our bathroom and the bedroom of my daughter Woo ... an event which coincided with my daughter Wendy's first final exam ... and my wife's attempt to get her own book started ... and Woo's emergency root canal ... and Woo telling her she wished I was home to provide some "calm role-modeling" ... but of course I wasn't there to help ... not at all ... or even to sympathize ... though I was calling up regularly from Vegas to complain about an endless slew of bad beats (and excessive air conditioning in my two-room suite with Jacuzzi) ... which even my wife, with her limited knowledge of and interest in poker (and a shower she couldn't use because of the hole in the bathroom wall) could tell were pretty much the result of my bad play ... well, I guess the nice way to put it is that she lost just a bit of patience with me and my journey into self-realization.
As you can see, "Yes, dear," wasn't going to be nearly enough. I thought to myself, "What would a real high-stakes poker pro do in this situation? What would a strategic genius like Howard Lederer do?" Then it came to me.
So there I was, two weeks later, watching that Virgin Air flight take off from JFK, winging its way toward England, carrying my wife and Wendy and Woo off on a four-week, four-country journey of their own. And I must say, on my own behalf, that I'd really learned something about giving:
I waited until that plane was at least a quarter-inch off the ground before I jumped in the car and headed east to Foxwoods.
A FACIAL FOR THE WORLD CHAMPION
Like marriage, poker can occasionally be heavenly. But more often, you wind up feeling like a total feeb.
And the way I did it was particularly satisfying. Down to my last $3,000 -- the other nine players left all had at least $15,000 -- and in danger of being blinded off in just two more hands, I watched in amazement as two medium stacks went all in against each other. When the loser of the hand was eliminated, I moved up from 10th (prize money: $600-plus) to ninth (prize money: $1,024).
Not exactly the life-changing win I was hoping for, true. But it figured to pay for about three days in Europe for the wife and kids, which ain't exactly chopped liver, either.
However, the best part of the tournament wasn't finishing ninth. It was a single hand -- the dream hand of a lifetime, the likes of which I'll probably never see again if I play until I'm 80. I was dealt A-A in fourth position. The guy in front of me bet $900, about 25 percent of his stack. I called, hoping somebody behind me would raise, so I could re-raise -- or at least call. Nobody did. The flop came A-A-5, giving me four aces, an unbeatable hand.
My unusual problem was this: The hand was too good. There were no two cards in the deck -- except a 5-5 -- the guy could be holding to allow him to bet, or to call any bet I might make. So I had already decided to check through to the river, hoping against hope that the next two cards would give him something, anything, to bet with. So imagine my amazement when the guy went all-in after the flop -- a stone-cold bluff into my four aces.
"You know, I really think I'm gonna win this one," I understated, calling, as the guy shame-facedly turned over a K-Q unsuited and beat a hasty retreat from the smokeless poker room.
An interesting side note: Greg Raymer, the winner of this year's World Series of Poker (and with the title, $5 million, a world record for any poker tournament), sat for a while at my table. Despite the fact that everybody was all over him like he was a nude supermodel -- congratulations, questions, requests that he sign pictures/hats/shirts/what have you, demands for hugs or just a lucky finger ramble through his hair -- he was incredibly congenial and obliging.
He seemed like the kind of guy who would appreciate all those old patent lawyer jokes. (Q: What do you have when 24 patent lawyers are buried up to their necks in sand? A: Not enough sand.) When somebody asked him how the patent attorney business was going, Raymer said, "I'm retiring tomorrow morning ... and that's the best part of winning the World Series."
He also displayed a nice I-gotta-be-me edge from time to time, which an unregenerate '60s throwback like myself found particularly endearing. One player asked him to autograph a copy of Card Player magazine (with Raymer on the cover) for his son, with the words: Dear Noel, don't gamble. Raymer smiled, nodded ... and wrote: Dear Noel, play smart.
Several players began to heckle the guy who was overseeing the tournament, suggesting rather pungently that he -- and, by extension, Foxwoods -- was miserly because he had failed to offer a bounty to the player who knocked "the world champion" out of the tournament. Finally, just to shut everybody up, the guy promised a steak dinner for two to whomever terminated Raymer. "Wow," said one guy, "that's truly magnanimous. Are you sure Foxwoods can afford it?"
Even the World Series champ, Greg Raymer, won't always make the final table.
Soon after, our table was broken up, and I'm not sure who actually eliminated Raymer. All I know is, when I arrived at the final table, he was not there.
KING OF FEEBS
I'm going to try not to dwell on the bad times. This column is long enough as it is; and, really, nobody cares.
Before I stop dwelling, however, just a bit of background. The World Poker Tour is hosting a $10,000 buy-in, no-limit, hold 'em event in November at Foxwoods; and, if you are one of those cheapskates who would prefer not to lay out 10 grand, Foxwoods has instituted a three-step program by which, God willing, you can win your way in for a total of $60.
It works like this:
1.) You enter an Act I one-table satellite for $60 ($45 entry fee, $15 for Foxwoods to help pay dealers, electric bills, the mortgage, Uncle Sam, etc.). If you finish in the top three out of 10 starters, you move on to ...
2.) Act II, another one-table satellite. (You can bypass Act 1 by simply paying a $150-$120 entry fee, $30 for Foxwoods -- but that doesn't seem particularly sporting.) If you win the Act II, you move on to ...
3.) Act III, a weekly super-satellite tourney. (You can bypass Act I and Act II by simply paying $1,000 -- plus a fee for Foxwoods -- but that is not only unsporting but expensive.) For every 10 entrants in an Act III, one person will win a seat into the WPT championship event. So, if there are, say, 60 players entering, the last six standing -- or, more accurately, sitting -- save themselves $10,000 and get a free shot at fame and more than $1 million.
