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ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - On Sept. 19, three of the
luckiest guys alive finally caught a break and headed
up to a room at the Borgata casino here for a rest in
the middle of a long day at the World Poker Tour. In
the past few years these three have each won millions
of dollars - the talk generally gets less specific
when losses come up - playing Texas HoldEm, a card
game that has stormed across television and computer
screens and put poker in the middle of the table as
never before.
The men are three of the kings of so-called no-limit
poker, a format in which any player at any time can
put all his money in the pot - all in, as they say.
No-limit poker is as indigenous to America as jazz,
and full of just as much improvisation. Apple pie is
fine, and baseball is always good on a sunny day, but
what could be more American than betting $1 million on
the flop of single card?
Although pitiless when they sit across the table from
one another for a game of HoldEm, the three, Doyle
Brunson, T.J. Cloutier and Gus Hansen, are friends, as
friendly as professional card players get. They had
mixed results playing the seven-card game at the
tables that day, in part because they had to play
through a clutter of amateurs that the poker craze has
created. Now that the pros finally had some time to
themselves, give or take a reporter, they could unwind
at last. And play some cards.
Away from the television cameras and clamoring fans,
they opted for a change of pace, plopping down on the
king-size bed as Hansen dealt 13 cards to each player.
Chinese poker was the name of this game, and it
required that they arrange three hands of poker out of
the cards they were dealt, in progressively better
hands. The room went silent for five seconds after the
deal as each man clicked through mathematical
possibilities measured in thousands. And then they
played nickel poker, with the word nickel meaning $500
and dime meaning $1,000. Many thousands of dollars
changed hands in a matter of minutes.
Hansen, a former top backgammon player who came out of
nowhere or, more specifically, Denmark, in 1997 as a
professional poker player, won the first hand.
Brunson, an old-school rounder who came up the hard
way - and won the World Series of Poker, twice - was
gracious in defeat.
"You won it all as usual, which is something I will
have to become accustomed to," he said.
He and Hansen have seen a lot of each other. This past
summer they, with six other of the world's best card
players, each anted up $400,000 for a professional
death match on Fox Sports Net called the "Poker
Superstars Invitational Tournament" - no amateurs or
Internet players allowed. The last episode of the
first round was broadcast on Sept. 19, with Hansen
riding a hot hand to victory. A new round begins on
Sept. 26.
In the game of Texas HoldEm, each player receives two
of his own cards and then bets progressively over the
next five common cards on the table - three cards
known as "the flop," a fourth known as "the turn" and
then the fifth, "the river." Millions of new players
are flooding virtual Texas HoldEm games on the
Internet and have stormed the casinos. The Borgata
alone is in the midst of expanding its poker room to
85 tables, from 35.
But these pros aren't new to the game. They are all
self-described degenerate gamblers who just happen to
be better at the game than civilians. Their every
waking minute is spent in pursuit of action, not
always at the poker table. If the three of them came
across two worms washed on a sidewalk after a
rainstorm, they might be compelled to stop and bet on
which one makes it back to the grass first.
Someone brought up the evening's NFL game: Miami would
square off against Cincinnati in a few hours. Brunson,
who is famed for putting down as much as a $250,000 on
any given day on sports events, asked Hansen who he
liked in the game. Hansen said he had no strong
preference, but Brunson told him to pick anyway.
Hansen chose Cincinnati to beat the points and the
under, which is a pick based on total points. And with
that, the bet was down: $30,000. Who picked whom was
clearly beside the point. "We all like the action,"
Hansen said later at the casino's buffet, taking in
mouthfuls of mashed potatoes off a butter knife as he
spoke. "If nothing is at stake, what's the point?"
That does not explain why millions of people are
sitting in front of their televisions watching other
people play cards; the World Poker Tour was the Travel
Channel's highest rated show last year. (Among the
other shows now on the air are ESPN's "World Series of
Poker" and Bravo's "Celebrity Poker Showdown.") Poker
became television fodder when the toy mogul Henry
Orenstein invented a camera technology that allowed
viewers to see a poker player's cards through a window
in the table. Orenstein is the creator and executive
producer of "Poker Superstars."
"Before, you never knew who had what cards," he said
in a telephone interview. "Now you can actually see
the strategy in the middle of the game."
It was the Internet, however, that changed the odds in
big-money tournaments. Last year an Internet player
named Christopher Moneymaker - his actual name, by the
way - won the World Series of Poker and $2.5 million.
He had never played in a live tournament in his life,
so his victory took a bit of the mystique out of
poker, where it has long been held that reading the
people is more important than reading the cards. There
are no faces in Web card rooms, only players and lots
of them. Last year, according to Christiansen Capital
Advisors, a market research concern, Internet gambling
revenue totaled almost $6.35 billion.
Orenstein reasoned that if people would spend billions
sitting in front of their computers, they might want
to see the game's royalty going head-to-head, and he
sold the program idea to Fox; "Poker Superstars" made
its debut in August.
The legendary player Johnny Chan, who appeared as
himself in the movie "Rounders," is one of those
kings. At the Borgata, he took a seat at a slot
machine to chat.
"The amateurs are going to get lucky every once in a
while, and I don't think it is bad for the game," he
said. "I love this game. We all do. We want to be in
the action all the time. The only time we aren't in
the action is when we are sleeping."
It can get pretty silly after a while. Howard Lederer,
who has played chess for cash, is known as the
Professor because of his command of poker's numerical
whims. Even as he sat nursing a brutally small stack
of chips in the poker room at the Borgata during the
World Poker Tour, he was staring at a television
screen above his head that was replaying a hand he had
against Johnny Chan in Fox's "Poker Superstars."
The hand in front of him did not look much better than
the one on the screen.
"I know I'm in a tournament and going to lose and
running bad on TV, too," he said.
"But you have to be in the moment," he added
philosophically. "I was having a mediocre day of
cards, but I was struggling to play my best. You can't
think about the meta, about the past, about the bad
beats. You have to play the cards in front of you."
The tournament ended after midnight and everyone, pros
and amateurs alike, counted their chips and thought
about the next day of play. But not everyone was done
playing. At a $15 craps table just outside the B Bar
on the main level of the Borgata, the guy chanting at
the dice looked familiar. It was Cloutier, who has 57
titles in major tournaments and five World Series of
Poker titles; he is poker's all-time leading money
winner.
Cloutier is one guy you do not want to have sit down
at your table, except that he is a complete gentleman,
which means he will be nice to you after he takes all
of your money. But he was playing craps right then. It
was 1:26 in the morning. He made a promise, empty even
as it was uttered, to stop by the bar when he was
done.
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