Poker Articles

Day One of the Million (Part 02)
By Jim McManus

By noon on Thursday only 137 players have entered the Million, which will generate a minuscule prize pool of £822,000. The winner's £1 million has been guaranteed, but exactly zero will be left to pay even one runner-up. Faced with a public-relations debacle, Ladbroke and Sky Sports pony up an extra £125,000. This guarantees £100,000 for second, but after that prize money cliff-dives to £6,000 for ninth, with token £2,000 "prizes" for places 10 through 20. In other words, in an event being trumpeted as the "Biggest . . . Ever!," you can make the final table, having bested 94% of an all-star field, and still fail to make money. The main event at the 2000 WSOP, by contrast, paid places 45 through 37 $15,000 each, with prize money escalating steeply to the $896,500 Cloutier took home for second.

Getting desperate, Ladbroke pushes the starting time from 1 to 3 p.m. to give undecideds more time to register. (Imagine what Katharine Harris would say about that!) When this yields only four or five more entries, tournament officials begin spreading "flash satellites," ten-player one-hand showdowns costing £600 to enter. That's right, one hand. These contests resemble cerebral hand-to-hand poker combat much less than blood-and tequila-soaked cockfights, though they do produce several more entries.

My friend Andy Glazer, who is covering the Million for Cardplayer and Casino.com, reminds me that at least we'll all be starting with positive equity: £7,212 (£1.25 million divided by 156) on our £6,000. He also likes having to outlast only 155 rivals, as opposed to the WSOP's 511, for a shot at the £1 million. The other side of the coin is that he's handicapping the 156 as the toughest he's seen at a tournament. "I estimated that half the field at the World Series was probably dead money," he tells me, "or at least money on life support. I'd say only fifteen percent of this field has no realistic chance at the money."

Around 3:30 we sit down with 5,000 "points" worth of chips--a bland compromise between pounds and dollars--plus a pink chit for another 5,000 redeemable at any time within the first eight hours of the tournament. Every American I've talked to approves of this wrinkle, which they see as insurance against busting out in the first twenty minutes after crossing an ocean and part of a sea just to get here. That's the way I see it, too.

I need some insurance, apparently, because the draw has plunked me down in seat 2 of table 14, surrounded by five of Europe's best players. Immediately to my left is the notorious Devilfish Ulliot, a high-test hombre who won the WSOP pot-limit hold'em bracelet in 1997 and last year was Late Night Poker's first champion. With his slicked-back blond hair and rose-colored lenses--he's also a not-bad blues guitarist and singer--this is the guy the British press has made their odds-on favorite; and since money tends to flow clockwise around a poker table, he's in perfect position to hammer me. Next come Irish heavyweights Colin Kennedy and Don O'Callaghan, hunkered in seats 4 and 5, while over in 6 looms Mansour Matloubi. Born in Iran in 1952, Mansour is one of the game's proven gentlemen, generous spirits, and witty philosophers; he's also "a genius," according to Cloutier and others who've faced him. In seat 8, in a black and gray buzzcut, is Simon "Aces" Trumper, the second winner of Late Night Poker. He also works as a stand-in, on film sets and at parties, for Robert DeNiro, though to my untrained eye he resembles Gerard Depardieu at least as much as he does Travis Bickle, even when he dusts off his You talkin' ta me? shtick. Using his own voice, presumably, he's been quoted as saying, "I'm totally fearless. I don't care who I'm up against. In that way I'm more like an American player than the other Europeans." Braggadocio aside, it's a fact that maestros like Ulliot, Matloubi and Trumper can deduce with mindbending precision--from your face, eyes and body as well as the way you played earlier hands--what cards you hold at the moment. They play you and the size of your stack as much as they play their own cards.

Be that as it may, the deck starts to smack me upside my head, allowing me to take down three of the first seven pots, building my stack to 6,600 and change (plus my chit) in the first fifteen minutes. Now that I have the upper hand, I can bring down the hammer on these blokes, raising them hand after hand. And it works. By the 5:40 break I have 8,650 and counting. But luck helps as well. Playing K-J from the button, for example, I just cracked the Devilfish's pocket rockets. Even when the board furnishes him with a third ace on the river, the same card makes me a sweet Broadway straight. "You've got balls," the Devilfish grants me. And I'm definitely feeling them now--finding good cards when I peek between my knuckles, sensing when my opponents are willing to make a stand, when they aren't. Even with a suited J-6, the momentum I've established keeps most of them back on their heels. Whap whap whap! I make a jack-high diamond flush against Trumper's nine-high. "Aces" my ass, Travis Trumper!

We knock off a little past midnight, having completed four two-hour levels and eliminated 57 players. Seven WSOP champions are still in the hunt, with Ferguson (ninth), Hellmuth (twelfth) and Furlong (fourteenth) leading the way. Among the top 18 chip counts, we have a Russian, an Austrian, a Scotsman, four Englishman, five Irishmen, five Americans, and me--in sixth place, with 33,400, proud to be counted among either of the latter nationalities. To celebrate, I think I'll try the seared devilfish with a side of tabouli, and a pint glass of Irish Champagne.