I thought so, which is why I entered an Act 1 with rather high expectations. The key thing to keep in mind about Act 1 events is that at least three or four of the 10 people entering will typically have no idea what they are doing and, therefore, virtually no chance to be one of the final three players. Two examples should suffice: a guy who asked seven or eight times before he was eliminated how much you could bet in a no-limit game; and a woman who would visibly shudder whenever anybody bet into her, and then mutter, "So much money. I knew this was a bad idea."
In other words, if you are even a mediocre player, your true odds of moving on to an Act II from an Act I are about even money.
Which is why I was ready to kill myself after entering three Act 1s and failing to move on all three times.
To sum up this distressing experience: I spent $180 to win my way into a mini-tournament that I could have gotten into just by paying $150 ... and after all that, I still hadn't qualified for an Act II.
Things could be worse though. Just imagine if my wife wasn't in Europe somewhere and she heard about this. Do me a favor ... if you happen to run into her Over There, please don't mention it.
Jackpot Jay's Poker Glossary
Bad beat -- A particularly unlucky way to lose a hand, especially a big one, usually involving an unlikely draw by an opponent on the last card (also known as "the river").
Blinded off -- When you lose your last chips in a tournament because you have to pay either a small or big blind. In some kinds of poker -- notably hold 'em -- the player to the left of the dealer has to post a bet called the small blind, and the player to the left of the small blind has to post another bet (usually but not always twice the size of the small blind) called the big blind before they are dealt a hand. The purpose of the blinds is to get the betting started (similar to antes in, say, seven-card stud) and, more important, to prevent players from endlessly folding until getting the best possible hand, which is A-A. In a tournament, the blinds increase at regular intervals, encouraging the play of less-than-optimal hands, which, in turn, prevents tournaments from going on forever.
Final table -- The last table left at a tournament, usually nine people in hold 'em events, though some televised tournaments, such as World Poker Tour championships, only seat six.
Flop -- In hold 'em, there are four betting rounds -- after each player is dealt his/her two down cards, after the first three community cards are dealt face up in the middle of the table, after the fourth community card is dealt face up in the middle of the table, and after the fifth and last community card is dealt face up in the middle of the table. The first group of three community cards is known as "the flop." (The fourth community card is known as "the turn" or "fourth street," and the fifth as "the river" or "fifth street.")
Position -- On any hold 'em hand, where a player sits in relation to the dealer. The first few players (usually the first three or four) to the left of the dealer -- that is, the ones who have to bet first -- are in early position. The next three or so are said to be in middle position, and the last three or so are in late position.
As I resumed my new career at Foxwoods last week, the heavenly part came first. I made the final table of a tournament for the first time ever.
Ask Jackpot Jay!
Got a poker problem or want more details about Jay's Vegas adventure? Send in your questions and comments.
Pretty good deal, huh?
ATTENTION, IRS: HOW JAY IS DOING IN HIS NEW CAREER
Three days at Foxwoods: plus $1,000
Total for my CTD (career-to-date): minus $500
Jay Lovinger, a former managing editor of Life and a founding editor of Page 2, is writing on his poker adventures for ESPN.com and also writing a book for HarperCollins. You can watch the 2004 World Series of Poker starting July 6 at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN.
Are Poker Superstars Possible?
By Andrew N.S. Glazer
Special to Page 2
Recently, a fellow journalist asked me whether there has ever been the poker equivalent of a Babe Ruth, and whether it is even theoretically possible for poker to have a Michael Jordan. If so, he wanted to know who I thought that might be.
The answer isn't simple.
Whether there ever "has been" and whether there ever "will be" that kind of poker superstar are two very different questions. People in the sporting world readily understand that Ruth played under different conditions than Mark McGwire or Barry Bonds did, and that Michael Jordan faced athletes far more talented than George Mikan did.
Could there ever be a poker player that dominated like Michael Jordan?
The differences in poker, past and present, are even more striking.
Before we even start comparing players, we first have to acknowledge the huge difference between "money play" superstars and "tournament play" superstars. Tournaments only came into existence about 35 years ago, didn't start expanding much beyond the World Series until 25 years ago, and didn't become widely popular until about 15 years ago. They made another quantum leap about five years ago, and -- as you and everyone else has seen -- have gone nuclear in the last two years, thanks to TV exposure.
As a result of the tournament explosion, it has become almost impossible to compare achievements from different eras. In my recent report on the 2004 WSOP, I stated that Dan Harrington's feat of making the final table (actually the final four, with a third-place finish in 2003 and a fourth-place finish in 2004) the last two years, when the fields included 839 and 2,576 entries, is far more impressive than Stu Ungar's consecutive victories in 1980 and 1981 -- and (though I didn't make this next point in the story) arguably more impressive than Johnny Chan's back-to-back wins in 1987-88, simply because the fields Ungar and Chan faced were mere fractions of the size of those Harrington faced.
I didn't make the Chan point in my story because that's a much closer call. The fields were a LITTLE bigger then; and Chan nearly made it a three-peat in 1989, when he finished second to Phil Hellmuth, Jr. To me, that three year run of 1-1-2 is the most impressive feat in poker history.
The problem in evaluating poker tournament superstars goes beyond comparing eras. How do you compare an Erik Seidel, who might play 30 tournaments a year, with a Men Nguyen, who might play 300? There's considerable disagreement within the industry, and no one has yet come up with the perfect formula for determining "Tournament Player of the Year."
The more sound plans call for a system that credits achievements in tournaments as field sizes and buy-in amounts increase, and that also takes into account some kind of net adjustment where you lose points for tournaments you enter and fail to cash in. That mirrors life, where someone who enters 10 $500 tournaments and wins three winds up with a financial result considerably more impressive than someone who enters 200 $500 tournaments and wins five.
