Paris Poker Nut's Poker Blog

ADIEU

2006-10-05T09:17:00.001-04:00

Adios, amigos. No more blogs, no more observations, no more Internet poker. The prudent men in Washington who help govern our lives have taken it upon themselves to shut us down. Apparently, playing poker for money online is detrimental to the public weal. Rather than finding a means to authorize, control and tax Internet casinos, our wise elected officials have preferred to label our activities immoral. Just why they condone some forms of gambling – horse racing, state lotteries, etc. - while condemning others is unclear. Just why they chose to ignore the desires of millions of their constituents in favor of heeding the voices of a handful of anachronistic moralists remains equally perplexing. By attaching the Internet Exclusion Act to a rider of an obscure bill, our well-meaning Solons have done nothing less than kick us out the back door rather than escort us out the front. I guess they think the evil that lurks in the heart of men is manifest by hundreds of thousands of individuals sitting in front of video screens trying to match wits with one another, for the most part with little money involved. Historically decrying public intervention in private affairs, a Republican congress and a Republican administration are contradicting their own traditional values, God only knows why. Lord save us from do-gooders, moralists and hypocrites, we can take care of monsters, bogeymen and sinners all by ourselves. However, if you still want to Play Poker Online check out PlaySolidPoker.com.

CLASS ACT

2006-10-02T03:03:00.001-04:00

I have fallen in love with the Venetian Resort. Unlike other establishments in Las Vegas, the Venetian greets and sees to the comfort of poker players from the very moment of entry. Since poker gives the house a far lower profit margin than slots or traditional gaming tables, is it not anomalous for poker players to be welcomed with open arms? True, due to the current popularity of the game, the casinos have no choice but to offer Texas Hold ‘Em, Omaha, and variations of seven-card stud. Providing BodogPoker space brings in people who might end up playing craps, blackjack and roulette, but as a rule, poker players eschew such frivolities. Why compete against a monolithic juggernaut with the odds in its favor when you can play against other human beings possessed of the same weaknesses and foibles as oneself?

To keynote its difference, The Venetian has posted a sign on the fifth floor of the parking garage offering parking spaces for VIPs and poker players. Hats off to whoever suggested that! Naturally, anyone else is permitted to park there, but it is nice to know that someone in this impersonal city has given thought to those of us whose game of choice entails a good amount of patience, a modicum of discipline and no little cogitation.

Equally significant, the Venetian card room has set aside a comfortable area for players waiting to get into a game. Couches and armchairs are provided while poker magazines are distributed to those interested in tournament results or the opinions of superstars or ordinary beings in the rarified universe of poker. If that isn’t enough, cocktail waitresses come by offering drinks. Let me tell you, no other casino I know of instructs employees to pay attention to players not yet confirmed as clients. Along with the wealthiest men in the nation, Mr Edelson (founder and majority shareholder of the Venetian) deserves to be on a list of America’s most considerate men.

Another factor that sets the Venetian apart is the classical music piped into the men’s room (lady’s room too, I assume), a welcome relief from the tinny elevator tunes you hear just about everywhere else. Yesterday it was Tchaikovsky rather than the more appropriate Vivaldi (a citizen of that other Venice), but is there really all that much difference between the residence of the Czars and the Palace of the Doges?

Elegance, of course, is anything but understated at The Venetian. Appreciate it or not, this is Las Vegas. Garishness is part of the ambience. Designer carpets and acres of marble are supposed to be on permanent display. While we are at it, I’ll let you in on a secret: Old Venice, that city on the Adriatic is not exactly a prototype of modesty, or a locale noted for simplicity and restraint. Let it all hang out, I say, and who cares if Nevada gondoliers sing Neapolitan love songs rather than melodies from Northeastern Italy? Those fellows paddling and poling on the lagoon have been doing it for decades.

I have a confession to make. Lately I have been winning at the Venetian. ‘Pour’vu que ca dure,’ as Napoleon’s mother used to say (‘Just let it last.’) Naturally, I can think of nothing greater to reinforce the profundity of my feelings for a casino/resort than a genuine hot streak. Who knows why one place is lucky while another is a forbidden city where one cannot win a single pot? Take yesterday. Bought in for $200 at a $2-$5 No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em Poker game, I went all-in with a suited ace-king on the second hand dealt me. A gentleman called holding pocket sevens. Both an ace and a king appeared on the board, but no seven. Several hands after doubling my stake, it was my turn to be dealt pocket sevens. Raising the big blind to $20, I was called by the same gentleman. The flop was a rainbow 3-4-6. I checked. My opponent bet $50. I called. The turn was the two of spades. I bet $150.

“Call and all-in,” said the fellow, turning over a pair of fours. No, I did not hit another seven, but the five of diamonds gave me a straight.

Maybe now you will understand why I love the Venetian. Nowhere else do I catch cards like this! So play me Vivaldi, show me Canalettos and bring out the carpaccio. Whether here on the Strip or there on the Lagoon, I can think of few places on earth so full of mystery, beauty and - at least for the moment -a bit of good fortune.

PRICES

2006-09-28T01:35:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I went to Mandalay Bay again. Sounds like the opening line of a book, doesn’t it? A film too: directed by Hitchcock, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. “Rebecca,” was the name, by Daphne Du Maurier. I don’t have it quite right. It should go: “last night I dreamed I went to Mandalay again.” No, that’s not it. Manderley, not Mandalay! That's the name.

While there is no Manderley in Las Vegas, the southernmost mega resort on the Las Vegas Strip is Mandalay Bay. Exquisite looking from the outside - two golden towers rising majestically – it is equally impressive on the inside. The main poker gaming room might seem a bit overcrowded, but is not the establishment's business to provide table games and slots to people looking for action? Food, too. Along with Caesar’s, MGM Grand, Wynn and Bellagio, I'd say the best restaurants in town are at the Manadalay Bay. Dinner at the Aureole (Mandalay), Picasso (Bellagio), Robuchon (MGM), Guy Savoy (Caesar’s) or Alex (Wynn) might cost you a mortgage payment or two, but your taste buds will be treated to an incredible experience.

So yesterday I stepped into the Mandalay Bay again. Only a week previously, my wife and I had dined there at China Grille. This time I was accompanying my Portuguese pal, Pedro da Silva to the resort’s famous Hamburger Bar. Pedro is crazy about American burgers.

“On the road to Mandalay,” I burst into song, “where the flying fishes play, and the dawn comes up like thunder out of China ‘cross the bay.”

“What’s that?” said Pedro, eying me queerly.

“It was a poem originally,” I said. “By Kipling. The English once controlled Burma, you know?”

“Hong Kong, too,” he said. “We kept them out of Macao.”

“Well you won’t keep us out. Us Yankees, I mean. Nor will the Chinese. Both the Wynn and the Venetian have opened multi-billion dollar resorts in Macao.”

“They are going to have more clients than they can handle. No people gamble as much as the Chinese.”

We stopped off at the poker room. The director told us we had to buy in for between $200 and $400 at the $2-$5 No Limit game.

“What if I’m losing a bundle?” asked Pedro. “Can I buy in for more?”

“No, sir. $400 maximum.”

“That’s foolish,” said Pedro. “A player should not be restricted to maximum buy-ins.”

“It used to be worse,” I said. “At one time, both here and at The Bellagio you could only buy-in for $200, minimum or maximum! It took them long enough to change the rules. As far as I know, only Wynn and Binion’s offer the sky’s the limit.”

“Why is that?” asked Pedro.

“I guess the casinos want to avoid wealthy wise guys from buying in for tens of thousands and muscling everyone else around.”

“Speaking of muscles, mine are aching. Let’s eat.”

We lunched on the specialty of the house. They were damn good burgers, let me tell you! Well why not, at ten bucks apiece? Actually, they cost a lot more. Our requests for extra cheese, bacon and avocados added to the cost. Cocktails and beer brought our tab to $70 with tax and tip. We skipped desert.

Neither Pedro nor I felt like playing poker. We took a taxi to where I had left my car. That set us back another ten bucks. Pedro wanted to play blackjack at The Orleans, his lucky casino. I opted to go home for a nap. Still hungry, I pulled into a Burger King where, for about two dollars, I gobbled down a double bacon cheeseburger with pickles and lettuce. You know what? It tasted pretty much the same as the one on The Strip.

FOLLY

2006-09-25T01:07:00.000-04:00

I was hardly settled in place at a $1-$2 No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em game last night when a young, curly-haired fellow sat up and proclaimed:

“Watch out for me, man. I am totally crazy.”

Imposing a lopsided grin on his face, he stuck out his tongue and wiggled it from side to side. I could see his pupils were dilated and glassy.

“I’ll take note of that,” I replied, accepting $100 worth of chips from the dealer.

“Don’t bother,” said a player a few seats to my right, “unless you want to suffer with the rest of us.”

“You don’t believe I’m a nut?” said the young fellow. “Watch this. Raise twenty bucks on the blind.”

Two players called. Dealt KH-3D, I had no trouble folding. I really do not like playing against idiots, drunks and fruitcakes.

The flop was a rainbow A-5-3.

“All-in,” said the young guy. “Wow, am I crazy!”

A player with suited A-5 called. The turn was a nine, the river a six.

“Whopee!” shouted the self-proclaimed lunatic. He turned over a four and a seven. “Now will you people believe me when I say I’m insane?”

“Let us not confuse madness with luck,” said the bloke (a Brit) who had lost the hand. “You might try talking a bit less while you are at it.”

His request fell on deaf ears. Rather than elaborate a host of meaningless details, let me assure you that aside from state capitals and Washington D.C., you would have to search far and wide to find a bigger windbag. Refusing to shut up, Curly continued to mention his absence of sanity.

I’ll say one thing for the fellow: he certainly animated the game. Betting hand after hand and bluffing continuously, the only thing he seemed to fear was exclusion from the action. While such play was sure to see him eventually go broke, for the moment he kept kicking my ass as well as that of the tall, heavyset gentleman on my immediate left. In a matter of minutes both of us were obliged to re-buy chips at the expense of the non-stop talker. I’m telling you, I’ll take the quiet, serious poker player over the loudmouth blusterer any day of the week.

I guess he had about $400 in chips in front of him when he went all-in with pocket queens. Deciding to dodge a bullet with suited A-9, I watched my neighbor count his chips.

“Call,” he said. “I'm afraid I have far less than you do.”

That was the beginning of the end of the wordy one. Holding KH-QS, the gentleman hit a straight on the river.

“How could you call with that?” asked the young man in amazement. “You must be as crazy as me.”

“You’re not crazy, you’re drunk,” replied my neighbor.

“I’m crazy, I tell you. I really am.”

“No sir,” said the heavyset man. “Anyone can tell you that an ignoramus will never admit to stupidity. By the same token, a truly irrational person will do everything possible to conceal his disorder. An admission of stupidity or madness may give pleasure to a fool who enjoys making a spectacle of himself, but nothing is more frightening to the authentic idiot or madman than the possibility his condition might be revealed.”

TRANSITION

2006-09-21T01:16:00.000-04:00

Maurice de Talleyrand, the extraordinary statesman who served both Louis XVI and Napoleon Bonaparte often extolled ‘the sweetness of life’ under the French monarchy. Of course Paris was the center of everything. So too, after the Franco-Prussian War and World War I, the capital witnessed rebirths of gaiety and splendor. Once again the city experienced a similar period of magnificence after World War II. Much like the expatriates of the 1920s, those of us who spent time in Paris in the 50s and 60s were privileged to have known a metropolis clinging to a few final moments of post- bellum joy. That was before urban blight, street crime, pollution, inflation, racial disruptions and the general malaise that permeates all of France today came along.

