The $20 Million Game Of Hold 'Em

THE $20 MILLION GAME OF HOLD 'EM

Texas hold'em is the most difficult and strategically complex form of poker. As far as I am concerned it is the most cerebral card game around. It is also very easy to learn and play, creating the illusion in the minds of most players that they are proficient at the game. The greatest card players in the world are attracted to hold 'em for these two reasons: every time one plays one is faced with a new problem that thrills and challenges; and there is a lot of money to be made fleecing the rest of us who believe we know the game well.

A full game of hold 'em consists of ten players, but it is possible to play with as few as two people. Short of dueling to the death with very sharp swords, going head's up in hold 'em is the purest and most primal form of competition. Many pots end up as a showdown, and I have frequently stared across the green felt at a single adversary and felt a surge of atavistic desire to tear this stranger limb from limb as he re-raises my final bet with an insouciant flick of the wrist; the casual splash of his chips on the table signifying that he holds the "nuts,"the best possible hand for a specific pot. But I am getting ahead of myself, rushing to the part where my manifold weaknesses as a hold 'em player are cruelly exposed once more, at the expense of explaining the basic rules.

Each player is dealt two cards face down before five community cards are dealt face up in the middle of the table. The player who can make the best five-card poker hand, using both, one or neither of his own two cards wins the pot. It could not be more simple or deceptive. Bad players seldom realize when they are beaten, but there is an element of delicious uncertainty in a lot of hands to preclude anyone from being absolutely sure that they will win. The majority of hold 'em games feature preset limits to the betting and raising, whereby players are restricted in the amount that they can wager on any of the four betting rounds. A medium-sized game would be $10-$20, so that in the first two rounds of betting all bets and raises must be in $10 increments, while the final two rounds begin at the doubled $20 level. The size of this game is already at the outer limits of my comfort zone. In the worst-case scenario, which is usually a lively possibility in hold 'em, you could lose upwards of $200 in a single hand.

I am sitting at a $10-$20 hold 'em table in the Mandalay Bay's poker room on a balmy May evening in Las Vegas when it strikes me that poker is the most egalitarian game in the world. My opponents this midnight hour include: a one-eyed man who has a second eye that is dead to the world, and who lacks the common decency to cover it with a patch; an octogenarian with double-fisted hearing aids; a man who wears a horribly stained baseball hat with the brim pulled down low and occasionally flashes us a smile that is closer to gummy than toothy; two kids in shiny bowling shirts with perpetually runny noses who throw rolled-up hundred-dollar bills at the dealer as if defying him to prove that they are over the legal age; a matronly transsexual with enormous man-hands who is wearing a string of pearls and a homemade jumper; and a heavy girl with peroxide hair who is sporting cut-off denim shorts that cut into her vast thighs like trailer-trash tourniquets. It takes me three hands to realize that this young woman, with her clingy Nascar T-shirt and double-wide hams, is in a different league to the rest of us. She's probably a Pro, a Vegas local who feeds off unsuspecting tourists. We are her rabbits for the evening, and she's going to swallow us like a quart of Vanilla ice cream.

I call the bet and there are five of us left waiting to see 'the flop.' The dealer will turn over the first three community cards at once and this is known as the flop. I'd like to see her turn over two Kings and a Five, but I'd also like to see my cocktail waitress, with her surgically-enhanced bosom that could double as a flotation device in the unlikely event of an emergency landing, waiting for me in my hotel room - and the chances in terms of probability are roughly the same. The reason I shouldn't be in this hand is that I'm holding the kind of cards that down the line could easily give me a false sense of imminent victory and such a feeling always ends up costing a small fortune. With a King and a Five I could easily end up in second-place, which is the worst place to finish in any kind of poker, particularly hold 'em, where if you make that a habit you'll end up poor and deranged.

The flop comes Ten, Four, Two, which would be useless to me if not for the fact that the Four and the Two are both hearts. I am now one card away from making a King-high flush (in this case five cards all hearts-suited), which is a very big hand in hold 'em. The Pro bets and I call, content in the knowledge that the bets are doubling in the next round and if my fifth heart hits I'll be able to destroy her, for this hand at least. She's taken $300 of my money thus far and it is safe to say that the enmity I feel towards her is personal. This is another reason why at best I am a mediocre hold 'em player. Both shiny kids fold, which amazes me, but then they get up together and head off to the nearest restroom sniffing in unison, so maybe it isn't so amazing. Man Hands calls the bet, and there are only the three of us left. I figure that The Pro is holding an Ace and a Queen as is waiting for one of them to hit the board to make a high pair. Man Hands seemed to get interested at the sight of the Ten and my gut instinct is that it is holding a pair of Tens. Most gamblers regardless of gender-confusion tend to stay in hold 'em hands once they have the highest pair showing after the flop.