Nonetheless, any "Player of the Year" system should factor in consistency: You can't award twice as many points for winning a $1,000 tournament as you do for winning a $500 event, or for winning a 200-player event instead of a 100-player event. Otherwise, it would be almost impossible for anyone to beat Greg Raymer this year, because he won a $10,000 event with 2,576 entrants (the World Series of Poker).
Raymer would have scored so highly in both multipliers that you'd need to win five other large-field, $10,000 tournaments just to catch him; and nobody is going to win five $10,000 tournaments in a year unless they start getting held on a weekly basis -- and even then the odds against it would be overwhelming.
Because modern tournament fields are so large, it is becoming more and more difficult for one player to win multiple events in a year. When Mike Matusow busted out at the final table at the Big One in 2002, he was in tears, saying, quite correctly, "I could play perfect poker for the next 20 years and not get back to this final table."
Although there will certainly be multiple event winners (Ted Forrest already won two at the World Series) -- especially when you throw $300, $500, and $1,000 tournaments into the mix -- I think "final table appearances" are going to start needing more credit than they've received in the past. And in a country that is winner-crazy (quick, who came in second in the 1998 Super Bowl?), the public (those outside "the poker world") may find that hard to accept. It will be difficult for true superstars to score repeated wins unless we start upping the ante and offering more $25,000 or even $50,000 tournaments -- the only "fair" way to limit field size, unless you want to consider an invitational fair.
Money superstars have never been that interested in having their results known, in part because many have an aversion to paying full income taxes on their winnings and in part because the best players don't want to scare away potential donors. No one aside from the players themselves knows exactly who wins how much in a given year; so aside from reputation, there is no solid way to rank money players.
I think that most people would agree that the two most talented all-around players in poker history are Doyle Brunson (also a repeat WSOP winner, although the fields were tiny when he won) and Stu Ungar (a three-time winner; he also won in 1997). Many consider Stuey the best-ever when on his game, but most of his career was lost to problems with drugs and alcohol. Brunson has performed at a very high level in money games and in tournaments (a rare combination) over a very long career.
Whether you pick Brunson or Ungar, or argue for a Johnny Chan (great in tournaments and money play), or Chip Reese (great in money play), or Phil Hellmuth (great in tournaments) or T.J. Cloutier (great in tournaments), or Chris Ferguson (doesn't even play in money games: tournaments only!), or Howard Lederer (great in money and tournaments), the reality is that none of these players can dominate in poker the way that Ruth or Bonds can in baseball -- or the way Jordan did in basketball -- because of the randomizing luck factor.
Greg Raymer won the 2004 World Series of Poker, but it's very difficult to win big tournaments consistently.
Would you be willing to play a young Michael Jordan one-on-one? Could you pinch-hit for Bonds with a clear conscience? Could you beat Tiger Woods? These questions are rhetorical, of course. Unless the "you" is another superstar in the same sport, "you" wouldn't try.
Yet you and I and many others are quite willing to plunk down our money to try to beat Hellmuth and Cloutier in poker, because we can outdraw them. We can acquire enough skill so that if the cards run our way, we can, in one tournament, beat them. TJ was at my starting table at this year's WSOP; he lasted only a fraction of the time I did, and I came nowhere near the money.
Over the long term, the amateur poker player has no more chance against the superstar professional than he would of beating Jordan in basketball. But because the "long term" can sometimes take quite a while to establish itself, many people get false ideas of how good (or bad) they really are.
For a while, people thought that no one could dominate the pro golf tour because there were so many great players, but then Tiger came along and proved it can be done. Even though there is a little luck in golf -- does the ball that hits a spectator roll onto the green or into a creek? -- the luck factor there is tiny compared to poker.
Let's put all this into numbers. If you had tried to put "to win" odds on any given player before the 2004 WSOP, knowing that 2,500 players would start, not one single player was worth a bet at 200-1. Even though most tournament fields are much smaller, that ratio probably tells you what you need to know.
Great players can certainly stand out in poker by making numerous final tables and scoring occasional multiple wins in smaller events, and by winning large net sums of money on a consistent basis (the ultimate arbiter of all poker disputes). But you will never see a poker player winning six out of 10 200-player tournaments, let alone larger fields.
Poker has its stars. But the game's nature, which involves the randomizing luck factor, combines with the modern large-field tournaments to ensure that we will never see anyone, no matter how great, dominate the poker circuit the way Tiger Woods dominated golf for three years. If there are to be superstars, then either the public will have accepted them as such because the broadcasters have told them to, or television will have to create smaller-field events with, probably, much larger buy-ins. With a buy-in of $100,000, few duffers will apply. Even most superstars will look for backing, too; but at least then, you'll get events where the final tables are consistently strong.
Even then, luck will preclude poker from producing a Michael Jordan ... unless, of course, Michael decides to leave his private game and buy into the World Series himself.
Andrew N.S. Glazer, "The Poker Pundit," writes a weekly gambling column for the Detroit Free Press, is Tournament Editor for Card Player magazine, and is the author of the soon to be released "Complete Idiot's Guide to Poker." He also writes about poker tournaments at FinalTablePoker.com, where his e-newsletter, "Friday Nite Poker," will be starting June 25. He welcomes your questions there or at PokerPundit@aol.com.
Poker ain't like it used to be...
By Bill Simmons
Page 2
Editor's Note: This column appears in the June 21 edition of ESPN The Magazine.