When I first came to Paris, the city was majestic. Sylphs and sorcerers had taken turns to bless her with celestial stardust. Emerald leaves floated through enchanted trees. Golden ashes descended onto the arcades facing the Rue de Rivoli. Fountains of spectral mist sprayed the obelisk at the Place de la Concorde. Atop Montmartre, Sacre Coeur glowed in cool pink mornings. Lovers, passionate and serene, stopped to embrace in gardens and parks. Café sitters dozed in halos of dazzling light. With loud clicking heels, chic demoiselles glided on starling wings. Men and boys fished behind long wooden poles while elderly ladies, busy with needles and wool, occupied long green benches. Beneath a blue-gray sky, Parisians, individually and en masse, were frozen in a motionless tableau, joyously confirming the countless gifts bestowed upon their incomparable city.

I was an insomniac when I started playing poker. No matter how late I went to bed I could not sleep past five in the morning. That’s the time Paris wakes up. There is a poker expression for that. You won’t find it in any dictionary or guidebook. A heart flush is composed of five hearts, ‘cinq coeurs’ in French, homonymous with cinq heures or five o’clock. If you ever hear anybody at a French card table say: ‘Paris s’eveille’ (Paris is waking up), you can be sure he is announcing a heart flush.

The metro starts running at five-thirty. Cafes and newspaper kiosks open slightly earlier. As in any major metropolis, working class people dominate the early morning hours. Around five-fifteen I would buy the Herald Tribune, before going for coffee and croissants at Le Rallye, a café on the Place Saint-Andre-des-Arts. Michel the night man stayed on until nine in the morning. He and I liked to play a French dice game called four hundred twenty-one. We played for drinks, not for money. Every weekday morning Roger and Toto, a pair of brothers-in-law would arrive at the café with the first metro. Invariably, they drank a few glasses of melicasse, a combination of rum and red currant syrup. One day Toto stayed late instead of going to work. He wanted to play dice with Michel and me. The man had a hot hand. The bartender and I had to cough up dough for cocktail after cocktail. None of us was aware of the hour. Just before Michel was due to get off, Toto collapsed to the floor. Neither Michel nor I knew what to do. Another client called the fire department. Toto was taken across the river to the Hotel Dieu Hospital.

He was absent the following morning. Roger blamed Michel and me for getting him drunk. He called us every name in the book. Didn’t we know that Toto had a bad liver?

“You rats,” he concluded. “You could have killed him.”

Michel made a Gallic shrug. All his clients had bad livers. Roger would not be appeased. He and Toto stopped going to Le Rallye. For a while they went to the tobacco bar next door. Then they abandoned the Latin Quarter altogether. Shortly afterwards, Michel was fired. Not because of what had occurred with Toto, but because he was caught with his hand in the till.

The new night manager of the Rallye was a deadbeat. I started going to the café Jacques Coeur instead. Antoine, the owner thought I was wealthy. A lot of people in the neighborhood agreed with him. In those days, the French were convinced all Americans were loaded.

One morning Antoine accused me of coming on to his wife. Far from the only person on his list, he pointed an accusing finger at a dozen other customers. The crazy bastard went so far as to shoot a local tradesman. Pretty Beatrice was the only waitress at the café. While the victim had no reason not to be friendly with her, such logic made no impression on Antoine. He was sent to prison, but only for a year. Crimes of passion are treated lightly in Mediterranean Countries. Even though Paris is a long way from the sea, French thinking pays no attention to detaisl such as distance. Similar examples of so-called Cartesian logic worked out to my advantage at poker. My opponents were so lousy, I couldn’t miss winning nine games out of ten.

Not long after he regained his freedom, Antoine attacked another client for making eyes at Beatrice. As far as the French were concerned, there was nothing unusual about that. Nor were they surprised by my continuous success at poker. As the locals like to say: 'the more things change, the more they remain the same.' But that is not so. Today the Café Jacques Coeur is a souvenir shop, the Rallye is a secondhand bookstore and the poker games I frequent take place thousands of miles from Paris.

THEOLOGY

2006-09-18T04:56:00.000-04:00

Anyone not familiar with the world of genies, pixies, elves and sprites is sure to be a stranger to no limit Texas Hold ‘Em. Conversely, show me the person who has played the game regularly and you are sure to find a person unable to deny that: “more things exist in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies.” Because I’m telling you, inexplicable phenomena arrive all too frequently at cards games. In his book “Pale Fire,” Nabokov claims: “I know the world could not have occurred fortuitously, and that somehow Mind is involved as a main factor in the making of the universe. In trying to find the right name for that Universal Mind, or First Cause, or the Absolute, or Nature, I submit the Name of God has priority.” Whoa! Hold on there, Vladimir. Not for one moment can I imagine that white bearded figure holding a finger out to Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, getting involved in Las Vegas poker games. Surely He has better things to do than decide who shall hit a straight or flush. Still, I know something – or somebody - has to be out there. Perhaps it’s The Creator’s way of allowing imps, sylphs, goblins and other supernatural mischief-makers to intervene in the affairs of men. For what reason? How would I know? I’m having enough trouble with poker to bother with theology.

Let me go back a month. I was playing $2-$5 NL at the Bellagio. Oh brother, what a game! Four players were throwing money around as though the end of the world were coming tomorrow. I mean, they were chasing after belly straights and calling $100 bets with hands worth less than a nickel. I ‘ll be darned if one of the loonies didn’t pay an all in bet with pocket sixes after two pairs Q-10 accompanied by a J appeared on the board. Another saw his chips dwindle from eight large piles to zero in the bat of an eyelash. Finally, after months of searching, I had found that mythical ultra loose table where with a decent hand or two a player could not miss going home with a four-figure profit. Bought in at the $200 minimum, I doubled my stake before the first round of play was finished, holding nothing better than an unsuited J-10.

“Tell me,” I said to the gentleman on my right, “doesn’t this draft bother you?”

“I had your place before I moved,” interjected a thin fellow seated across the table. “That seat you’re in is like ice fishing in Alaska.”

“That’s why I’m wearing a sweater,” said the fellow I had originally addressed. “Those overhead A/C vents are pointed directly at us.”

We were interrupted by a battle between two of the maniacal players. Don’t ask me to furnish details. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how much money each put into the pot with cards any sane person would throw away.

I called over a floor manager and asked if it were possible to turn down the air conditioning.

“Sorry, Sir, it’s 100 degrees outside.”

No use arguing, particularly when I picked up K-Q of hearts. In France, a suited king-queen is called ‘belotte’ in an eponymous game that is far easier to play than this one. So without pause I raised the big blind to $40 and was followed by three of the crazies. Please, do not imagine that I am unaware of the dangers posed by wild men. Of course I know the loose goose is more apt to tear one apart than the opponent who measures probabilities. So what? Unless you are totally out of form, is it not advantageous to play with fruitcakes rather than knock heads with a bunch of Rocky Mountain goats?

A new series of blasts from the A/C sent shivers through me. As a child, both my old grannies had made a point of warning me to avoid draughts. In Paris it is axiomatic that a courant d’air will send you to the hospital, if not worse. Particularly susceptible to colds, sore throats and other respiratory ailments, I began to feel ill. I’m telling you, my eyes were tearing, I was coughing up phlegm and my temperature must have been rising like a fighter plane taking off.

“I can’t go on like this,” I said, picking up my chips and abandoning my seat.

Allowing health to take precedence over cards, I was quitting the best table I had played at since leaving Paris eight years previously. Damn it all! Why couldn’t this have happened in winter or spring?

As mentioned, that was about a month ago. I hadn’t returned to the Bellagio for any number of reasons, foremost of which was a desire to play in $50 and $125 tournaments offered by competing casinos. Tournaments played in this ornate palace range between $500 and $1,000. As well, I guess in the back of my mind was fear of having run out on a winning table. Mon Dieu, had I known those creatures of destiny were capable of playing such tricks, I would have risked pneumonia back then.

They started out immediately upon my arrival. Calling a hand with AC-7C, I was met by 7D-4S-2C on the flop. Unlike last month’s game, today’s session was dominated by pros from the Strip rather than by loonies from the heartland. Fine by me, and anyway, weren't my hole cards worth a $25 raise? And then, when the seven of hearts appeared on the turn, wasn’t I truly sitting pretty? I sure thought so when the river turned out to be the four of diamonds.

Unprepared for Accident #1, I swallowed hard. A shifty-eyed bastard I recognized from previous games laid down the two missing fours. Damn! That was the only combination that could beat me. Oh well, I had seen this happen before, and I was only down a single buy-in. From then on, like a boxer absorbing too many punches, I got smacked from the left, slammed on the right, hit by jabs, uppercuts, hooks and Sunday wallops that seemed to come from another world. Dealt pocket aces I raised in order to play against as few opponents as possible. Some tobacco-chewing grandpa called me. Q-8-3 was flopped. I went all-in. The old timer called with two nines. A nine on the river saw me reach for another buy-in. On the very next hand, it was I who was dealt pocket nines. Instead of recognizing a series of events stacked against me, I quadrupled the player who had raised the big blind to thirty. Oh man, so many picture cards appeared on the board you would have thought the house had ordered a mosaic of jacks, queens and kings for our table.

I took a deep breath. It was my turn to be the small blind. Dealt King of hearts and seven of clubs, I was deliberating my choices when a sudden breath of icy air – far colder and much closer than that from the faulty A/C – blew the cards out of my hand. For the first time in memory, I refused to add the few chips needed to go from small blind to big blind. So strong was that gust, my cards turned over and were exposed. Not only was the flop K-K-7, the player on my right showed me he was holding wired sevens. Bad enough I had missed out on winning a super pot, and worse still that everyone at the table knew about it.

What was wrong with me? Could I not see that diabolical forces were running amok at my expense? I guess not, because now as big blind holding 7H-2H, I bet $50 when three hearts came up on the flop. Paid by the gentleman sitting in the same seat I had vacated four weeks previously, I witnessed the queen of hearts turn over on Fourth Street. Not bothering to bet, I threw my cards in the air. It was payback time all right, and if those were not supernatural forces making fun of me for having refused a gift last time out, what the hell were they? No kidding, I was convinced beyond a doubt that I was faced with furies, nixies and pixies whose sole purpose was to see me lose hand after hand as ignobly as possible. Now on the button, I followed the blinds with 10S-9S. Lo and behold, the flop was JS-QS-AS. Well you guessed it. No other spade appeared, but the big blind was happy to call my all-in bet with his suited king-two of spades. In twenty minutes I had dropped eight hundred bucks.

Look, it’s nice to think we have free will. Maybe at times we do, but five will get you ten, not all the time. Because if external forces play no part in determining what happens to us, why are there days you can’t win a hand even when your cards seem pretty damn good?

CRYBABIES

2006-09-14T03:10:00.000-04:00

What a pleasant surprise to encounter fewer crybabies here in Las Vegas than those I was faced with during my thirty years of poker in Paris. Or so I thought until yesterday. Stuck in a $1-$3 No Limit game at The Wynn, the converse proved to be true. I say ‘stuck’ since I wanted to play at a $2-$5 table but no seats were available. Rather than sit around twiddling my thumbs, I chose to play in the smaller stakes game. Once again I was struck by the disadvantage of $3 chips over $2 chips. Let’s face it: betting in three-dollar increments is a pain in the neck. “Ill see those seventeen chips and raise you twenty-eight more.” How much does that make in cold hard cash?