The turn card is a Nine of hearts and I try to control my breathing, do math problems in my head, and picture my grandmother in her underwear. This is the same technique that prevents me from reaching orgasm too quickly, and it works just as well at the card table. The urge to scream out in premature triumph must be tempered with a stoic indifference to all that lies before you. When The Pro bets $20 I calmly call her and am shocked when Man Hands raises the bet to $40. The Pro calls and I call as well. The river card is an Eight of diamonds, which is good news for me because it means that the highest possible hand for this pot is a flush. The Pro bets out once more and this time I quickly raise it to a $40 bet. Man Hands hesitates for a nanosecond before re-raising me to $60, and then The Pro caps the betting at $80. I'd like to re-raise both of these sorry individuals but the rules of limit hold 'em prohibit any more betting at this juncture, besides which I only have enough chips left in front of me to call. As I prepare to show the table my gorgeous flush The Pro turns over a flush of her own, with the Ace and the Three of hearts no less, and my world is shattered.

"I have the nuts,"she explains patiently as though we are mentally handicapped squirrels and we nod blankly back at her, confirming that fact.

"I had the King-high flush,"I say in a dazed voice.

Man Hands lets out a booming good-natured laugh and shows the Queen and Ten of hearts. All three of us made flushes, but only one of us knew all along that she couldn't lose. I stare at the dealer, convinced that the whole game is rigged.

"That's a bad beat, honey,"The Pro says to me, and she's right yet again.

For the month of May Las Vegas is the center of the poker universe. Binion's Horseshoe hosts the World Series of Poker, a collection of poker tournaments that culminates with the undisputed world championship event: No-limit Texas hold 'em, where the buy in is $10,000 per player and first prize is over $2.5 million. The greatest players in the world can be seen milling around in the Horseshoe's poker rooms and for me it is a thrill to see in the flesh the characters that I have previously read gripping accounts of: Amarillo Slim Preston; Chris "Jesus"Fergusen; Doyle Brunson. They may not be household names yet, but professional poker is on the verge of capturing the American public's imagination. Televised coverage of the newly formed World Poker Tour has started to develop a cult following. Millions enjoy playing the game on a social level, it makes for exciting television, and it is ideally suited to expert commentary by former champions like Mike Sexton, who can explain the intricate nuances of the game.

The evening after I find myself outclassed at the $10-$20 level I take a cab downtown to the Horseshoe to see how the Pros do it. My original intention was to try and qualify for the World Championship by winning one of the super satellite tournaments, where one could parlay the $200 entry fee into a $10,000 seat at the big show. But I am not ready for that yet I tell myself. My cabbie is a large man with a shaved head and the kind of unbridled moustache not seen since the West was won. He asks me what I'm up to on this Saturday night and I tell him that I'm going to watch high-stakes poker.

"I've had a week from hell,"he tells me. "I'm going to get completely wasted tonight. Then I'm going to Cheetahs and get me a hand-job in the back from one of the dancers."

"Oh," I say. Clearly he is in the mood to talk so I let him. He tells me that he had been clean and sober for five years, until he fell off the wagon last month. With that he runs a stop sign, pulls a sharp right into a hotel parking lot, and yells "short-cut"before resuming his narrative.

"I did E, Percoset, Moriset, Xanax,"the list of substances he abused goes on and on, featuring more dreadful-sounding names that could double as Canadian pop stars. It sounds to me like the wagon backed up over him a couple of times.

"Anyway, I was on this bender for three days and I ended up getting married."

"You did?"

"Yeah. It's this girl I'd been seeing for the past few years, but she runs with a bad crowd so I never got too serious with her."

I take another look at him as we barrel down the Strip sashaying in and out of lanes, and wonder what would qualify as a bad crowd to this guy? He could moonlight as an assassin or a professional wrestler, and I'm sure he'd be more competent at these careers than he is behind a wheel. It occurs to me that I might die before we get to Binion's Horseshoe.

"We've been married a couple of days when she starts staying out all night. It turns out that she's hanging at the Red Rooster. You get a chance to go there yet?"

I learn that the Red Rooster is a swinger's club, and that it is well worth a trip for the chance to see things that I am too modest to put into print, but which were described to me in gaudy detail by my driver.

"She starts bringing back women from the Rooster, into our bed, man. I got no problem if I'm going to be included - you understand what I'm saying? But it wasn't like that. Then I find out that she's sent away for a joint credit card, and next thing I know I'm in for eight grand."

We narrowly miss a slow-moving pedestrian.

"I haven't had a decent fare since Tuesday. I'm still waiting for the paperwork to go through to get this bitch out of my life, and to top it all, two days ago some jackass came out of nowhere and wrecked my ride. Can you believe it?"

I can, but I shake my head anyway.

As we pull up to the Horseshoe and I mumble a prayer of gratitude, he says: "If you're interested in real high-stakes poker don't mess around with this tournament. There are so many amateurs playing nowadays it's like a circus in there. You should go to the poker room at the Bellagio and ask one of the dealers to tell you about Andy Beal. Hey, you might even get to see him play."

"Who is Andy Beal?"

"He's a crazy Texas billionaire who wants to beat the best hold 'em players in the world, and screw the cost. Go to the Bellagio, you'll see what I mean."

