With help from TV, card
tourney is bigger than ever
Mashantucket
A
redhead from Portland, Ore., was sitting on her feet,
fingering a healthy stack of poker chips, and the
“railbirds” watching from the sidelines were chirping.
“That's Annie Duke,” one spectator whispered to
another. “She's won some tournaments, but I think
she's overrated.”
Overrated or not, the mother of four who became a
household figure when poker hit it big on TV was still
in the game on Day 3 of the World Poker Finals at
Foxwoods Resort Casino.
You couldn't say the same for most of the other
big-time
Texas
Holdem
players
who made the annual pilgrimage to the Mashantucket
Pequots' castle-like casino in the woods of
Connecticut this week and bought into the World Poker
Finals for $10,000.
There would be no $1.5 million check or custom-made
wampum belt for Doyle Brunson, a 71-year-old
considered by some to be the greatest poker player
alive. The Texas native was eliminated early and
retired to the poker room upstairs, where for the next
three days he played for an estimated $2 or $3 million
against other “losers,” like Chip Reese, Lyle Berman
and Chau Lang.
Greg “Fossilman” Raymer, the patent attorney from
Stonington who won $5 million in the World Series of
Poker in May and promptly quit his day job at Pfizer
Inc. to travel the world and play cards, was long gone
from the tournament. A run of bad luck, his fans said.
Phil Hellmuth, the self-titled “Poker Brat” from
Madison, Wis., who has enough championship bracelets
to weigh down an arm, had been knocked out the day
before. Hoyt Corkins, the Alabama cowboy who won $1
million in the final game at Foxwoods last year, was
history.
The
Texas
Holdem
pros and
the wannabes had been falling like flies all day, but
with 88 out of 674 players left, the action had slowed
down significantly Monday in the makeshift tournament
room off the lobby of the Great Cedar Hotel. Nobody
was betting on toss-up hands now. Players who finish
in the top 60 would be paid, and everyone in the room
wanted to be “in the money.”
•••
Poker has become a national pastime thanks to
television and its use of the lipstick camera, a tiny
device that allows viewers to see a player's “hole
cards.” In televised No Limit Texas Holdem, players
flash their two under cards to the camera so the
viewer, but not the other players, knows what they are
holding as they decide to fold, call or raise.
“It puts the viewer right into the seat,” said Kathy
Raymond, director of poker operations at Foxwoods. The
technology led at-home players to think “I can do
that,” Raymond said, drawing droves of new players
into casino poker rooms.
Foxwoods has 81 tables, and on weekends it is not
enough.
The World Poker Tour, owned by Lakes Entertainment,
aired its first season in 2003 and is now taping its
third. Like a golf tournament, players travel from
site to site and battle for the big prizes.
The show's instant success on the Travel Channel
spawned numerous copycats, and aficionados can now
watch poker most nights of the week.
Home to one of the oldest and largest
Texas
Holdem
poker
rooms on the East Coast, Foxwoods was the first casino
to sign up for the World Poker Tour, according to
Raymond, who loves to enumerate all the other firsts
Foxwoods has racked up since then. Last year the
casino set the record for the highest prize pool, and
this year it has the largest number of entrants.
Foxwoods this week debuted the inaugural game of the
Professional Poker Tour, a new, invitational-only
venture of the World Poker Tour featuring the best of
the best. The field has been whittled to six, and the
final game will be taped before a live audience
Friday.
This year's World Poker Tour, with the final game
played Wednesday before a live television audience,
was more like a carnival than ever, Raymond said.
During the TV taping, six of the top poker authors
were signing books in an adjacent room. Spectators
picked up tips on the game at a demonstration table.
Amber Bach, one of the television sponsors, set up a
beer-tasting table. The World Poker tour sold branded
shirts, hats and poker paraphernalia.
Poker is so hot that Foxwoods executives have created
an advertising campaign based on the game. In one
spot, a jolly looking man dressed as a king comes out
of a men's room with a paper folded under his arm. He
sighs contentedly and says, “Nothing beats a royal
flush.”
Raymond and others in the field say the poker craze is
far from over.
“As we move forward, there's no telling how big poker
will get,” Raymond said. “This whole event has not
been a mild preview of things to come. The growth is
not even close to stabilizing.”
•••
Television is not the only technology that has
revolutionized a card game forever associated with old
men and smoky basements. The shy and inexperienced can
sign on to Web sites like partypoker.com and
pokerstars.com and play thousands of hands on-line
before venturing into a casino and plunking down some
chips. Internet poker games are faster than so-called
“ring games,” and some players are emboldened by the
anonymity.
The Web has created champions like Chris Moneymaker,
who won a seat at last year's World Series of Poker in
an on-line satellite game and then bluffed and bullied
his way past the old pros to take the title. At the
same time, the Web has shaken up the poker world.
Internet-schooled newcomers tend to be more aggressive
and unpredictable than card-room veterans, and the two
playing styles can clash.
“It's always good to have new money in the game.
That's the good news,” said Jimmy Christina, a
Foxwoods tournament supervisor who has been a part of
the action here since the casino opened in 1992. “The
bad news is, the new people don't always play the way
the pros expect. In the old days, the pros would be
able to make a bet and look a guy in the eye and know
what they have. That's not happening anymore.”
Playing a “correct” game of poker has become a
subjective term.
Walt Williams, a tournament regular from August, Ga.,
said the young players “really have a lot to learn.”
“They'll call hands with an ace, 10 or a small pair,”
he said. “They don't know about the ‘over cards,' as
we call them.”
He
quoted Sammy Farha, a poker great who once said, “I
can beat anyone who knows how to play.”
But Scott Fischmann, a member of “the crew,” a group
of young players who banded together last year and
have since won some money and notoriety, says the
older guys might need to adapt to the new style of
play. He calls it the “Internet gap.”
“The new style is aggressive,” he said.
Some of the old-timers are embracing the young people
and their beloved Internet. Bill Seyour and Jim Bucci,
two 60-something tournament players who don't want to
travel as much these days, are coaching players
on-line for a healthy fee. The coach and player sign
onto the same game and the coach advises the student
on how to play each hand.
“We have to be smart enough to adjust to the game,”
Seyour said.
•••
Earlier this week, the railbirds at Foxwoods were
chattering about Eric Seidel, who hunched over a large
stack of chips. Some people recognize Seidel, a
balding former bond trader turned poker pro, as the
man who was beaten by Johnny Chan in the now-classic
Texas
Holdem
poker
movie “Rounders.” Watch him, the railbirds said. He's
really good.
But then here came another contender. Scotty Nguyen
sauntered into the room in his leather jacket
following a break in the action and playfully grabbed
the microphone. He returned to his seat, where he had
a large stack of chips and a fresh Heineken.
A
native of Vietnam whose name is pronounced “win,”
Nguyen could be a poster boy for his new home in the
Nevada desert. He wears a shag haircut, dark
sunglasses and a fat gold medallion on his chest and
tends to end his sentences with the word “baby.”
A
day later, Seidel and Nguyen were out, and Duke, the
sole remaining female, was close to the end. Vying
with nine men for a seat on the final table, she went
“all in” with a pair of eights, pushing her diminished
stack of chips into the middle of the table.
“Annie's all in,” the railbirds tittered.
Tuan Le called with an ace, 10, and picked up another
10 when the “flop” cards were turned over.
Adios, Annie.
Duke left the table quickly with a not-unhappy look on
her face.
“Don't feel bad for Annie,” commented Jim Bourque, one
of Foxwoods' tuxedoed tournament supervisors. “She
just won $166,000.” |