But it’s crybabies I want to talk about, not the structure of games on The Strip. I’m telling you, we had two champions at yesterday’s table. The younger one, a kid sitting on my immediate right, couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. You could see the other whiner was close to three times his age. Hard to say who was more disagreeable, but I guess the kid would get the prize, if only because his voice was loud and strident. Worse still, he was winning his fair share of hands. The old timer, a geezer who looked as though he had spent the previous evening sleeping with the homeless on Main Street, couldn’t win a hand. You know what? I wouldn’t be surprised if he were one of those weird people who live on $200 a month then end up leaving millions of dollars to some obscure pet farm in Missoula or Grand Rapids City.

Let me give you an example of junior’s conduct. All-in head to head against an Oriental lady, the young man stood up and screamed “Oh no” when he saw her pocket queens across the table from his wired jacks. “Why does this always happen to me?”

Of course a jack came up on the turn. Rather than fall silent and regain his seat, the fellow continued to whine and moan.

“I was really scared for a moment. This kind of thing happens to me all the time.”

“What happens all the time?” asked a bearded gentleman. “You pull a miracle card against an opponent?”

No reply to that. Nor did the young man shut up. When not following a hand, he continued mumbling under his breath about his lousy hole cards. Come on, man, give me a break! I’ve been sitting here all afternoon with nines and fours, eights and threes, sevens and deuces.

About fifteen minutes passed with no action whatsoever. I guess that’s the nature of small stakes games where players feel constrained to be cautious. The betting is faster and far more aggressive when more money is in play.

Suddenly old Art raised the bearded gentleman’s $9 bet to $21. Au secours, - that's help in French - I thought to myself. Art hadn’t followed a hand since Marie Antoinette was telling the peasants that brioches were every bit as good as bread. Not put off in the least, the bearded man came in. The dealer turned over: QH-7S-2C.

“All in,” said Art.

El Beardo pushed his last chip into the pot before revealing two red sevens. Poor Art’s pocket aces looked like a bird with broken wings.

“Couldn’t you pick on someone else?” said the old man. “Can’t you see I’m in the shithouse? You could have been a good guy and folded those sevens.”

Silence ensued. It was an embarrassing and painful moment. Squirming in my seat, I could see the bearded fellow shake his head sadly.

Old Art reached into his pocket. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he took out a roll of $100 bills as thick as your fist or a torn handkerchief smeared with oil.

“I’ve been playing this game longer than most of you have been around,” said Art. “I still can’t get the hang of it.”

He withdrew a silver dollar from his pocket and examined it carefully.

“1929,” he said. “An unlucky year if ever there was one.”

“Why do you keep it?” asked the dealer.

“That’s the year I was born.”

Art bought in for another $100. Too discreet to let any of us see the size of his bankroll, he was soon engaged in another all-in hand, this time with the kid on my right. Both players turned over pocket kings.

“Oh God, no” said the youngster. “I know he’s going to get a flush.”

“Something tells me I’m not going to win this hand,” said Art.

“Can we chop?” asked the young man. “Is it all right if we don’t turn over the flop?”

“Fine by me,” said Art.

“No can do,” said the dealer. “Against the rules.”

The five common cards turned out to be: 4-5-6-7-8 of four different colors. As desired, the two players chopped the pot.

“I told you I couldn’t win that hand,” said Art.

“Wired kings,” said the young man. “What the hell does one have to do to win at this game?”

“Cry,” said the Oriental lady. “Like you have been doing all afternoon.”

Sure enough, the kid won a nice pot on the very next deal. A few minutes later, Art followed suit.

“Hand me a box of Kleenex, will you?” said I, their common victim, reaching into my pocket for additional funds. “If it’s crying that makes a man a winner, I can bawl as loud as anyone else.”

A CONUNDRUM

2006-09-11T02:02:00.000-04:00

For a while I was doing pretty well in tournament play. Strange, since until a few months ago I eschewed tournaments completely. If my son hadn’t urged me to give them a try, I doubt if I would have played in anything other than cash games.

“Tournaments should be right up your alley,” he said. “What more do you want than limited monetary risks coupled with interesting cash rewards?”

“Yeah,” I said, “at odds of forty, sixty or a hundred to one.”

“There are prizes for coming in second, third and so on.”

Since he was in town we tried a couple of tourneys. Besides being fun, I found the competition stimulating. After two outright victories and once being in the money, I began catching onto the idea that this style of play might be more rewarding than the more traditional manner. True, tournaments are long and often laborious, but isn’t that a small price to pay for picking up all those dollars?

If difficult for a man to acknowledge his ordinariness in life, it is close to impossible for a poker professional to admit his skills are not much better than anyone else’s. Add to this a string of favorable results, and – voila! – you might get to thinking like that fellow who says: take away the element of luck and he alone would win every game. Really, I know what the man means! Because when I hit a flush or a straight I tend to think I am pretty damn shrewd. But let an opponent pull winning cards on me, and by God, have you ever seen such unadulterated luck?

Recently tens have been giving me lots of trouble. In one hand I held a pair of jacks against a young fellow’s wired tens. Sure enough, a ten appeared on the flop. That same evening a woman went all-in with a suited ten-seven. Naturally I called with big slick. My ace and king came up, but so did a queen and a jack. Then there was the hand where I got knocked out of a tournament when my ace high flush came in second to a Chinese gentleman’s tens over queens full. On another occasion, I had a winning hand turn into a loser when the ten of spades gave my opponent a flush on the river. Lastly, I lost a huge hand, and my tournament seat, when my wired tens lost to a pretty girl’s ace-queen. Both her cards turned over while mine remained unaccompanied.

You know what? I’m beginning to discover that making money in tournaments is just as difficult as winning cash games. Those two victories and that fourth place finish must have been freaks. Perhaps I’ve been wearing the wrong colored shirts, or perhaps I should buy a rabbit’s foot. How could Dame Fortune desert me so quickly? So here I am, back at square one doubting whether this is a game of luck or one of skill, and wondering where I should play next time out.

AMBITION

2006-09-07T02:09:00.000-04:00

Literary characters such as Balzac’s Rastignac, or Americans Gatsby and Sammy Glick exemplify the young man arriving from farm or suburbs to the city prepared to move up in the world. So too did Alain Bertier, the superstar of my first Parisian poker game, follow a similar route. Nothing, he said, was going to block his route to success.

“I was devoured by ambition,” he said. “I would have sold my sister to the pimps on the Rue Saint Denis.”

Alain enjoyed bragging about his poker losses. Not a single art dealer, auctioneer or hanger-on in France was unaware that Bertier spent weekday afternoons playing cards. As his reputation grew, so did the number of people coming to visit him. Art magazines sent photographers to take pictures of his apartment. Shopkeepers from Madison Avenue to the Ginza came to restock their boutiques. Museum curators called on him regularly. Movie stars and pop singers would have been hard pressed to add to their Art Nouveau or Art Deco collections without looking in on Le Grand Bertier.

“I’m making a fortune,” he liked to announce at the poker table.

Alain had no patience with people outside the trade. He felt it was a waste of time to seek goods from private individuals. If he did not buy from other dealers, he limited his purchases to public auctions. Contrary to his competitors he refused to pay intermediaries a commission for bringing him merchandise. On one occasion, after an employee at Paris’s main auction house had concealed a much sought-after item from rival bidders, Alain rewarded him with a single franc, worth at best a quarter. Having saved the art dealer hundreds of dollars, it was only normal the poor fellow was shocked. Letting the franc slide onto the floor, he made no effort to conceal his contempt. Bertier could not have cared less. Stooping down, he retrieved the coin and placed it into his pocket.

Only once that I know of did Bertier visit the home of a private party. Madame Sorigny, an elderly lady had fallen on hard times and was selling off of her possessions. Alain sensed there might be something in the house for him. As usual, his instincts proved correct. Immediately upon entering the lady’s apartment, he caught sight of a rare Galle vase. While nothing else interested him, he spent over an hour inquiring about the rest of the collection. Finally, he asked Madame Sorigny how much she wanted for the vase.

“I could never part with that,” the lady replied. “It has too much sentimental value.”

Bertier was not put off. He knew he would have to take his time. Once more he went through the entire collection. Time and again he fingered an object with deliberate care. Only when he felt the proper moment had arrived did he return his attention to the Galle vase.

“You know, Madame,” he said, “I can understand your feelings. While this vase has no commercial value, it is rather pretty.”

Now, as though obeying the instructions of a theatrical director, he picked up the vase and examined it closely.

“The reason I am interested,” he said, “is that this vase belongs to a set of four. I happen to own the other three.”

“Really?” said Madame Sorigny.

“Don’t you think it is a shame for the vases not to be together?”

“Well,” stammered the lady, “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“It is a set, Madame. A set should not be separated.”

“It does seem a bit sad.”

“Perhaps,” said Alain, “you would like to purchase the other three?”

“Dear me, I am in no position to be buying antiques.”

“For the sake of the set I will sell them to you cheaply.”

“I am afraid that is out of the question.”

“Then allow me to buy yours.”

The woman hesitated. Alain sensed she was weakening. As irritating as it was, he would have to remain a while longer.

“Really, I do not want to sell this vase,” Madame Sorigny repeated.

“Listen,” Alain insisted. “I’m a little crazy. Cite me an absolutely impossible price. That was I can leave here in peace.”

“Oh dear,” said the lady. “I would rather not.”

“Go on. Mention some ridiculous price.”

“Well,” said Madame Sorigny, “suppose I were to say twenty-five thousand francs?”

Alain’s mouth dropped open. He fell to his knees. Madame Sorigny could see the poor fellow was white as a sheet.

“Madame,” he said, gulping for air, “that is more than the entire set is worth.”

“Well,” said Madame Sorigny, smiling. “You said I should quote a ridiculous price.”

Alain spent a full half-hour explaining to the lady the necessity of reuniting the set. By now nearly three hours had elapsed. The art dealer paced the floor. He pulled at his hair. He emitted pitiful noises. He grew angry, then contrite. Again and again he told Madame Sorigny how outrageous her proposal was. Tears welled in his eyes. Several times he grabbed his hat and approached the front door. At last, sensing the psychological moment had arrived, Le Grand Bertier took a large wad of bills from his pocket and placed twenty-five thousand francs on the dining room table. As if in a trance, he clutched the Galle vase against his heart.

“You have made a complete fool out of me, Madame,” he said.

Once outside, Alain hurried to his boutique. Breathing rapidly, he did not bother to sit down. He threw off his coat and picked up the telephone.

“It’s Bertier,” he said. “Come to Paris tomorrow. I have the vase you have been looking for.”

The following afternoon a gentleman arrived from Zurich. Attached to his wrist by handcuffs was a leather case containing 120,000 Swiss Francs. For a single day’s work in October 1969 Alain Bertier had earned $26,000, nearly twice the average Frenchman’s annual salary at the time. Oh Boy, were we about to have fun at poker!