Have you ever stumbled across one of those celebrity poker shows on cable, and practically blown out your elbow bringing the remote to a screeching halt? That happened to me a few weeks ago, when Travis Tritt and Mena Suvari were battling for the same pot. Just the sight of them at the same table nearly had me scheduling my first Tommy John surgery. Travis was eyeballing Mena like she was covered in those roses from "American Beauty." Mena peered right back, eyes narrowed, like she was auditioning for some crappy poker movie. You could cut the tension with ... well, anything.
Everyone's playing poker these days -- even celebs like Mena Suvari.
Travis checked. He had the Lawrence Frank "I Just Realized I'm Coaching in Game 7 of a Playoff Series" face going. Even Mena could see right through him. But she stared him down a while for good measure (or maybe she was just kicking herself for turning down "American Pie 3"). Finally, she raised. What took her so long? She was holding two 10s. Travis quickly folded, and he seemed ready to suffocate himself with his cowboy hat. It was not his finest hour. Meanwhile, Mena raked in the chips without cracking a smile. Apparently this was some serious stuff.
I think we've gone too far. Poker has gone mainstream? Can we vote on this? What happened to the days when poker was cool, when only a few people knew the nuances, when it meant something to pony up that 10 grand for the World Series? Remember when somebody could make a terrific poker movie -- say, "Rounders" -- and only an elite group understood the magic of that climactic flop?
I miss the days when everyone was terrified to play poker in casinos, when taking a seat at one of the tables was roughly equivalent to walking down a dark alley in New Orleans. For instance, it took me nearly four years to sit down at a $1-to-$5 stud table. Four years! And when I finally got up the nerve, my buddies tried to talk me out of it. You don't want to do that. Those guys are lifers. They'll eat you alive. They sit around all day waiting for a schmuck like you to come along.
I didn't care. I loved "Rounders." I wanted to be Mike McD. I wanted to topple Teddy KGB. I wanted to bluff Johnny Chan and hear him ask, "Did you have it?" then calmly respond, "I'm sorry, John. I don't remember."
Maybe poker wasn't as glamorous in real life as they made it out to be in "Rounders" -- for instance, I never played at a table where Famke Janssen brought me over that first pile of chips -- but it still sucked me in. I honed my skills on stud and low-stakes hold 'em, marked as a preppie who thrashed his buddies a few times and then mistakenly assumed he could hang with the big boys. And I played that role to a T. I wore my baseball hat backward, forgot to ante and seemed generally confused as they circled me like the Sisters surrounding Andy Dufresne. My friends were always shocked when I returned with a profit: "You won? You beat those guys?" I felt like I had taken Pedro deep.
I didn't feel nearly as special when ESPN started televising those World Series tournaments. In "Rounders," Johnny Chan seemed larger than life, like seeing Tiger's character unlock in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004. But many of the best poker players looked like you could find them hanging out in an airport smoking lounge. The unintentional comedy was off the charts. You were just as likely to see a hideous rug as a full house. Even the most recognizable player in the game, Phil Hellmuth, marketed himself as a McEnroe-style hothead and came off like a more manic version of Bania from "Seinfeld."
Chris Moneymaker earned a cool $2.5 million by winning last year's World Series of Poker.
Then it happened. First-timer Chris Moneymaker came out of nowhere to win the 2003 World Series. This could never happen in any other sport. You won't see the Lakers pluck someone from the stands to run the point against the Pistons. The mystique was gone. After Moneymaker, everyone realized the same thing: to play poker, you needed ... a wallet. Watch some shows, read some books, play a few hands on the Internet, throw on a pair of crummy sunglasses, and you're ready to roll.
In the recently completed World Series, the number of entrants nearly tripled. Everyone was banking on a puncher's chance of becoming the next Moneymaker. My buddy Sal entered this year for a segment on "Jimmy Kimmel Live." He figured he'd get knocked out in a couple of hours. The sum of his poker experience? Three weeks on the Internet, three books and six tutorials in Vegas right before the tournament. That's it. He ended up hanging on for three full days, cracking the final 500, outlasting all of those authors and tutors. And he was wearing a pair of Elton John-style sunglasses to boot.
"It's all about luck," a surprised Sal said later. "Once you know what you're doing, it's all about luck."
He may think that now ... but just wait until Mena Suvari is staring him down.
Bill Simmons is a columnist for Page 2 and ESPN The Magazine
Did you guys know that they also recently ran a 22 hour poker marathon on the channel, with only two 1-hour breaks for sportscenter.
Man, TSN sucks shit, especially that shoddy camera work on OTR...
This story is about everyone's favorite movie - "Rounders." I especially like the bit about Worm's character being a send-off of Bugs Bunny.
"Rounders" in Real-Life
By Jeff Merron
Page 2
Jackpot Jay's terrific Page 2 stories about life in the fast lane of poker, combined with the anticipation about ESPN's upcoming coverage of the 2004 World Series of Poker, got our poker jones going. Though we haven't played much since the nickel-dime-quarter, winner-buys-the-beer days of college, the juices still start flowing every time we see "Rounders."
For all of you poker players out there, "Rounders" is a must-see.
A realistic depiction of life as a full-time poker hustler player? You decide.
In Reel Life: Mike (Matt Damon) and his girlfriend, Joe (Gretchen Mol), go to "City Law School" in New York.
In Real Life: "City Law School" is actually Rutgers, which you can figure out from a typical movie "tell." Check out the door in the last scene: There's a "No Smoking" sign that says, in small type at the bottom, "Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey."
In Reel Life: Worm (Edward Norton) is a risk-taker, in contrast to Mike, whose instinct is to grind it out in the true "rounder" fashion.
In Real Life: Some have likened Worm to Ratso Rizzo, the great character Dustin Hoffman played in "Midnight Cowboy." While Norton admires Hoffman and knows the Rizzo character well, that wasn't what he had in mind.
