Poker
There’s no other game like it.
When it’s going well, nothing could be easier - and it’s
glorious. Why isn’t it always like that? And when it’s going badly,
it can beat you to a whimpering pulp.
I’ve loved poker for as long as I can remember. I always
will, even though it has broken my heart any number of times. I don’t play
every week, or every month, or even every year. I have long stretches away from
the tables, in which I don’t even think about it; but for a strange and
crazy while recently, I found myself playing just about every hour of every
day, in a frenzied race against time...
It was a wild ride. Up one moment, down the next; soaring with the eagles, plummeting into the crocodile-infested swamp. And the more I threw myself into it, the more I found myself standing back, and taking a look around at the alternative universe that is the Poker Life. The more I saw of it, the more questions I had. I consulted experts. I talked to lawyers, card-room directors, website owners - and especially poker players, from the biggest names in the game to the unusual guy in the Hawaiian shirt next to me.
The Story
I had no idea, around midnight on March 30th, that the next
day I’d be writing this book, and I’d be setting out on my roundabout
way to Las Vegas and the World Series of Poker.
I had no idea that I was just about to have a horrible online
poker experience either...
But that’s what started it all.
I’m a professional writer, not a professional poker player. I’d finished
a big project, and was working my way up to my next ones. Or to be more accurate,
I was avoiding them and playing too much online poker.
And my horrible online poker experience forced me to ask:
So what am I going to do - write? Or play poker?
And in a flash of revelation I saw my answer.
I was going to do both.
Play poker, and write about it.
When you write, you need a story. I saw mine in that same flash. I would play my way into the World Series of Poker.
And I already had this great ending in mind...
As with all journeys, it’s not just about the destination, it’s about the getting there, and the people met and the sights seen and the lessons learned along the way. And it all culminates at the greatest tournament of them all, the Championship Event of the World Series of Poker, as poker experiences the biggest boom in its long and colorful history.
The Scene
Not so long ago, casinos were closing their card-rooms. Now
they are opening everywhere. The rails at major tournaments are packed with
spectators. Professional players have come out of the shadows and into the limelight,
where they are now treated like rock stars. Camera-crews trail their every move.
There are two reasons for this - the Internet and Television.
They both coincided, in 2003, in the person of Chris Moneymaker,
a 27-year-old Tennessee accountant who won his $10,000 seat at the WSOP Championship
Event through online satellites - for an outlay of just $39.
Which set every recreational player thinking - "If he can
do it, anyone can."
And ESPN’s ratings for its showings of Moneymaker’s
victory were through the roof.
Thanks to hidden cameras, allowing viewers to see players’
cards, poker makes excellent, gripping viewing.
And now that TV has discovered poker, the world is understanding
the appeal of the game.
The result is that poker is booming.
I’ve been to the World Series of Poker before, several
times. I was last there in 2001, when I won my prized Final Table jacket (it’s
all in the book). That year, there were 613 players in the Championship Event.
Chris Moneymaker beat 838 players to win the title - by
the far biggest field in the WSOP’s history.
There were three times that many players a year later.
The Interviews
Among the people I interview are:
Mike Sexton, the ‘face of poker’ on TV.
Mike hosts the World Poker Tour, and is the expert consultant
for the biggest poker website, PartyPoker.com. When I talked to Mike, PartyPoker
had been in existence less than three and a half years. Now, it has over sixty
percent of the billion-dollar online poker market. Mike spent over twenty years
as a professional player, winning many tournaments including a WSOP title. His
insights into the life of a pro are profound. He loves poker - but loves not
having to make a living playing it any more. And he has a great Doyle Brunson
story...
Sammy Farha - top professional player who had an epic battle heads-up with the "man from nowhere", Chris Moneymaker, at the 2003 Final Table.
Sammy was a man from nowhere himself, once - but everyone wanted
to play with him, they thought he was a rich sheikh with oil wells... Now he
is one of the most successful big-money players in the game - and one of the
game’s most engaging characters.
Kathy Liebert - multiple major tournament winner, who is always described as ‘one of the game’s top women players’, in a game where gender is increasingly irrelevant.
Kathy has ranked as high as #4 in Cardplayer’s Tournament
Players of the Year Top Twenty. I interviewed her shortly after she won an open
title at the 2003 WSOP.
John Duthie - British semi-pro and full-time TV director, who won the inaugural Ladbroke Million tournament (first prize One Million U.K. Pounds, at the time about $1.5m).
John, unlike Kathy, is a self-confessed gambler; and the two
of them discuss the pros and cons of ‘having the gamble in you’.
Broadcaster Larry Grossman - owner and host of
the USA’s longest-running gaming-related radio show, ‘You Can Bet
On It’.
Larry has been covering the WSOP for twenty years, and knows all the big-name players, many of whom have been on his show. He is also picture editor of Cardplayer Magazine, and has a remarkable archive of World Series of Poker photographs going back to the 1980’s. There are over thirty of these in the book - and about a dozen others, including some famous faces you might not expect to see at the poker table.
Many of the great players I have met over the years also feature - such as Bill Boyd.
Bill is still considered to have been the finest five-card stud player who ever lived. He was the inspiration for The Edward G. Robinson charcater "Lancey Howard" in the movie The Cincinnati Kid.
Most players have a lot of questions about the online game; and I get answers from ‘the other side of the screen’. In Vegas, I talked at length and in detail to representatives of the three leading websites, PartyPoker.com, PokerStars.com and ParadisePoker.com - and was invited by PartyPoker to come and see their operation for myself, which I later did.
Another perspective is provided by Barny Boatman,
one of the four British pros who represent PrimaPoker.com as ‘The Hendon
Mob’.
Among the questions players have are - is Internet poker legal?
For an answer, I consult Professor I. Nelson
Rose, the industry’s leading expert on the gambling and the
law (which is, in his case, www.GamblingAndTheLaw.com©). Our conversation
covers topics from carrot cake to Prohibition, from social engineering to poodles.
Phyllis Caro is the Director of Poker Operations at the Hollywood Park Casino. I get her views on the current poker boom, and of the effects of television and the Internet on the live game.
At a festival like the World Series of Poker, you get a story wherever you point your microphone.
One moment I’m chatting with ‘Amarillo’ Slim Preston, a former winner of the Championship event; the next moment, Darell Kiney is telling me how he won his $10,000 seat online for twelve dollars.
Then it’s John Bonetti, multiple WSOP winner, larger than life, and, at seventy-five, still full of the joys of poker.
There is "Just Jim, from Los Angeles," who explains why nothing would persuade him to play online, while others I meet seem to do nothing else with their lives.
This year’s "bubble boy," Dave
Combs, fulfilled a life’s ambition by winning a seat at the
WSOP, only to finish one place out of the money, in 226th (and getting a nice
surprise after his diappointment).
And of course, there are all those I encountered online, on the way to Vegas - some good, some bad; some funny, some foul - and by no means all of them perfect gentlemen, or ladies.