NERVES, FORM AND ATTITUDE

2006-09-04T15:19:00.000-04:00

About four decades ago, Bobby Fischer, considered by many to be the world’s greatest chess player (and one of its preeminent nuts), said the moment he liked best was when he could sense his opponent’s nerves begin to shatter to pieces. Never known as Mr. Nice Guy, Bobby’s attitude, if not particularly sympathetic, remains understandable. Except, perhaps to poker players. A player who cracks up at a poker table is sure to elicit a different response. Considerate and kind, are poker players not a breed apart? Where others tend to enjoy rubbing an opponent’s face in the mud, we, noble warriors that we are, take no pleasure in another’s agony. Good heavens, if a player goes under, how are we going to squeeze money out of him in the future?

Let's skip back a few nights ago to a $2-$5 No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em game at the MGM Grand. Unable to win a hand, a gentleman in his late forties insisted on pressing his misfortune rather than accepting a losing day and going home. With unpropitious timing and no thought of defense, he continued to raise pots with small, wired pairs or suited connectors only to find a player with a larger pair or a better combination invariably behind him. Unhappily, he was equally inept at controlling his emotions. Moaning and groaning, he kept cursing under his breath and pounding his fists on the table. Other than occasionally flashing telltale glances at one another, we others tried to maintain neutral expressions on our faces. None of us, I assure you, felt very comfortable. Finally, a gentleman in his sixties holding AD-4D that beat the complainer's KS-QC, dared respond to the loser’s agonizing.

“Of course I was lucky,” said the victor. “Isn’t that in the nature of the game?”

“What the hell does an ace and a four have to do with nature?” the defeated man replied, fishing into his pocket for additional funds.

“Texas Hold ‘Em,” said the sexagenarian, “is a game where one wins with an unsuited eight-three and looses with wired aces. The best thing a player can do is respect his form.”

“By that thinking, a loser would never get his money back.”

“Those who learn to run away, live to fight another day,” said a young fellow with a decidedly British accent. Amazing how many Englishmen visit Las Vegas!

“Great,” said Monsieur Angst, signaling for more chips. “Now, how about everybody shutting up?”

Playing in such an ambience is really not much fun. Better still, since I was

– am - the sexagenarian in question I figured I might as well go home with a handsome profit. While this might seem contradictory to my pronouncement about playing one’s form, it really is not. I had only won a couple of small hands all evening. Playing defensively is what kept me out of trouble. True form comes when you win pot after pot with your cards doing all the work. Offering my respects to the table, I gathered my winnings and began the walk to the cashier’s window.

“It’s good to see that bastard leave,” I overheard the aggravated gentleman remark. “Here he's played three hands all evening, and one of them beat the pants off me.”

WHEN PROBITY BECOMES A VICE

2006-08-31T01:46:00.000-04:00

Picture this: George Washington’s mother takes her son aside shortly after he confessed to his father that it was he who chopped down the cherry tree.

“Very good, young man,” she says. "Probity is a wonderful thing. Just don’t let it become a vice.”

“What,” you ask? How can probity become a vice? I’ll tell you how, because I can think of no better way of defining an incident that occurred yesterday at a $2-$5 No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em game. Sitting with wired kings, it was my turn to bet when a young fellow suddenly stopped the action.

“Hold on," he said. "I’m not sure, I could be wrong, but I think I saw a flashed card.”

“Come again,” said the dealer.

“I caught a glimpse of the first card you dealt to the lady. At least I think I did. I’m not 100% certain. Still, I’d like everyone here to know I am honest.”

Oh, man, don’t try that nonsense on me. You might have seen it, then again you might not have. You’re not sure, you couldn’t quite make it out, but there was this flashed card and you kind of perceived something, and . . . hey, look here, everybody, am I not one hell of a person? Because all you are doing is vaunting yourself! What else do you think this proclamation of honesty is? Here, during a total non-incident, you decide to come out crying STOP EVERYTHING when, as it turned out, you had no intention of following the hand in the first place. Reminds me of the teacher’s pet who’s got to attract attention to himself, and what better way than appearing honest at the same time, sort of like killing two birds with one stone, n’est-ce pas?

No fooling, the fellow refused to stop. He simply had to repeat how moral he was even though he remained uncertain whether or not he had seen a card. Lord protect me from people who go out of their way to assert their honesty, I can take care of the dishonest ones by myself. Worse still, this went on for over a minute. Finally the dealer called a floor director over. Happily, since the gentleman on my immediate right had followed the $5 big blind it was decided to play the hand out irrespective of the young voyeur’s confusion.

By now, with the rhythm of the hand completely broken, I figured my best move was to follow. I hate to follow with wired kings. It’s a bloody trap. What do you do if an ace shows up? Suppose someone limps in with a nine and a six and those two cards appear on the flop?

As indicated, Mr. Probity mucked his hand when the bet came to him. On his left, a bearded young man (75% to 90% of today’s players seem to be males under thirty) raised to $40. The lady whose card was supposedly exposed called, as did the gentleman on my right. That was enough for me. Going all-in, I pushed $350 into the pot. That scared everybody out except the initial raiser who only had $30 remaining. A pair of treys and a five were flopped, followed by a nine on the turn and a ten on the river. Examining my kings, the bearded youngster threw his cards into the muck.

“It’s a good thing you went all-in,” said a player a couple of seats to my left. “I would have called forty dollars with my suited ace-three.”

That’s the trouble with probity. Too much of it can have the opposite effect to what one desires. I recall an afternoon in Paris when the extremely literal-minded head of our Texas Hold ‘Em game was making the final accounts of the day. Our biggest sucker, a wealthy banker announced his losses at 30,050 francs ($6,010). After writing a check for 30,000 francs, he was asked by our scrupulous director for the missing ten bucks.

“Do you really want them?” said the banker. “Why not ask for my underpants too? Well, here they are! The fifty francs, I mean. But don’t expect me to play here again.”

MINI TOURNAMENTS

2006-08-28T03:07:00.000-04:00

After a string of tough losses at Texas Hold ‘Em, I promised to stay away from casinos for at least a week. What do you know? I almost made it. Actually, I believe I would have pulled it off if my son hadn’t come to town. Accepting the dictum that family loyalty should prevail over a promise made under duress, I reluctantly (well, almost) acceded to my offspring’s desire to participate in a tournament. What’s that, you say? Didn’t the World Series of Poker Tournament end a little while ago? Yes, it did, but that has nothing to do with the scores of mini tournaments held weekly in Las Vegas. So if you are looking for tournament action, go to Anthony Curtis’s excellent web site (www.lasvegasadvisor.com) and you will not only learn where to find poker tournaments any time of day (or night), but just about everything else going on in this Valley of Transgression.

Since I was paying for both son and self, I sought out a relatively inexpensive locale. That’s right, I wanted to limit our losses. Can you think of a better reason for participating in tournaments rather than playing in cash games? The Aladdin, with its $60 one-time buy-in fit the bill perfectly, and other than racing from a parking lot half way to Death Valley, we found both the casino and its adjoining Desert Passage much to our liking.

Oh the ignominy of it all! While son Alexander steadily progressed, Papa was immediately eliminated. Of the forty-eight players present, I alone was first to bow out. Like the Old Grey Mare, this Paris Poker Pro is not what he used to be! Bad luck, you ask? That's not it. Dealt 5D-6D on the third hand, I went all-in on a flop of

JS-7H-4H. How was I supposed to know someone was holding AH-JH? Okay, it was a stupid bet (for a tournament, less so for a cash game), but perhaps I was influenced by an empty seat at the $1-$2 No Limit game taking place behind me.

Dammit all, I had to wait two and a half hours before Alex was finally eliminated in seventh position, one player out of the money. Oh well, I must admit my impatience was assuaged by a $280 victory.

Since sonny boy had such fun ( I wasn't complaining either), the following evening we returned to the Aladdin early enough to lose $100 at roulette before the poker tourney commenced. That’s Vegas for you. Sooner or later you are likely to get suckered into playing a table game with shameful odds against you.

Poor Alexander. He lasted nearly an hour until his pair of tens lost to a set of sixes. As for Papa, not this time! I’m telling you, I hit straights and flushes and paired-up as though I were the horniest client of the hottest dating service around. By the time we hit the final table there was no doubt who was chip leader. I even had the pleasure of eliminating a tiresome smart aleck who, after doubling the pot with big slick, went all-in when a king appeared on the flop. Staring at my wired aces, the look on his face was worth the entry fee.

“Why didn’t you raise my original bet?” he asked.

“I was hoping you 'd do my dirty work for me,” I said.

He threw his cards in the air, and uttered an unpleasant remark. That was the sole display of anger or petulance I encountered all evening. Everyone else acted in the manner of Phil Ivey or Doyle Brunson rather than like some other Phil or Mouthful Mike. Even the young man who came in second shook my hand and patted me on the back when my J-10 beat his A-J thanks to a ten on the river. From first eliminated on Wednesday evening to champion twenty-four hours later, I ask you, how can you not love this crazy game?

I gave half my $620 winnings to Alexander. Aren’t parents supposed to be suckers for their children? No big deal, that! I’ll be back tomorrow and the day after, and for all you know, if I win another tournament, maybe next year I’ll sign up for the World Series of Poker.

TOUGH GUY

2006-08-24T05:12:00.000-04:00

One afternoon a tall man with a dark complexion came into the bar where our afternoon poker games took place in Paris. Smartly dressed in a blue suit and red tie, his long brown hair ended in a ponytail. He had dark eyes and a small crooked mouth. A pair of elaborate mustaches curled from his upper lip to his cheekbones.

“You’re Bill the American, aren’t you?” he asked me.

I said I was.

“I’m looking for the photographer, Herve Simeon,” he said. “I’m Bertrand Gimont. Perhaps you have heard of me?”

I admitted I had. More than once his name had been bruited about.

“Are you expecting Simeon this afternoon?” he said.

“You can never tell with him.”

“The creep is trying to stiff me for 35,000 francs. That’s seven thousand of your U.S. dollars.”

“Wow,” I said. “When did he lose that?”

“Sunday. He lost a lot more. He says he’ll pay the others, but not me.”

I did not like the way the man spoke out the side of his mouth, or his habit of sucking on his teeth. I guess he had seen too many gangster films.

“He’ll stiff you too,” he said. “Wait and see.”

“I doubt that. He feels comfortable with us.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just what I said.”

“So that’s his game, is it? He’s telling everyone I cheated him. ‘

“He never said that to me.”

Gimont nodded knowingly. I declined his offer for a cigarette.

“Maybe we can work something out,” he said.

“I can’t imagine what,” I said.

“If he wins in your game, you can put the money aside for me.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“All right,” he said, shrugging. “I’ll have to do it my way.”

Motioning with my head, I called to Madame Nicole. The damn fool had exposed the butt of a pistol. The bar owner looked at me with a strained expression. With thumb and forefinger I made the sign of a revolver.

“You,” she said sharply. “Out of here. There will be none of that in this bar.”

Nor would we poker players tolerate any criminality in our games. Gimont’s tough guy approach was a demonstration of how not to act when faced with a loser who refuses to pay. No surer way exists to alienate the local bourgeoisie. While the French might pretend to be attracted to gangsters, nobody wanted to find a genuine underworld character sitting at his table.

Many years later Gimont left Paris and settled in Guadeloupe. He purchased a second hand yacht that he scrubbed and painted until it looked like new. A Frenchman who remained in touch with him told me the man lived for his boat. He learned where fish were running and how to pick up an occasional charter. He and his boat were always available for young ladies hoping to find a Caribbean adventure. Neither poker nor money interested him any longer. When not at sea, he was content to spend his time polishing and repairing his prized possession.