"[Worm is] like Bugs dressed as Keith Richards," Norton told Mal Vincent of the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. "You always need to find a line in on a character, and Bugs Bunny is always scheming, always two steps ahead of a beating and always laughing. Worm is completely comfortable with who he is in a deep, conscious, philosophic sense. He accepts and declares that the game for him is not poker but the hustle, and he loves it."
In Reel Life: Before entering one of the underground clubs, Mike and Worm either have to be recognized through a surveillance camera or be given a very solid introduction.
In Real Life: Screenwriters David Levien and Brian Koppelman wrote about their research in the Sept. 1998 issue of Details magazine. They describe going to a club in Manhattan:
"We press a button, the door buzzes open, and a face dominated by shiny dentures appears at the top of the stairs. It's Billy Mops, and he runs the joint. Though we've been here a dozen times, his face remains blank. The drill is: No one knows anyone. Until you're inside.
"'Yeah?'
"It's David and Brian ... We've been by a few times. We know people -- Joel Bagels, Freddie the Watch ... your brother.
"Recognition stirs in Billy Mops. His denture smile grows impossibly wide. 'Oh, sure. Course, course. Come up.'"
In Reel Life: Playing underground poker seems ... well, like a pretty glamorous life.
In Real Life: Damon and Norton spent a couple of months touring the New York underground poker scene; and Damon, at least, said he wasn't tempted by the lifestyle. "It's not quite as sexy as it sounds," he said on CNN Showbiz Today. "You know, I mean, it's, you know, 12-hour days of kind of sitting."
Norton agreed, saying the folks who frequent the clubs were not ... well, they were a bit ... unusual. "There was this one guy who used to come into this one club all the time," he told CNN Showbiz Today, "and he had these glasses. And one of them like had a bullet hole through them, like it was shattered, and it was like he never got it fixed in the months that I went into this place."
In Reel Life: During one game, Worm tells two players to stop talking to each other in Russian.
In Real Life: The possibilities for cheating are obvious, and this scene is similar to what Levien and Koppelman observed in their underground travels -- players were speaking in Russian, and an argument ensued over the practice.
In the World Series of Poker at Binion's, and at many casinos, an "English-only" rule prevails. Jay Lovinger, in an e-mail, tells me that during his recent visit to Vegas, he heard several players being warned because they were speaking to spectators in Russian.
Mike (Matt Damon) is an expert at reading "tells," and that serves him well.
Brian Mulholland wrote about the English-only rule last year in Card Player magazine. "When a foreign tongue is spoken at the table, it doesn't matter whether or not there's any collusion or 'insider trading' of information actually occurring ... A person speaking non-English during a hand might be sharing nothing more than a dinner recipe; the problem is the doubt and suspicion it produces in those who have no means to verify that fact."
In Reel Life: Both Damon and Norton seem fairly comfortable with the cards.
In Real Life: In the process of researching their roles, the two actors got seats in the World Series of Poker, and also toured the New York underground poker scene. "You pay for lessons," Norton, speaking of the New York clubs, told the Sun-Sentinel. "I was down $750 in a matter of no time. Luckily, I was bankrolled by the studio research department."
In Reel Life: Mike is an expert at reading "tells," and manages to keep a pretty good poker face himself.
In Real Life: Damon took this part of his character seriously. "I practiced with blank cards," he told the L.A. Times, "so I wouldn't let my expression, or mannerisms, 'tell' another player what I was holding."
In Reel Life: You rarely see any cards other than the community cards.
In Real Life: Although the lipstick cameras that reveal players' cards in televised poker seem to be a real draw, director John Dahl didn't think that would work in the movie. "I looked at a couple of scenes from movies where they had photographed cards, and I realized how incredibly uninteresting that was," he told the Knight-Ridder News service. "I thought I just don't want to see that."
In Reel Life: Teddy KGB (John Malkovich) manages a club for the "Russian Mafia," and is also, apparently, an excellent poker player.
In Real Life: You might think that the club manager, who makes a steady income off the "rake," wouldn't bother with playing -- too much of a gamble. But apparently, it isn't true of the underground poker clubs. Andy Bellin wrote about New York's underground poker scene in the Jan. 2000 issue of Esquire. In the story, he describes playing in the "M Club," which is managed by Mickey "Chips," who Bellin says is "one of the best card players on the East Coast."
In Reel Life: The card games are populated by players with colorful -- almost cartoonish -- nicknames.
In Real Life: That's the way it is. Bellin says he played with guys named "Tony Plugs" (formerly known as "Tony Toupee," before his transplant), and "Johnny California."
In Reel Life: Most of the clubs are dark, poorly lit.
In Real Life: "That was one place where we made a big departure," director John Dahl told American Cinematographer magazine. "Card players don't care what the room looks like, and most are lit with overhead fluorescents. But when you read a script about men playing cards, it seems as if it wants to be a darker, pools-of-light-over-the-tables sort of place, with all that traditional movie stuff. It becomes more like a pool hall. We simply decided to make a more dramatic statement and go with a darker, more atmospheric look. A real card player looking at this movie will probably say, 'Oh, that's a little bit Hollywood.'"
In Reel Life: Oddly, Teddy KGB's otherwise dingy club features chandeliers and some other beautiful lights.
In Real Life: "The best chandeliers in the world come from Russia," production designer Rob Pearson told American Cinematographer magazine. "Our backstory on Teddy was that he was a fence and [had access to a lot of] stolen goods -- so in this old dingy club, there were these beautiful chandeliers. It was a nice lighting device that created sparkles everywhere."
Teddy KGB (John Malkovich) is a club owner, and a card shark as well.
In Reel Life: Mike says, "Like Papa Wallenda said, 'Life is on the wire. The rest is just waiting.'"
