TEXAS HOLDEM ONLINE POKER
TEXAS HOLDEM ONLINE POKER
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Hope floats on casino, along with poker's new faces |
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Dan Malka looks over his
crowded poker room, scowls for a moment, and finds something to complain
about. More than 100 people have come to play in his Texas HoldEm tournament, and there aren't enough chairs or tables to seat them all. Which means gamblers with hot money will be standing around waiting. Which means the casino loses a chance to make more money. Which means Malka is annoyed. "I wish I had two more tables for tonight," grumbles Malka, who resembles a bespectacled version of Nice Guy Eddie, Quentin Tarantino's track-suit wearing wise guy from the movie Reservoir Dogs. Regulars call him Poker Dan. Most of the gamblers in his Las Vegas-style room represent the poker old guard: aging white men sitting around faded green tables. But thanks to the game's exploding popularity in recent years -- due largely to televised poker tournaments -- the crowd aboard the floating casino has changed. "We've seen a large increase in all ethnic backgrounds. More of everyone," says Malka, who runs all the poker rooms for SunCruz Casinos, a gambling cruise line with ports in Daytona Beach, Port Canaveral and Key Largo. And "the demographic of the poker room is getting younger. Out of the top 10 best players, I can think of two of them that are in their 20s." Now, Malka's weekly Wednesday-night tournament buzzes with players willing to pay the $115 buy-in and entrance fee on a chance to win thousands. Players such as Kim Dyess, Shaheed Brown and Frank Cruz -- all of whom represent the changing face of the game. Tonight, they are among 113 gamblers competing for the top prize of $4,600. Casino cruises have long attracted a diversity of gamblers, but it's been only recently that the game has become less homogeneous. Indeed, on a Friday and Saturday night, one of the most diverse places in Central Florida is offshore, on one of Port Canaveral's two offshore casinos. The difference now is that more players are wandering upstairs to the poker room. Brown, who is black, laughs when asked what got him interested in "Texas HoldEm," a game made famous in Las Vegas. "The television shows turned me on," says Brown, 22. But not the celebrity poker games, he says. The real thing, the granddaddy of 'em all: the World Series of Poker. Tonight is his second tournament. His first was on Monday -- when the Olive Garden employee from Altamonte Springs lasted 15 minutes. Compared with some, it wasn't a bad start. Four minutes into Brown's second tournament, the first player goes down -- walking away with that awful feeling of being the first one gone. No one seems to notice. In fact, few notice much about their surroundings. There's a baseball game on TV, but no one is watching. Even a bright-orange sunset is ignored. Tournaments hinge on survival. Casualties come quickly. By the 15-minute mark, eight players are gone. By the hour mark, about 50 players have been eliminated. Some storm off, but most leave quietly. Occasionally, shouts are heard from one of the nine tables. But Brown is still alive. So is Cruz. And so is Dyess (pronounced "dice"), a 39-year-old card dealer from Satellite Beach. A veteran player, Dyess, who is white, says she's won three tournaments and usually finishes "in the money" -- a term used to describe tournament players who finish high enough to get paid. "As a female, I'm given more respect. It's thought that women are tighter Texas HoldEm players so that if I'm in a hand, they assume I have a good hand. I don't get called as often as a man might," she says. "There's also the assumption I have no clue what I'm doing. Which I use for my own benefit." And in fact, many players don't know what they're doing. Brown seems to have learned a few tricks since the last time. In the first hour, he's kept the rounders at bay and even pulled a couple of hands. He bluffs his way to a big pot with a pair of 4's and doesn't make any drastic mistakes. But as the minutes tick by, his stack gets smaller until he is eventually forced out, just after the hour mark. "I did better tonight," he says, not too disappointed. "Next time, I'll be in for it all." Dyess is knocked out about 30 minutes later. A pair of 10's would be her undoing. She's a little mad. But amazingly, Cruz, 31, is still alive two hours into the competition. "This is the first time I've ever played a tournament," says Cruz, who has only six months' experience. Originally from Guam, Cruz now works for a yacht company on the shore and lives in Cocoa Beach. He credits home schooling for the success. "I play Texas HoldEm all the time at home," he says. The cards were good to him too. A pair of 3's turned into three 3's, and then into a high-ranking flush. That pot netted the new player close to 5,000 chips. But like Brown and Dyess, Cruz's chips started to disappear as the number of tables dropped from nine to seven to five. Eventually, a last-ditch effort ended with Cruz being pushed out. Soon after, as the cruise line turned toward home, an electrical contractor from Kissimmee would win the crown -- almost four hours after the tournament began. Still, Cruz, who came with his brother-in-law, says "it was a pretty cool experience." And like Brown and Dyess, he says he's already looking to next time. |
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