One morning, after an extended evening of partying, Gimont awoke to find his boat was not in its berth. In a state of shock, he tried to recall if he had made an arrangement with another skipper. Neither the harbormaster nor any of his fellow yachtsmen had any idea where the boat could be. There was no sign that a line had been cut, and no witness to foul play. For all anybody knew, Bertrand Gimont’s boat had disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle.

Gimont spent the following weeks scouring the island. Not a single harbor escaped his scrutiny. On foot or by sea, he examined ever hidden inlet and every exposed or unexposed cove. After a month of searching he returned home empty handed. Not only had he not found the boat, not a soul knew a thing about it.

With nowhere to sleep, Gimont took a room in a seedy hotel near the port. Every day he walked along the quays in search of his missing boat. The police were no help. After a while they abandoned their investigation. On a rainy evening, three months to the day following his loss, Bertrand Gimont put a revolver to his head and squeezed the trigger.

Although all this occurred many years ago, I have often wondered whether or not he used the same pistol he had shown me that afternoon in Madame Nicole’s poker Bar.

MORE BAD BEATS

2006-08-21T02:25:00.000-04:00

Crybaby Freddie, a Parisian dealer in military antiques used to say the thing he feared most at poker was a good hand. “Please, God please,” he would say aloud, “don’t give me good cards.”

“How do you expect to win otherwise?” we would often asked him

“I am not here to win. I am here to have a good time.”

That was probably true. In Freddie’s case having a good time meant moaning, groaning and complaining that he was the unluckiest person who ever existed, which was more or less Charles De Gaulle’s description of his countrymen. ("Ca rogne, ca grogne, ca rouspette.")

It’s taken me an awful long time to understand Old Freddie, but recently I’ve been getting the point. Up the Ole Kazoo, as they say!

In six consecutive games I have suffered more bad beats than I care to count. Yes, yes, I am quite aware that it is all part of the game, and didn’t someone say, “when sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions?”

Worse still, I find myself beginning to enjoy sharing my woes with anyone who will lend an ear. Good Lord! Have all those years in Paris turned me into a Frenchman?

So if you allow me to reveal one or two, I promise not to divulge them all.

As the big blind I am dealt 8-9. The flop is two nines and an eight. Naturally, I check. So does everyone else. The turn is a king. I bet double the size of the pot and am called. The river is another king. Admittedly, the hand did not cost me too much, but I assure you it was not a great morale booster either. Far more expensive was when I followed a raise holding 6H-8H. Why make such a call, you might ask? Well the raise came from the player on my immediate right and was followed by three others. I guess it’s called playing the money. The flop was 6D-6C-4D. In first position a player bet $50. I called. Now the original raiser went all-in with no small bet. He must have been sitting on $700, the same amount as the $50 bettor who promptly folded. While aware that the all-in gentleman might be holding two fours, I strongly sensed a diamond draw and called with my remaining $160. Simultaneous to his displaying the KD-10D, the dealer turned over first the ace and then the deuce of diamonds. Coming, going, upside down or otherwise, there was no way the man was going to miss his flush. Okay, only one more: I raised the big blind from $5 to $45 with wired kings. An elderly gentleman followed. The flop was 9S-5H-3C. I went all-in for $110. My opponent looked at his watch and announced: “I really should be going home. I know it’s a stupid call, but at least it will get me out of here, and you look like a pretty nice guy.” So he puts his remaining chips in the pot, about a hundred bucks, stands up and turns over the 5S-4C. How the hell could the dummy follow a $40 raise head-to-head with those two cards? Oh, that’s right, his wife was waiting for him.

What’s the difference how he beat me? The turn of a four, a five or a back door straight, it all comes out to the same thing. While you’re at it, don’t do me any favors, Mister. If you want to go home, do so, but without explaining that you are contributing to my welfare because you are in a rush!

Crybaby Freddie, wherever you are: Je vous comprend. For a week or two I shall stop playing this stupid game. Then, when I return, I will raise my eyes to the heavens and ask our Creator- or perhaps the poker gods - to refrain from giving me good cards. Meanwhile, I hope to have a swell time telling everyone all about the bad beats I have encountered.

INSOUCIANCE

2006-08-17T03:46:00.000-04:00

For a long while our afternoon draw poker game in Paris was going nowhere. Day after day the same participants showed up with the attitude of passing time rather than enjoying the challenge of creative poker. Of course that was better than nothing at all, but I suspected if things didn’t pick up the game would slowly expire. Oh well, thanks to Alain Bertier, Grandpa Pepe, and Roland the Corsican I was still making a living.

The game became duller still when our sole female player, Jacqueline Sels quit drinking. When fortified by a few shots of whiskey, Jacqueline’s raucous stories and sarcastic barbs were a source of constant amusement. Now, she said, she was going to stick to water. At first, I thought it was drinking that caused her to quit Jerry and Carla Pritkin’s night game. Resisting alcohol is more difficult in the wee hours of morning than it is in the late afternoon. Then it came out that drinking had nothing to do with her decision. She was angry with a player who was a permanent fixture at the Pritkin’s game. Dr. Louis Mellot, it seemed, was fooling around with Eva, Jacqueline’s eighteen-year old daughter.

“Two pairs,” says Crybaby Freddie. Although he swears he is going to stop playing he is almost always the first to arrive at Madame Nicole’s café.

“How high,” says Roland?

“You stupid Americans,” says Old Man Pepe. “You finally had a half decent president and what did you do but kick him out?”

“Tens up,” says Freddie.

Roland throws his cards away. “Better than nines over fours.”

“You see,” Bertier says to Freddie. “You don’t lose all your close hands.”

“Didn’t we go through all that a long time ago?” I say to Pepe.

“The old man is right,” says the dentist, Arthur Sisse. “Nixon was a great man.”

“Who cares about politics?” says Jacqueline. “When am I going to find a new man?”

“Oh mother, please!” says Florence, Jacqueline’s younger daughter. From time to time Jacqueline brings the sixteen-year old girl along as a spectator.

“Whose deal is it?” asks Claude Stahly, the other dentist at the table.

“Methinks it is the lady’s,” says English professor Pierre Pegon.

In first position I open a hand with three aces. Sandbagging is not my specialty. Suddenly my eyes fall on Bertier. What the hell is he doing? In an effort to appear nonchalant, the art dealer keeps gazing at the ceiling. With a coy smile he drops his cards on the table. It is unlike him to feign indifference when he is not holding a good hand.

Pepe, Sisse and Roland fold. Crybaby Freddy comes in timidly. Stahly lets out a farting sound to let us know he is not playing the hand. That’s the extent of his humor. I look over at Pegon. Seated next to Bertier, he is squirming in his chair. From my vantage point at the end of the table I see why the teacher is uncomfortable. Behind them, Florence has stretched out her legs. Slowly, Alain Bertier has dropped a hand and is caressing the teenager’s calves.

Jacqueline is drinking directly from a Perrier bottle. Shaking a finger, she indicates that she is folding. Fortunately, her view of Florence is blocked. Unable to come to terms with Louis Mellot wooing her older daughter, imagine what she would think about Bertier touching her baby!

“Not only did he open the door to China,” says Pepe, “he brought about détente with the Russians.”

“Two cards,” I say. “Nixon was the only one who could pull those things off. You forget: for twenty-five years he led the opposition against them.”

“One card,” says Freddie.

Holy cow! I catch a fourth ace. Will you look at that? Bertier’s hand has disappeared under Florence’s skirt. The damn fool had better watch himself. With Jacqueline on the wagon, she is apt to be more attentive to what is going on.

“You tell ‘em, Pepe,” says Pegon. “De Gaulle started to kick the Yanks out. It is up to us to finish the job.”

“We can begin right at this table,” says Claude Stahly.

Bertier pays no attention to their banter. His face is blissful. I tell you, one of these days the man is going to go too far.

“You damn idiots,” says Freddie. “Of all the times to talk about politics, you have to pick today. Here I’m holding four jacks and this American jerk doesn’t know it’s his turn to bet.”

“Four jacks?” I say. “I’ve got four aces.”

“You see, you see!” Freddie cries out. “Now will someone believe me?”

Bertier removes his hand away from Florence’s leg. He rubs his nose. Shifting in her seat, the young girl is looking directly at her mother.

“What is it, Cherie?” says Jacqueline.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“It can only happen to me,” moans Freddie.

“Quit your constant bawling,” says Sisse. “You haven’t given up a single chip when you should have lost your whole pile.”

“Who else can lose with four jacks?”

“We should talk about politics more often,” says Pepe. “It distracts the American.”

“That’s not why I missed my bet,” I say.

“Where has our friend Bertier gone off to?” says Jacqueline. “I have never seen him so quiet.”

Bertier attempts a weak smile. The deal comes to me. What the hell caused
Pepe to think of Nixon after all this time? That’s the French for you. Unfailingly, they remain loyal to the one American president forced out of office.

“Let’s try to play a little faster,” says Roland. “We all seem to be sleeping.”

He is right. We are moving at half our normal speed. As a group, we have been playing together so long we have become like an inbreeding family.

Florence stands up. Straightening her skirt, she moves away from the table.

“Cherie,” says her mother. “Bring me a glass of whiskey, will you? Just a small one to get rid of this funny taste in my mouth.” Jacqueline throws back her head and laughs. “Not too small, mind you,” she adds.

JAM SESSION

2006-08-14T02:54:00.000-04:00

An expression we used to employ in Paris regarding earning money at poker went like this: “you can’t make bread without jam.” By stretching the imagination, I guess confiture, the word for jam in French, does sound a bit like the word, conjuncture. Which was just another example of the locals trying to be clever.

In French or English, conjuncture indicates a combination of events or circumstances that precipitates a critical state of affairs. Meaning you can have fabulous cards from noon to midnight and still only make peanuts. If your opponents all have busted hands, whose going to pay to see those quads, boats, etc?

Surely most of us can remember an occasion in which the pair we had in hand was duplicated on the board. Naturally we checked again and again, hoping that somebody would make a flush or full house and bet into our strength. Instead, what usually happened was we picked up naught but the blinds. C’est la vie. Without the proper jam you are not going to accumulate chips.

Two nights ago at a $1-$2 No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em game at the MGM I saw a player corner the market on jam, jelly and conjuncture. From the deal of the cards to the turn and the river, everything fell in place for him. Well, almost everything: he could have been playing at a higher stakes table.

Don’t ask me why nobody raised before the flop. Since the session was exceedingly defensive, I guess everyone was waiting for someone else to make the initial move. That way, I was able to limp in with an unsuited king-ten. Here’s what six of the other nine players were holding: two queens, two jacks, two nines, two eights, A-KH and 7-6S. The flop turned over, 5D, 8C, 9H. Happily for Mister 7-6S the man with a set of eights was on the button. Checked around to him, we finally saw some action. And plenty at that! Before you could say: “Je pense, donc je suis” four players with substantial piles had gone all in. With a measly $26 in front of me I too put the rest of my chips in the pot. Now if only a jack and queen would turn over, I would have the nut straight!

Nothing of the sort happened. By turning over the deuce of diamonds and the trey of hearts, the dealer once again confirmed that only one person per hand is apt to get lucky. In this case it was a middle-aged gentleman with thick eyeglasses and a pencil thin mustache. I don’t know how much he raked in, but for that table it was plenty. Standing up to leave, I had to pass behind his position.

“Yes, Siree,” I heard him remark to the player on his left. “I sure played that hand like a pro.”