In Real Life: "Papa" was Karl Wallenda, who founded the famous (and still performing) high wire act called "The Flying Wallendas." According to the Wallendas' Web site, he actually said, "Life is being on the wire, everything else is just waiting." Death was also on the wire: Three Wallendas have died and one was paralyzed while performing their high wire stunts; Karl himself died in March, 1978 in a 120-foot fall from a high wire strung between two hotels in Puerto Rico.
"If anyone could choose the way they had to go, I would say that would have been Karl's way," Ringling Bros, Barnum and Bailey Circus producer Kenneth Feld said at the time.
In Reel Life: Mike watches a video of Johnny Chan winning the World Series of Poker; Chan is the symbol in the film of the ultimate player, and he also makes an appearance in the movie.
In Real Life: There's a good reason Chan is the icon of the ultimate professional: He is the last player to win back-to-back WSOP championships, in 1987 and 1988; and his consecutive wins were also the most impressive. Johnny Moss (1970, 1971), Doyle Brunson (1976, 1977), and Stu Ungar (1980, 1981) are the only others to have achieved the feat.
In Reel Life: Mike returns to Teddy KGB's club after his big defeat and long hiatus. "I feel like Buckner walking back in to Shea," he says.
In Real Life: While everyone knows about Bill Buckner's infamous error at Shea Stadium to give the Mets a win in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, few remember that Buckner not only walked into Shea two nights later, but also played a very good game. In his first at-bat, in the first inning, he singled to right. Then, with Boston trailing 6-3, he led off the top of the eighth with another single to start a two-run rally, scoring on a Dwight Evans double. He finished 2-for-4 with one run, while registering nine putouts and one assist at first base -- with no errors.
In Reel Life: In their final showdown, Mike tells Teddy KGB to stop "splashing the pot."
In Real Life: "Splashing" means throwing your chips, rather than placing them in stacks. It is not a cool thing to do. Besides being annoying (especially as practiced by Teddy KGB), it can be a method of cheating, as the chips are difficult, if not impossible, to count when sprayed in such a manner.
In Reel Life: At the end of the film, Mike beats Teddy KGB by figuring out his "tell." Obviously, it has something to do with Oreo cookies. But ... did you figure it out?
In Real Life: Roger Ebert, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, answered this question for a reader. "The Oreos have been much discussed in the Internet discussion group rec.gambling.poker, where John Harkness of Toronto writes: 'If he breaks it in front of his face, it means nothing. If he breaks it to the side of his head, as if listening to it, he's got the (cards).'"
Cold, man. Very cold. I gotta get me some of that fancy ESPN TV. That, and the Travel Channel U.S. What cable package do you have, Al?
Regards,
all_aces
I have star choice - no espn or travel channel over here. Wish i did though, just for Sunday NFL ticket.
Give the guy a break. He was probably up all night playing poker.
ScottyZ
Regards,
all_aces
The best one-line description of Phil H. I've ever heard.
ScottyZ
June 28th story:
By Jay Lovinger
Page 2
The call came at about 9:30 a.m. last Tuesday morning, an ungodly hour for a wannabe high-stakes poker pro.
I was already a bit shaky, having been awakened earlier -- at about 5 a.m. -- by my wife, calling from France to discuss in great detail the deplorable clothes-shopping conditions in Paris. (Yes, the same wife I am desperately trying to hold onto via a combination of groveling, abject begging, bribery and thousands of dollars worth of family therapy. (See last week's column for the sordid details.)
So it took me a few moments to shake out the cobwebs when the second call came in.
Her: "Hi, Jay. This is (didn't quite get the name) of (didn't quite get the organization). We were wondering if you'd like to come down to the studio (didn't quite get the relative time reference) and talk about Ben Affleck's big tournament win and the popularity of poker in general."
Me: "Huh?"
Finally, after many patient minutes of handling by Coleen Murphy, a booking producer for MSNBC's "Dayside," I was given to understand the following:
1.) Somehow, Ben Affleck had won $356,400 the previous weekend in a big poker tournament.
2.) MSNBC wanted me to discuss this on national television, along with why poker has suddenly exploded in popularity.
3.) They were willing to go to great lengths -- a car service to and from their studios in Rockefeller Center, coaching, extensive makeup -- to secure my services.
Despite my oft-repeated insistence that they had the wrong guy -- having been a high-stakes poker pro for Page 2 for little more than a couple of months, I hardly had sufficient historical perspective on poker's popularity to comment on it ... plus, more to the point, I had never played a single hand of poker against Ben Affleck, nor even observed him playing a single hand ... plus, I hadn't the vaguest idea what tournament he had won, how significant it was, etc. -- the affable Ms. Murphy would not take "no" for an answer.
Apparently, she had read some of my Jackpot Jay columns on Page 2 -- she seemed particularly taken by the previous one, on my marriage problems -- and was convinced I was the perfect man for the job.
"Have you ever seen a picture of me?" I asked at one point. "I'm not exactly TV ... uh ... material."
"Don't worry about it," she said. "The people we interview look like whatever they look like."
"Okay," I conceded, "but you'd better send me a news clip or something on that tournament so I can have some idea what I'm talking about."
We would converse again, Ms. Murphy and I, many times before my appearance on MSNBC that afternoon -- including one unfortunate call during which I asked her, "Isn't MSNBC one of those financial channels, where they stream stock prices across the bottom of the screen 24 hours a day?"
How good is Ben Affleck? Don't ask Jackpot Jay.
"No," she explained, ever patient. "You're thinking of CNBC."
But mostly, she prepared me for the interview.