I spend an hour pottering around the seedy interior of the Horseshoe, spotting great poker players like big game sightings on a safari as I stand back and observe them in their natural habitat. I take the escalator to the second floor of the hotel where the final of the $1,500 Limit Hold 'em tournament is taking place. It immediately feels as though I have reached a higher level. Standing in front of me is Jesus. Chris Fergusen is wearing a ratty red shirt that shouldn't be on the back of a millionaire let alone one of the undisputed lords of poker. This is a man with a PhD in game theory who can be shown fifty-one cards in a deck and immediately tell you what the missing card is. That might not sound terribly impressive at first, but trust me when I say that no one you know would be able to do it. They're down to the final two participants by the time I get there: Layne Flack and Annie Duke. Both are well-known Pros, and pop up regularly on television. I take a seat on the bleachers behind the table amongst a small crowd. There are murmurs that they have already decided to split the prize money for first and second place, which means each would get $110,000 but that is not what drives these players. They want the coveted WSOP bracelet, a status symbol that remains unmatched in a world where six-figure pots are commonplace. The final hand sees Annie pushing all her chips into the middle, known as 'going all-in,' confident that her Jack-high diamond flush will hold up. She looks bemused when Layne, whose nickname on the circuit is 'heart attack,' flips over a Queen-high diamond flush.

"Oohs" and "Aahs"escape from the flabbergasted crowd. I've seen worse.

I decide to spend Sunday morning at the Bellagio, following my cabdriver's recommendation. At this hotel the cocktail waitresses look like supermodels, and the supermodels are gathered around the craps tables squealing for their mega-rich boyfriends to roll hard sixes, or whatever it is that people shout for at craps. Las Vegas is a city in mammary overdrive, and the Bellagio is the epicenter of the big-boob explosion. A stroll through its casino makes you realize just how lucky Pamela Anderson-Lee-Rock really is not to be serving complimentary beverages, and conversely how unlucky the Bellagio waitresses are. On the other hand it seems to be the kind of spot where crazy billionaires are plentiful, so they must feel there's always a chance they'll get swept away into a fairy tale existence, or at the very least get a big tip.

The poker room at the Bellagio is as sumptuous and well rounded as the finest examples of the plastic surgeon's craft. One can play a friendly game of $1-$5 stud or a downright hostile game of $400-$800 hold 'em. It's one of those rooms where the size of the action has no limits, and it takes me two minutes to spot Andy Beal's game, which is the biggest of all. Tucked away in the far corner, slightly elevated from the other tables and surrounded by an iron railing, is a card table with two players and a dealer. One of the players is wearing wraparound dark sunglasses and a large set of bulky black headphones, the kind that were popular in the 1970s. He is dressed in white and doing a mighty fine impersonation of Howard Hughes. The other player is one of the world's best, an overweight individual who is chatting amiably to a couple of other WSOP bracelet winners who are standing around the table. I am not allowed to get too close to the table but can see that both players have many stacks of $10,000 chips in front of them. If you haven't seen a poker game with over $20 million worth of chips on the table then you need to go to Las Vegas, because I have a feeling Beal's game might still be going on.

See, Andy Beal is a brilliant man. He doesn't have a college degree, but he is the founder of a very large bank in Texas, the Beal Bank, that has well over $1 billion in assets. He owns ninety-nine percent of the bank. He isn't an engineer or an astrophysicist, but that didn't stop him from devising a plan to build his own rocket ship. He's not a mathematician, but using his bank's computers he discovered a mathematical problem that has become known as Beal's conjecture. Finding a proof or a counterexample to the conjecture has perplexed the great minds of applied mathematics for the past six years, even though Beal has offered a $100,000 prize to anyone who can solve the problem. He's kind of like Fermat, Einstein and Scrooge Mc. Duck all rolled into one slightly neurotic-looking headphone-wearing poker player. Like many brilliant men he has clearly decided that mastering Texas hold 'em presents the ultimate challenge.

I watch a single hand where Beal and the Fat Man constantly re-raise one another until more than fifty of those $10,000 chips are spread in-between them. The fifth card helps the Texan more than the Pro and he rakes the pot. The dealer of the hand gets up to take a break.

"How much did that guy just win?"

"$540,000" the dealer replies.

"Is that Andy Beal?"I ask.

"Sure is. He came here a week ago wanting to play no-limit against the best poker players in the world. Six or seven of them have formed a syndicate and they take turns playing him. He plays fifteen hours a day, every day."

"What's he listening to?"

"He should be listening to 'How To Play Poker' on audio-tape,"the dealer chuckles at his own joke.

"Why is that?"

"So far he's down $12 million. But that's nothing to him. He just wants to beat them."

I grab hold of the iron railing for support. In a city renowned for monster-sized gambles, one of the largest in the world is taking place on a quiet Sunday afternoon before a crowd of one spellbound writer.

Two weeks later, an unheralded amateur from Tennessee, whose only past tournament experience was gleaned online (card rooms and casinos are illegal in Jack Daniels' country), would go on to win the World Championship of poker. The player, whose apt last name is Moneymaker, won an Internet satellite tournament with an entry fee of $40 that exempted him from the $10,000 buy-in and qualified him for the main competition. His $2.5 million dollar payday proves the egalitarian hypothesis; poker as a manifestation of the grand American dream, yet you still need to be a billionaire or a professional to partake in the truly big no-limit hold 'em games in Las Vegas.