LOGIC AND WHATEVER

2006-08-10T03:38:00.000-04:00

While sometimes it seems there are countless ways to rake in a pot, we usually win (1) when our cards hold up (2) we pull off a bluff (3) we pay an opponent’s bluff. Of course the first is the most common. Luck, combined with good judgment and skillful betting will maximize our gains, and the psychological effect of having many – or few – chips on the table is likely to deter or stimulate an opponent’s action. Winning by bluffing is less facile. Besides having to choose the right moment, we have to know the amount to risk to scare off an opponent. Successfully paying another player's bluff entails either intuition or the ability to read the person correctly. Don’t get down on yourself if you sense a bluff and are mistaken. Receiving information for future play might well compensate a short-term error. With that acknowledged, allow me to give you an example of a style of play I encountered yesterday. The only way I can come close to figuring it out is by repeating P.T. Barnum’s oft quoted dictum.

Mrs. Sweet (she had a friendly face and a pleasant smile) and I arrived at the Bellagio simultaneously. Seated at the $2-$5 No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em table, the lady opted to buy in at the maximum $500, while I went the other way, requesting $200 worth of chips. Rather than argue which tactic is more advantageous - both swords have a double edge – allow me to remind you that when entering a game already in progress, you are likely to encounter one or more players sitting with double, triple or quadruple the maximum buy-in permitted. In that case, wouldn’t you agree that plunking down five bills reduces the leverage it offers when starting up a new game? Particularly yesterday when a fellow named Burt was sitting on a pile worth around $5,000.

Mrs. S- got lucky. On the button holding pocket aces, the blinds were raised again and again. The good lady had little to do but push in her chips before raking in a thousand five hundred dollars.

‘It should happen to me,’ I thought, as I imagine did everyone else. (It has, but so infrequently, the point becomes moot. Whoever said that eventually luck is distributed equally has a lot of observing to do – both at poker and in the world outside.)

A few moments later, Moneybags Burt bumped the $5 big blind up to $50. Admittedly, he was playing rather large, but in a calculated way. Other than a twenty-dollar publicity stunt he had yet to throw a dime away. Personally, unless I was loaded, I wanted nothing to do with him. Mrs. Sweet equaled Burt’s bet. The flop came over Q-9-2 of three different suits.

“Check,” said Burt.

“Fifty,” said Mrs. S-. Burt followed after a slight hesitation.

A second queen appeared on the turn.

“A hundred,” said Burt.

“All-in,” said the lady.

“Wow!” said Burt. “I doubt if you have a boat, Ma’am. You’d sucker me in little by little if you did. So I’m going to pay you with my Ace-Queen of spades.”

He was right. She had the king of hearts and the queen of clubs. The river was a six. Burt got richer while the nice lady went into her pocketbook for another five bills.

A lot happened in the next half hour, but nothing that made much difference to me. Mrs. Sweet won another hand, as did Burt. When her turn to be big blind arrived, I noticed him sit up in his seat and move a hand onto a stack of $100 chips. On the lady’s right, the small blind was nodding his head to the rhythm of an I-Pod. There sure are a lot of music lovers present at contemporary poker games.

“Ten bucks,” said Burt when the bet came to him. The smile on his face was almost angelic.

Of course she called. The flop came up 9-9-4. Both players checked. The turn was a queen. Burt bet $10. Mrs. Sweet called. The river was another four. Grinning foolishly, Burt went all-in. Mrs. S- hesitated. Not for all the tequila in Mexico would I have paid him holding anything other than two fours, two nines or two queens.

The lady was clearly confused. Continuing to examine her cards, she shook her head from side to side. Brother, what could she be thinking? Did she really believe Burt was risking 800 bucks to pick up a handful of chips on a half ass bluff?

She paid with a four. Burt turned over Q-9 suited. In about forty-five minutes the lady had lost $1,000 with situations that would have seen a normal player ahead by a similar amount. Okay, that wasn’t my problem. Losing thirty dollars, I was hoping to win my first hand. But a thought kept turning over in my mind. While we read a lot of books and articles on how to play winning poker, is there anything out there that might help us grasp elementary logic?

AT THE RIO

2006-08-07T01:13:00.000-04:00

It’s 11:00 AM on a Friday morning at the Rio. Nine of us are about to commence a $2-$5 No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em cash game. Behind us, janitors, dealers and pit bosses are setting up tables for the $10,000 N.L. tournament, first prize, twelve million dollars. About eleven hundred of the original 8,700 contestants remain. Security personnel and television crews are scrambling all over the place. They have an hour to get everything ready. Since no spectators will be allowed this morning, the room seems almost vacant. Maybe that’s why it is so damn cold. The air conditioning must be regulated for several thousand bodies.

Compared to the main event our table is small potatoes. That makes me smallest of all. My eight opponents have bought in between $300 and $500 apiece. Not me, partner. After 30 years of playing the game professionally in Paris, I know the advantage of risking as little as possible. At this table, the minimum stake is $100. That’s enough. If the poker gods want to smile on you they will do so no matter how much your initial stake.

It takes an hour before I am obliged to buy-in again. Other than losing a $20 raise with a pair of sevens, I didn’t play a hand. By now the place is buzzing with activity. Over the PA system a detached voice instructs the dealers to shuffle up and deal. Unimaginable, I am thinking. How can a person win $12,000,000 at a poker game, even one that lasts two weeks? Once I won $18,000 in a marathon game in Neuilly, but all I collected was half that amount.

I bust out with a pair of kings. A fat man with suited ace-king hits an ace on the river. The river, the river, it’s always the river! Pumping a fist in the air, the bastard looks as though he is congratulating himself for skillful play.

Back in the pocket I go for another $100. No way am I going to take more. Since a $500 buy-in wouldn’t have helped me so far, I see no reason to change tactics. A loud roar erupts from the tournament section. I guess some celebrity player just demonstrated his ability by hitting a straight or flush.

I go all-in with Ace-King of hearts. Fatty follows with Queen-six of clubs. A straight to the five – what’s called a bicycle or a wheel at lowball – appears on the board. The fat man and I split the pot. At the back of the room someone emits a deep moan. I know how you feel, pal, believe me I do.

I limp in with king-ten of spades. Fatso raises $10. You got it: from five bucks he brings the hand up to fifteen dollars. A young fellow with a thousand bucks in front of him and I are the only followers. Either the other players have nothing or they are distracted by the action a few yards away.

It is still like Antarctica here. Some wise guy must have upped the A/C another couple of notches. Members of the TV crew are wearing sweaters. I’m telling you, there are more summertime colds in Las Vegas than any other place in the world. I wonder if a collective lawsuit against the casinos . . . Forget it, nobody ever forced a player inside.

A king, a ten and a five appear on the flop. Two of them are hearts. I go all-in. Fatty too pushes his whole pile into the pot, an amount equal to what the young player has in front of him. With action like that I can only assume he has flopped a set. If it’s kings I am drawing dead. The young fellow scratches his head but folds. The fat man turns over two small hearts. What a ridiculous bet! Suppose the young guy was holding two kings or the ace second of hearts? Hey, wait a minute! Maybe the three hundred pound man isn’t so stupid after all. If that were the case, wouldn’t the young fellow have come back at his two-bit raise?

Naturally a heart appears on the river. I’ve had enough. I can’t hit against them, but they sure know how to hit against me. Anyway, I am glad to exit this igloo. Walking out the door, I am jostled by a tall, well-dressed gentleman who apparently has been eliminated from the tournament. He is talking to a woman next to him. It is probably his wife, though in France it would be assumed she was his mistress.

“Forget what I told you yesterday,” he says. “This game is ninety-nine per cent luck.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” I say to him, before quickly walking away.

TALES AND TELLS

2006-08-03T08:26:00.000-04:00

It’s a mistake to think all Parisian art dealers are crooks. One or two honest dealers can be found if you make an effort. At our poker table Freddie-the-Weeper was lily white, or blanc-bleu as they say in French. That’s why, he claims, he never got rich. Not that Freddie’s done poorly. The crybaby owns a large apartment on the Left Bank and a country home in the Dordogne. Pretty good for a peddler of military articles and historic objects.

Little Pete (Petit Pierrot) is on the other side of the fence. He might do poorly at cards, but he makes a good living selling art. Oh, the naughty things one learns at Parisian poker tables. Pete himself liked to brag about his misconduct. I’m telling you, if Messieurs Luciano, Costello and Lansky had known what was going on in fancy Parisian galleries, they would have forsaken guns and gangs.

Little Pete measures five foot three. Unfortunately, he’s only an occasional player. Mainly, he comes to touch base with our superstar, Alain Bertier, one of the world’s leading dealers in Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Rumor has it Alain began his career as a runner for a homosexual dealer on the Right Bank. With no compunctions about lending his body to get ahead (pun unintended), our boy rose up the ladder very quickly. Sex aside, Bertier would have been successful in whatever he did. Intelligent and ambitious, he has a will of iron. I don’t know what attracts him to Pierrot, unless he sees a version of his younger self.

I’ll say one thing about Little Pete: he is not afraid to bluff. When he asks for a single card at draw, he’s likely to come out betting. Then it’s my job to figure out what he’s got. Happily, Pete makes it easy for me. His clients might not be able to tell the genuine goods from the fakes, but at poker he’s as easy to read as the Happy New Year sign on top of the Eiffel Tower. All one has to do is make him talk. If Pierrot opens his mouth, he’s bluffing; if he clams up, he’s hit his hand. Naturally there is a method in how one goes about this. In my case, I say: “my time to pay.” Now if Pete says: “take all the time you want,” the last thing in the world I’m going to do is pay him right away. Don’t ever let an opponent know you’ve figured out one of his tells. So I’ll toss a coin or count my fingers or throw in my chips disgustedly, so as to give the impression I don’t know what I am doing. That usually evokes Pierrot to say something equivalent to: “hell’s bells, I can’t beat this bastard in poker or in flipping coins.” But please, do not feel sorry for the little man. He himself cannot count how many times he has sold Rodin’s statue, “The Kiss.” Surely, it’s in the hundreds.

Francois-Auguste-Rene Rodin authorized seven versions of his exquisite bronze before breaking the mold from which the statue was cast. So where did all those extra copies come from? That’s hardly the point. If given a chance, most any dealer would do what Little Pete does. What sets Pierrot apart is not his dishonesty but the fact that he is a member of a committee appointed by the French Ministry of Culture whose purpose is to protect French art and artists from fraud and deceit. They might just as well have appointed Jack-the-Ripper chief of police.

In both the world of art and the world of poker, Pierrot is a relative minnow. Wait till you see Bertier. Now there is a great white shark, and subtle as well! Although Alain maintains a gallery next door to the café where we play poker, most of his business is conducted from his home. The boutique is a front. Madame Bertier, Claire to her friends, tends shop. Not only does that allow her to keep an eye on her husband, it helps keep the tax people at bay. A compulsive buyer, Alain has stocked his emporium from floor to ceiling with bronzes, furniture, glassware and anything else created between 1890 and 1935. I don’t know how many times he has sold The Kiss, probably, never. Rodin is not one of his favorites. Didn’t I tell you he was subtle? Alain tends to steer clear of great names. No Manets, Monets or Gauguins for him. But don’t for a minute think that leaves him out of the counterfeit game. Au contraire, he and a couple of other dealers have sold ten times as many marble and bronze statuettes of the Romanian born sculptor Demetre Chiparus than the master molded and cast on his own.