First, she e-mailed me a wire service story on Affleck's big win. (Apparently, he had finished first out of 90 entrants in something called the California State Poker Championship, which I had never heard of -- ultimately beating out second-place finisher Stan Goldstein, a poker pro I had also never heard of. The only other players mentioned in the wire service story were Chuck Pacheco, president and co-founder of Castle Rock Entertainment, and Tobey Maguire, better known for web-slinging than poker-playing. To put it mildly, this sounded a bit suspicious -- were we talking about some kind of high-priced celebrity vanity tournament here? -- though the prize money and the fact that a seat in the World Poker Tour $25,000 buy-in championship tournament also went to the winner suggested it might be legit.)
Then Ms. Murphy e-mailed me a list of "possible" questions (also known as "pre-interview questions") for me to think about:
1.) How is it that poker has gone so mainstream?
2.) What is it about this particular game of cards that makes it sexy?
3.) Ben Affleck has qualified for the World Poker Tour championship. How strong a player is he?
4.) You are spending a year on the road as a high-stakes poker player while writing a column about it for ESPN.com and a book. You have a wife and family. How did you get your wife to agree to this?
5.) You are several months into your year of professional poker. Are you holding your own with the big boys?
Soon enough, we were chatting again on the phone -- or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, I was auditioning some "possible pre-interview answers." I took great pains to point out, once again, in reference to pre-interview question No. 3, that I hadn't the vaguest notion about how good a player Ben Affleck is. Ms. Murphy told me not to worry my little bald head about it.
Later, we also talked at some length about:
My pre-poker background.
The importance of keeping my answers short and to the point -- in other words, how to give good soundbite.
Looking into the camera, not at the monitors, during the actual interview. While I would be in a studio in Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan, the MSNBC interviewer would actually be in a studio somewhere in New Jersey. So unless I looked directly into the camera, the viewers at home -- all 11 of them -- would think I was talking to someone off to the side instead of to the interviewer. And this, of course, would not make for "good TV."
At about 2:15 -- my interview was scheduled for a little before 3 -- I arrived at the studio, where I met another patient MSNBC employee, Ilene Schneider, who sat me down behind a desk (the better to look scholarly, I suppose), neatened my appearance a bit, attached the requisite electronic equipment (an ear piece), and reiterated Ms. Murphy's instructions about talking into the camera.
I spent the next few nervous minutes staring at myself in the monitor (yes, the same one I wasn't supposed to look at during the interview), wondering where to put my hands (as it turns out, it didn't matter, since they only showed me from mid-chest up; but, for the record, I folded them neatly in front of me on the desk), and reminding myself to sit up straight (both my wife and mother would have been proud).
Finally, at about 2:55, I heard a strange voice counting down in my ear. And suddenly, there she was ... MSNBC's Alison Stewart ... asking me my first national TV question as a series of hunky Ben Affleck shots flashed across the screen ... well, you can probably guess by now what that question was:
"How good a poker player is Ben Affleck?"
Even Alison wasn't ready for Jay's analysis.
For a nanosecond, a couple of things flashed through my mind -- all the careful preparation I had done to answer the expected question about poker's sudden exploding popularity, how little I knew about Ben Affleck (other than the J-Lo thing and how bad "Daredevil" was), how foolish I was about to look in front of a worldwide audience (hopefully, for what was left of my reputation, a minuscule one).
But suddenly, from God knows where, a reasonable answer jumped into my head; and I heard myself calmly say:
"Well, poker is like sex. Everybody thinks they're great at it, but hardly anybody knows what they are doing."
Alison Stewart snorted and began to laugh, joined by fellow interviewer Sam Shane, who joked about writing that line down. And, in fact, the camera got him jotting it down on his script. (Now, that's good TV.)
There were a couple more questions -- about the legitimacy of the tournament, about why people like to watch poker on TV -- and, as John Madden would say, Boom! It was all over ... in about 90 seconds ... which proves, I suppose, that poker isn't the only thing that's like sex.
ROLLING AT FOXWOODS
Though it's painfully obvious I will never be a TV star, my nascent Page 2 poker pro career spiked at Foxwoods Casino last Thursday when I entered a $150 buy-in one-table satellite tournament, won my way into a $1,000 buy-in super-satellite, and finished in the top five -- thereby winning a free seat in the $10,000 World Poker Tour event at Foxwoods in November. The expected top prize for that tournament is well over $1 million.
I could make a lot of jokes about it, but the simple truth is:
Except for my marriage ("Yes, dear"), the birth of my three children, and a handful of sexual events, dimly recalled, this is the most exciting thing that ever happened to me.
ATTENTION, IRS: HOW JAY IS DOING IN HIS NEW CAREER
Last week at Foxwoods: plus $9,000.
CTD (career-to-date): plus $8,500.
How about:
Well, poker is like sex. You could do it by yourself, but it's much more fun with when you have 9 skilled (or even not so skilled) opponents and an elongated oval table. :cool:
ScottyZ
(this idea was probably stolen from Ocean's Eleven where Brad Pitt's character gives Topher Grace and some other hollywood youngins lessons, until Clooney hussles them).
Poker is Taking Over the World
By Darren Rovell
Page 2
I was waiting by my phone all day to hear back from guys like Phil Hellmuth, Chris Moneymaker and Phil Ivey.
But in my heart, I knew the phone would never ring.
After all, the odds of a top poker player returning your call these days is roughly equivalent to the odds that you'll die from a venomous spider bite. (One out of every 738,585 Americans do, according to the National Safety Council.)
That's how untouchable today's poker players are.
We live in an America where approximately 20 million of us play golf, and 50 million of us play poker. Industry insiders say that an estimated 100,000 people are playing poker online at peak time (8 p.m. PST, 11 p.m. ET) every day. And while right now more of us are watching the pros play golf than poker, it won't be long before those numbers will flip and your grandma will know who Johnny Chan and Chris Ferguson are.