Residing for many years in Paris, Chiparus produced about 2,500 statues in the 1920s and 1930s. So make your count. At roughly $4,000 apiece, the trio of French counterfeiters have raked in – you’ve got it - $100,000,000 from a relatively unknown artist.

At poker, Bertier has nearly as many tells as false Chiparuses. Foremost is the sound of his voice. Brother, when he drops his voice an octave you had better head for the hills. The man is loaded, and everybody knows it, even Claude Stahly the dentist whose brain measures half the size of half a pea.

Bertier prides himself on being the trickiest fellow in town. He cannot understand why someone as clever as he is consistently loses at poker. He loses because he has little patience, no discipline, lacks money management and displays his tells as clear as a flock of blackbirds in a snowfield. Here’s an example:

Alain draws a card. Stahly takes two. For sure, Claude has three of a kind. He could never imagine drawing one or standing pat. A rock tight player, the dentist raised before the draw. No way would he do so on the come. Bertier is probably drawing to a straight or a flush. Like most of the locals, he wouldn’t dream of folding if there were a chance he could catch a card to complete his hand. I’m telling you, these Frenchmen are money in the bank.

“Parole,” says Bertier, glancing at his card. That means pass, or check. Oh my God, he sounds like he’s tuning up to sing basso in a Russian opera. What did he do, hit a straight flush?

Stahly has heard it. Maybe he’s not so stupid after all. He is taunting Bertier by waving his cards in the art dealer’s face.

“What’s that you said, Alain?” he asks.

Bertier does not reply. He is trying to work an expression of fear onto his face.

“If I heard you correctly,” says Stahly, “you said: ‘pass.’ ”

Back then we played that passing made a hand inconclusive. Instead of turning over one’s cards and allowing the best hand to win, the money stayed in the pot. Any other player who wanted to join in would have to cough up a similar amount. That made for monster hands. It also made for collusion. At the end of a game, losing players would purposely pass so as to get a chance to get their money back in one fell swoop. Leave it to the French to come up with a variation of logic that would have Descartes turn over in his grave.

“You know what,” Stahly continues, “I’m going to pass too.” He shows Bertier three aces before tossing his cards on the table.

Alain is shocked. The color drains from his face. He picks up his glass and throws it across the room. Madame Nicole who owns the place looks at the shattered glass before coming to our table.

“What’s this all about?” she asks. “If you cannot behave I will not let you play.”

“It’s Bertier,” says Henri the electrical equipment salesman.

Madame calms down. Bertier is her number one client. Dealers, collectors and art historians from all over the world come to see the great man.

“What’s wrong, Cheri?” Madame Nicole asks Alain.

“He saw my cards,” says Bertier, pointing to Stahly.

Stahly laughs. “How could I see your cards? I’m sitting opposite you.”

“No one has to see your cards,” says Henri. “Every time you open your mouth you give yourself away.”

Bertier exhales. He knows Stahly is not a cheater. Henri’s words are puzzling him. Refusing to reveal his cards, he buries them in the pile. Since none of us want to contribute to a monster hand, the two adversaries are obliged to split the pot. That’s the first time I’ve seen Henri refuse to enter into such a hand. He must be winning for a change. The damn fool should have kept his mouth shut. What’s he trying to do, let Bertier know we have caught on to his tells? For a moment I was afraid the art dealer might comprehend. Thank God that’s not the case. Bertier shrugs his shoulders and looks out the window. He asks for another drink and requests we get on with the game. I can breathe easy again. Nothing is more alien to Alain Bertier than introspection.

ILLUSIONS

2006-08-01T06:01:00.000-04:00

The trick is to keep things in proportion. Rather than discard a fantasy (“lose your dreams and you will lose your mind,” according to the lyrics of a 1960s Rolling Stones song) or allow reverie to dominate our every waking hour, can we not attempt a balance between what is practical and what is fantastic? Easy to say! Not so easy to accomplish.

Lest one think that Las Vegas is unique in offering smoke and mirrors, allow me to remind you of the many television programs featuring variations of poker. More than any other game, Texas Hold ‘Em has captured the hearts and minds of people throughout the country. As could be expected, nobody is more susceptible to the lure of playing poker for a living than young people.

So here I was last weekend on a visit to Albuquerque, New Mexico where I dropped into a Native American Casino nearly as plush as those on Las Vegas Boulevard. Besides slot machines, craps and blackjack, there were a number of tables offering No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em. Brother, it was no easy feat getting a seat. The list of potential players kept growing until the wait was more than an hour.

Finally seated at a $2-$5 no limit table, it did not take me long to remark that the quality of play in the heartland was definitely as good as that of any big time casino. I’m telling you those people knew how to bet and bluff, when to call and when to fold. Equally astonishing, other than a gentleman in his forties, none of the seven others at my table could have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three. Where the heck did they get their money? Unlike myself who bought in at the $200 minimum, these youngsters were all sitting with chips triple and quadruple the size of my pile. Two of them were young ladies, pretty at that, while two of the men were Native Americans, and another was of Chinese descent. That left a pair of callow country bumpkins who were clearly familiar with one another as well as with the different dealers, floor men and other players. That’s right, I soon learned, all of them came to the casino just about every evening.

Nobody wiggled his ears when I said I lived six hundred miles up the road in Las Vegas. (The only reason I noted the mileage was so that they did not confuse my Nevada hometown with Las Vegas, New Mexico.) If I thought the mention of Sin City was going to impress them, I had another thought coming.

“I get up there pretty often,” said one of the country boys.

“Really,” I said. “Where do you play?”

“Upstairs at the Bellagio is what I like best.”

For those who are unaware, the upstairs room at the Bellagio is to poker aficionados what Yankee Stadium is to a sandlot ballplayer. If one can single out any spot on the globe where an unknown can make a quick ton of money, Upstairs at the Bellagio has got to be the place. Of course you have to be exceedingly skillful, totally indifferent to the value of money and wildly lucky to stand a chance. But then, isn’t that what Las Vegas is all about?

“There are some damn good games at The Commerce Club near L.A.,” said his friend.

“I like high stakes games at The Wynn,” said one of the girls. “I’m moving to Las Vegas next month.

“We’re all moving to Vegas,” said one of the Native Americans. “Except for Harry,” he nodded at the Chinese lad. “He’s going to Macau.”

“No way,” said Harry. “I’d just as soon play at Foxwood.”

They all laughed before returning to the serious business at hand. I got lucky holding wired nines. A nine appeared on the flop accompanied by a pair of sevens. Harry was holding the ace-seven of hearts. Unperturbed by the dent I made in his chips he came back a few hands later raising on a flush draw. I went all-in with two pairs. Harry called. The club he was hoping to find turned up on the river. Wiped out, I left the table without saying a word.

Twenty minutes later I stopped for gas. Still upset by the hand I had lost, I hardly realized my tank was empty.

“So those kids are going to Las Vegas,” I thought to myself. “Poor bastards! Like countless others, all they are going to do is chase after phantoms."

As for me, I had a better idea. For a simple dollar I could buy a dream worth considerably more. With the powerball jackpot at the multi-state lotto up to $100,000,000, I went inside and bought ten tickets. You know what? Once I collect my winnings, I just might try my hand upstairs at The Bellagio.

ILLUSIONS

2006-08-01T05:49:00.000-04:00

“I get up there pretty often,” said one of the country boys.

“Really,” I said. “Where do you play?”

“Upstairs at the Bellagio is what I like best.”

“There are some damn good games at The Commerce Club near L.A.,” said his friend.

“I like high stakes games at The Wynn,” said one of the girls. “I’m moving to Las Vegas next month.

“We’re all moving to Vegas,” said one of the Native Americans. “Except for Harry,” he nodded at the Chinese lad. “He’s going to Macau.”

“No way,” said Harry. “I’d just as soon play at Foxwood.”

Twenty minutes later I stopped for gas. Still upset by the hand I had lost, I hardly realized my tank was empty.

“So those kids are going to Las Vegas,” I thought to myself. “Poor bastards! Like countless others, all they are going to do is chase after phantoms."

MARKETING

2006-07-31T02:26:00.000-04:00

For the past forty or fifty years, many of us have admired the marketing skills of wine distributors from the Beaujolais region of France. Every third Thursday in November, a handful of merchant/growers manages to capture the palates and wallets of wine drinkers throughout the globe. From Buenos Aires to Stockholm, Sydney to New York, Paris to Tokyo, pre-shipped cases of New Beaujolais are simultaneously opened on the stroke of midnight, Central European Time, giving to the awaiting throngs a taste of the undistinguished product of the gamay grape. What had once been little more than the pet wine of Lyon, (generally drank as an aperitif, or to accompanying a brunch-like meal called a machon) annually leaps to the forefront of world consciousness.

Other French products have followed suit. Most conspicuously, Perrier has done for water what some gooey syrup did for seltzer back in Nineteenth Century Atlanta. For a while it seemed impossible to enter a tavern anywhere between Manhattan and L.A. without catching sight of rows of tiny green bottles sitting atop bar counters and tables. Glasses of Perrier with lemon and ice replaced beer, bourbon and martinis as the drink of choice in a suddenly health conscious nation. Consumed year round rather than during a brief spell in autumn, the fizzy water opened the door to dozens of clones. Today, Americans from coast to coast enjoy not only French sparkling water but also the residue of spas and fountains from California, Colorado, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Germany, Brazil, Fiji and Fuji. Whereas a generation previously it was inconceivable for an American to pay for flat water in Paris, today no sophisticated Yankee diner would dream of ordering a carafe d’eau when an endless supply of Evian, Volvic and Contrexeville are available.

France aside, it is our own bottled water that dominates today’s American market. Even in the High Rockies, where water is cool and pure, bicyclists, hikers, skaters and pedestrians tote around plastic containers distributed by the same people who produce and bottle sweet sodas. What did you think? That the managers of Coke and Pepsi were caught in a time warp somewhere beneath the Champs-Elysees?

Another trend whose marketing brilliance cannot be overlooked is the promotion of an event rather than a product. You got it, Brother! Thanks to Online Casinos, Las Vegas Resorts, magazine and book publishers, poker has become an intrinsic part of the national psyche. Most of all, incessant television broadcasts have brought the game to a new level of international prominence. What a difference between today and the years (1969 – 1999) when I played the game professionally in Paris! Believe me, I had to come up with any number of cover stories in order to conceal that I was making a living at what was then considered a less than ethical profession. Well, it is not that way any longer. Today, thousands of young people are happy to acknowledge that it’s the poker business they want to get into. Why not? What would you rather do, play cards with your friends at the Bellagio or sift through papers in a solitary cubicle?

They are here in Las Vegas right now. Youngsters by the thousands have assembled to pursue the dream of a life style only a few will be able to attain. Indifferent to the odds against them, they have come to play in the $10,000 No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em Tournament that promises the winner both an emormous monetary prize, and the glory of a world championship. 8,500 strong, they are without exception, people who love the game of poker. While representatives of other age groups are certainly present, you can be sure that the vast core of this army is composed of people between twenty and thirty.