Poker, and more specifically the Texas Hold 'Em variety, is taking the world by storm.
There's a World Poker Tour (WPT). Players at the touring events took home nearly $30 million, and the televised two-hour WPT segments on Wednesday nights drew an average of 1.3 million viewers this past season. That's on the Travel Channel, where "John Ratzenberger's Made in America" is no longer the network's cash cow. Things are so good that the channel recently signed a five-year rights extension with the tour.
And it isn't just the Travel Channel. Bravo, when it's not airing "Queer Eye," is featuring "Celebrity Poker Showdown." And the final rounds of the World Series of Poker will be aired on ESPN in 22 episodes, beginning tonight (9 p.m., ET) and running every Tuesday until September 14.
One man took home the $5 million prize in the event, which took place during the last week of May.
Demand is so great that fans of televised poker no longer want to wait to see the action. With that in mind, Fox Sports Net will air the nation's first live broadcast of a pro poker tournament on July 14. (The telecast will be on a five-minute delay to prevent any sort of cheating help from audience members to the players at the table.)
Like any major sport these days (including baseball and horse racing), big-time poker has had its share of corporate logo controversies. Last year's World Series of Poker winner Chris Moneymaker, an accountant from Tennessee, made it into the tournament by paying only a $40 buy-in fee through Internet poker site Pokerstars.com. Although Moneymaker wore a Pokerstars.com hat at the final table (and similar-looking hats are now being peddled on eBay at $10 a pop), this year's players were told by Harrah's -- which now owns the event -- that no corporate logos would be allowed at the final table. Too bad for Pokerstars.com. Four of the nine players, including the champion, at the final table qualified through the Web site.
Chris Moneymaker wore a Pokerstars.com cap when he won the World Series of Poker last year.
The WPT also bans corporate logos on the apparel of its players, but tournament-wide sponsorship is welcome. Advertising is so steady now that -- and I'm not kidding here -- Anheuser World Select is the official beer of the WPT.
"Poker is a little harder to sell than your average sport, but there's definitely a lot of interest," says Steve Lipscomb, founder and CEO of the World Poker Tour. "A company like Nike, though, could be hard, since the poker player's shoes are under the table."
Poker is so big that true gamblers can now bet on the pro poker games. Who would have thought that we'd reach the point where people would gamble on other people gambling?
On June 16, online sports book Bodog.com posted odds on who would win the WPT Player of the Year award. They've taken $13,000 in action.
"It's an industry right now that is growing exponentially; and once there are more tournaments that go live on TV, the action on pro poker is going to grow even more," says BoDog spokesman Todd Corrigall.
Poker is so hot that Card Player Magazine, a bi-weekly publication which for the past 18 years has been a free publication that could be found in poker rooms, will soon charge for its issues. Circulation is expected to double in the next couple of months, and copies will be available on the racks in Barnes & Noble, New York's Penn Station and in virtually every major airport in the United States. The May issue marked the first time a non-gambling advertiser had purchased space. That advertiser -- Belvedere Vodka -- used nine of the world's top poker players in its ads that appeared on billboards and cabs in Las Vegas, and in ESPN The Magazine.
Part of the lure of poker is that amateurs can mix with the pros in the big events.
"It's not like you can play golf with Tiger Woods in one of the majors and actually have a shot at beating him," says Barry Shulman, owner and publisher of Card Player.
Thanks to the growth of Internet gaming and the popularity of how-to books, more and more people have a chance against the pros.
"It used to take five years to become a top poker player," says Mel Judah, a professional player who has won more than $1 million at the World Series of Poker alone over the past 15 years. "Now everyone has access to playing games, and we have Harvard graduates and Ph.D.s learning in one year and giving us some serious competition."
In 1989, the World Series of Poker had 150 participants. This year's list grew to 2,576 poker-heads, many of whom paid the $10,000 buy-in fee.
One way to slow down the amateur poker rush is to charge $25,000 a night for a lesson, as Hellmuth is doing. (Hurry up, people: He's only available about 20 nights a year. His telephone number is 650-464-0629.) If you aren't that rich, another option is to pay $2.99 to play "Phil Hellmuth's Texas Hold 'Em," which launched in May, on your cell phone.
Carmen Electra's poker game could be a big pay-per-view hit.
The other way to control the frenzy is to increase the big tournament buy-in fees.
Due to this year's astounding rise of more than 1,500 participants than last year, pros say they expect the buy-in fee to jump to $20,000 very soon, which should thin the amateur crowd.
How big is this poker craze going to get?
So big that Carmen Electra is reportedly hosting a strip-poker game that will air on pay-per-view on July 18 -- though true poker fans won't pay much attention, since that's a different game known as "Texas Hold Them."
So big that Ben Affleck apparently no longer wants to act in movies (or maybe that was just the "Gigli" bust). He beat 90 other players to win a $356,000 prize in California last month, and the poker circuit is abuzz with rumors about where Affleck will show up next.
Judah, who has a $5 commemorative chip at Binion's with his face on it, says he believes that within the next year and a half there will be a league, and professional players will be drafted "just like the NBA."
If this ever comes to fruition, ESPN executives would be smart to buy the rights to the round-by-round coverage, and tell Mel Kiper Jr. to start scouting tables across America.
Darren Rovell, who usually covers sports business for ESPN.com, can be reached at darren.rovell@espn3.com. He has never played poker in his life, but he charges $1,000 a night for "Go Fish" lessons.
It's too long to post in here so I will give you guys the url:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=lovinger/040706
BTW - the first segment of the 2004 WSOP aired on ESPN last night...I wonder if Dave is watching....There are now 22 episodes, unlike last year's 7. What the f*ck is up with TSN???