From now until tournament’s end, wherever one chooses to play will be teeming with young men and women from every corner of the earth. Since eight-five hundred people cannot compete simultaneously, and since many contestants will quickly be eliminated, the visitors head for any place in town with a poker room. The MGM is packed. The Wynn has an interminable waiting list. Not one seat is available at The Mirage, The Venetian or The Red Rock. Harrahs, The Palms, Caesar’s Palace and The Mandalay have rarely witnessed such business. At one table, I was told that six of ten players were contestants at the World Series. Not one of them was close to forty, and not one of them had paid the full entry price. I don’t know how many participants qualify each year by winning Online (or other) tournaments, but apparently they are plenty. Heck, why not, if you can get in without having to pay ten thousand bucks?

You know what? One of these days Americans might become fed up with Beaujolais Nouveau, and grow tired of Perrier. We might even return to the realization that besides being a hell of a lot cheaper, much tap water is as good as bottled water. Not that we should worry about the marketing industry. They will always come up with something new. If not, there will still be poker. That is one phenomenon that is not about to disappear. You can be sure that 8,499 of the 8,500 players in this year’s tournament will be joined by untold thousands of non-participants in hoping that next year will be OUR year. It has to happen. It’s human nature.

TRADITION (for Dr. P.A.)

2006-07-27T21:04:00.000-04:00

Holy Toledo, just look out there: Las Vegas is running amok! With the now traditional World Series of Poker underway, the city is teeming with poker freaks. Unlike the eponymous baseball championship, limited to clubs of a single continent, the Big Poker Show is open to anyone who can cough up an entry fee. And let me tell you, they are here by the thousands! Parked beside the pickup trucks of the local toothpick-chewing rednecks, the long and level limousines of gamblers from Aukland to Zimbabwe stretch faraway. Brother, if ever you thought the Tower of Babel was a rendezvous of confusion, wait till you see what's happening here. Would you believe that at one single nine-player table Japanese, Finnish, English, Spanish, Chinese, French and Hebrew were spoken?

That means plenty of my old poker-playing pals from Paris are present. Not only are they in town, they're loaded to the gills. I guess that's because the Euro is selling at a 25% premium over the dollar. In his first ten days, one fellow told me he had dropped thirty grand. Was he upset? Not in the least. Better to lose in Vegas, he said, than to drop a wad on a boring vacation on the French Riviera. Yeah, sure!

Driving along The Strip at night reminds me of trying to circumnavigate the Arc de Triomphe at six o'clock on a Friday afternoon. You're lucky if you can advance more than a car length every five minutes. On normally quiet weekday evenings, the valets of the MGM are refusing customers who are not staying at the hotel. A promenade through the Bellagio is about as easy as walking along Times Square on New Year's Eve. Not only is every poker seat in the house taken, the waiting list is slightly longer than the IRS's roll of delinquent tax payers. And that when it's 110 degrees outside and gasoline is selling at . . . well you know how much!

Of course it is the Rio that is stealing the show. In case you are unfamiliar with this year's World Series, that's where the action is. Rumor has it that owner Harrah's spent over $5,000,000 to build a special pavilion to house the forty-six-day long series of tournaments (June 26 - August 10). A floor manager told me there are 102 tables in all. That might be, but when, after an hour and a half, I finally procured a seat at a $2-$5 No Limit cash game, it was at table Number 184. Maybe he was talking about tournament tables exclusively.

The main event begins on July 28 ^th when cards will be dealt for the $10,000 No Limit Texas Hold 'Em tournament that the late Benny Binion inaugurated thirty-six years ago with a handful of players. This year promises 8,500 contestants. I bet Old Benny never imagined he'd see a hundredth that amount in a single tourney. While I am at it, I'll bet this year's winner, like those of the past few years, will be less than forty years old. I'm telling you, the physical stamina needed to play winning poker over a two-week period is akin to boxing for the heavyweight crown or riding with Lance through the mountains of France. Do you want to know something else? Mentally, it's equally as tough.

For those of us who live in town, the initial excitement of watching thousands of people cram into a gigantic airplane hangar wears off pretty quickly. Personally, I want to be able to get a seat at a game as soon as I walk into a place. Sure, it's swell seeing a lot of faces one recognizes from TV, but I know not one of them is about to put a penny in my pocket. Almost every dealer will tell you the same. Apparently, the rich and famous among poker celebrities are as stingy as the rich and famous in any other field of endeavor. It's something of a tradition. As a result, many of the local dealers refuse to participate. Can't say I blame them. In this heat, distributing cards must be almost as tiring as playing them. Makes you wonder why Harrah's doesn't hold the event in April or October? Another tradition, I guess. And why not move the tournament around every year? To Reno, Atlantic City, Monte Carlo and Macau. Make it a genuine World Series. Well, maybe that's going a bit far. After all, tradition is sorely limited in Las Vegas as it is, wouldn't you say?

ILLUSIONS

2006-07-24T22:04:00.000-04:00

One way or another, it seems that we are constantly reminded that man cannot live without illusions. From the time of ancient myths and medieval tales, philosophers, minstrels and teachers have let us know that dreaming is every bit as important as food or drink. Even Elvis crooned: "you can burn my house, you can steal my car, you can drink my liquor from that old fruit jar, but don't you step on my blue suede shoes." I guess if a little footwear could lend a feeling of grandeur it is only normal that the resorts lining The Las Vegas Strip arouse extraordinary images of what might be.

The trick is to keep things in proportion. Rather than discard a fantasy ("lose your dreams and you will lose your mind," according to the lyrics of a 1960s Rolling Stones song) or allow reverie to dominate our every waking hour, can we not attempt a balance between what is practical and what is fantastic? Easy to say! Not so easy to accomplish.

Lest one think that Las Vegas is unique in offering smoke and mirrors, allow me to remind you of the many television programs featuring variations of poker. More than any other game, Texas Hold 'Em has captured the hearts and minds of people throughout the country. As could be expected, nobody is more susceptible to the lure of playing poker for a living than young people.

So here I was last weekend on a visit to Albuquerque, New Mexico where I dropped into a Native American Casino nearly as plush as those on Las Vegas Boulevard. Besides slot machines, craps and blackjack, there were a number of tables offering No Limit Texas Hold 'Em. Brother, it was no easy feat getting a seat. The list of potential players kept growing until the wait was more than an hour.

Finally seated at a $2-$5 no limit table, it did not take me long to remark that the quality of play in the heartland was definitely as good as that of any big time casino. I'm telling you those people knew how to bet and bluff, when to call and when to fold. Equally astonishing, other than a gentleman in his forties, none of the seven others at my table could have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three. Where the heck did they get their money? Unlike myself who bought in at the $200 minimum, these youngsters were all sitting with chips triple and quadruple the size of my pile. Two of them were young ladies, pretty at that, while two of the men were Native Americans, and another was of Chinese descent. That left a pair of callow country bumpkins who were clearly familiar with one another as well as with the different dealers, floor men and other players. That's right, I soon learned, all of them came to the casino just about every evening.

Nobody wiggled his ears when I said I lived six hundred miles up the road in Las Vegas. (The only reason I noted the mileage was so that they did not confuse my Nevada hometown with Las Vegas, New Mexico.) If I thought the mention of Sin City was going to impress them, I had another thought coming.

"I get up there pretty often," said one of the country boys.

"Really," I said. "Where do you play?"

"Upstairs at the Bellagio is what I like best."

For those who are unaware, the upstairs room at the Bellagio is to poker aficionados what Yankee Stadium is to a sandlot ballplayer. If one can single out any spot on the globe where an unknown can make a quick ton of money, Upstairs at the Bellagio has got to be the place. Of course you have to be exceedingly skillful, totally indifferent to the value of money and wildly lucky to stand a chance. But then, isn't that what Las Vegas is all about?

"There are some damn good games at The Commerce Club near L.A.," said his friend.

"I like high stakes games at The Wynn," said one of the girls. "I'm moving to Las Vegas next month.

"We're all moving to Vegas," said one of the Native Americans. "Except for Harry," he nodded at the Chinese lad. "He's going to Macau."

"No way," said Harry. "I'd just as soon play at Foxwood."

They all laughed before returning to the serious business at hand. I got lucky holding wired nines. A nine appeared on the flop accompanied by a pair of sevens. Harry was holding the ace-seven of hearts. Unperturbed by the dent I made in his chips he came back a few hands later raising on a flush draw. I went all-in with two pairs. Harry called. The club he was hoping to find turned up on the river. Wiped out, I left the table without saying a word.

Twenty minutes later I stopped for gas. Still upset by the hand I had lost, I hardly realized my tank was empty.

"So those kids are going to Las Vegas," I thought to myself. "Poor bastards! Like countless others, all they are going to do is chase after phantoms."

As for me, I had a better idea. For a simple dollar I could buy a dream worth considerably more. With the powerball jackpot at the multi-state lotto up to $100,000,000, I went inside and bought ten tickets. You know what? Once I collect my winnings, I just might try my hand upstairs at The Bellagio.

ACES

2006-07-19T22:12:00.000-04:00

If there is any single point on which no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em players are able to agree, I would say it’s that wired aces have a tendency to win little and lose big. Is there a player alive - or dead - who has not suffered a bad beat when dealt top pair?

My personal memory of getting ripped apart holding two aces occurred one afternoon in Paris when The Boston Philharmonic Orchestra was in town. Not only did I have complimentary tickets, two of my favorite pieces were on the evening’s program. At the beginning of the poker game I announced I would be leaving an hour before eight PM quitting time.

“You can be sure no one will be sorry to see you go,” said a smart aleck who harbored little love for me.

At seven o’clock I was ahead by eight thousand francs, or sixteen hundred U.S. Dollars.

“Last hand for me,” I said.

We were ten players. Seated next to last, I casually picked up a pair of black aces. The convention we employed at the time consisted of the dealer putting up fifty francs ($10) and the first player blinding twice that amount. In this particular hand, one player called. That put a total of fifty dollars in the pot when my turn arrived.

“All-in,” I announced.

You can be sure Monsieur Smart Ass snickered at the absurdity of such a bet. If that weren’t bad enough, Eric, the blind kept on examining his cards with a curious smile plastered on his face. After a while, he said:

“I call.”

“I guess you know what I have,” I said.

“Don’t we all?” said my heckler.

Eric laid down the six and a three of diamonds. Good Lord did we have loose players back then! Eric was in his late twenties. He was single, handsome and soft-spoken. Everyone liked him. Not because he lost consistently but because he never carped, complained or caused a problem paying. As an only child, he was being groomed to take over the family’s manufacturing business. Don’t ask me what they manufactured. Whatever it was, it was making them all sorts of money.

“Hurrah for Eric,” said my Number One fan. “Tear the American to pieces.”

He did not have to wait long. The flop was the five, eight and king of diamonds. Showing no sign of awe or disbelief, Eric allowed his enigmatic smile to expand. He looked at me before shrugging his shoulders apologetically. The turn and the River were of no consequence. While my opponent was gathering in the chips, I stood up and reached into a pocket for a check of his I had won the previous day.

That was an advantage we had in Paris compared to games here in Las Vegas. Facing the same suckers day in and day out, skillful players were occasionally torn apart by wild opponents. What of it? Soon enough the crazies were sure to give back whatever they had won.

I thought of Eric yesterday at the MGM Grand when a jackass with a suited ten-nine outdrew my pair of aces. Apparently my fifty-dollar raise did not impress him. Shortly afterwards, the man was busted, but not by me. As he got up and walked away, I realized it was unlikely I would ever see him again.

Can you believe it? Not ten minutes later I was again dealt wired aces. Before the flop I went all-in. Gathering up the small and the big blind I was happy nobody called.

“How the hell can you chase everyone out with such a good hand?” someone asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I just got carried away.”