Friday's draw puts me in seat nine of Table 5. Immediately to my left, in seat 1, is Slim Preston, who'll be sitting in my small blind for the next several hours, making it all but impossible to steal many pots. In seat 3 is Lyle Berman, an American businessman who bankrolls stars like Cloutier, Seidel, and Harman. Berman is a world-class player in his own right, but with only 7,800 in chips he isn't a threat at this point. In seat 4 Ian Dobson, a fourteen-year pro out of Birmingham, is already sipping a pale Smirnoff cooler behind his 24,700 stack. A brilliant if reckless competitor, he placed third last month in the Irish Championships, then won his way into the Million via one of the cockfights. "Noice woy to sive fiffy-fo hunnud quid!" he remarked, blind drunk in his stylish black White Sox jersey. He tends to make opponents real nervous. Over in 5 is the gentleman running the show, Barry Hearn, chairman of Sky Sports TV. Silver-haired, ruddy, and tall (he doesn't look unlike Bill Clinton), Hearn is playing the tournament on a lark and has only 1,200 left. (He and Slim are the reasons that a covey of reporters and cameramen have perched around us, sucking up light and oxygen.) Rounding out the table is rangy Coloradan Bob Skultelsky in 7, in fourth place overall with 35,600; and tousle-haired Irishman Aidan Bennett in 8, also plenty dangerous with 27,100.

It may be worth noting how common it is for poker reporters and impresarios to play the events they're otherwise involved with. A lot of folks dealing the cards, adjudicating disputes, writing the magazine and internet accounts, or waiting the tables are solid poker players themselves; it's just that their bankrolls are a bit on the thin side right now. Writers who cover other sports have told me they find this quite strange--like having Jerrys Krause, West and Reinsdorf suit up for a team owned by Michael Jordan competing in the Eastern semis against a team starring David Stern, Hue Hollins and Sheryl Miller, game seven to be refereed by Larry Brown and Allen Iverson, play-by-play by John Malkovich, reported from the sidelines by Sheryl's little brother, with Kobe Bryant vending the popcorn. And every so often one of the reporters wins the damn tournament he's covering, which tends not to happen in ball sports. We also have writers who used to be full-time poker players--Glazer, Cloutier, Hellmuth, Jesse May and Linda Johnson foremost among them--though it's usually clear where their heart is. As Johnson always wrote at the end of her Card Player column: "Now let's play poker!"

To help us wake up and face the music--the blinds, after all, are up to 500 and 1,000, with 100 antes--Jack McClelland, the tournament's genial and famously proficient director (and a helluva player himself), puts Tex Ritter's country romp, "Don't Make A Bet With Amarillo Slim," over the P.A:

"You hear that, Table Five? Pay attention!"

"Don't worry, we're paying, Jack. All afternoon."

"Hell," Slim responds, "I can hear a mouse piss on cotton."

Then all of us get down to business. Having decided to play extra tight at the outset, I fold thirteen hands in a row. The closest call I have is a suited 9-8 from one off the button, the second strongest position. Even though no one has called the big blind, I still fold, mainly because drawing hands tend to work best in multiway pots. A half hour into the action, McClelland announces that Russian Henry Nuggett has taken the chip lead. His victim? Chris Ferguson. According to Andy, who's roving among the eleven tables, Chris found pocket aces and raised it to six times the big blind (roughly twice the typical preflop raise), but Nuggett still called with J-10. When the board came K-Q-x-9-x, Chris was toast. He's off now to do color commentary.

Back at table 5, I find myself peering between my thumbs at my own pair of aces, though because of what happened to Chris I must say I'm less than elated. The big blind is a great place to find them, however, since you can disguise their strength by merely calling some other guy's raise. (This is called "getting cute" with your aces, failing to reraise preflop in hopes of building a bigger pot on the final two streets, meanwhile increasing your risk of "getting run down" by hands like J-10.) But this time it looks as though all I will win are the antes and blinds, most of which I put in myself, since everyone has folded to Aidan. He's already got 600 in there, and I hope against hope that he'll try to steal my 1,100 and the other 700 in antes. Moves like this normally require a raise of three or four thousand; and if that's what he does, I'll just call. But he stuns me by moving in all 25,000 of his chips, and of course I feel privileged to call him.

"On their backs, please, gents," says the dealer. Cameras and reporters loom closer, closer still when it turns out that Aidan has a genuine hand: two red tens. If another ten spikes I'll be down to six or seven thousand--not dead, quite, but mangled and bleeding. Even when the flop brings an ace, and no straight or flush draw for Aidan, I can't quite relax till I hear McClelland announce: "Make that Jim McManus as your new chip leader." Ahhh!

Dobson keeps sipping his Smirnoff as the cameras zoom in on my stacks. I notice as well that Slim's repartee picks up as soon as one tilts back his way. His humor is an earthy amalgam of self-deprecation and ornery machismo. Last Sunday he told Victoria Coren of the Guardian: "People who sit down with me are expectin' to lose and, goddammit, I don't wanna disappoint `em." He also gave her a tip about playing in Vegas: "Get yourself a six-pack of young blondes, have yourself a good time and don't do no gamblin'."

Now, as Skultelsky is raking a pot, Slim drawls, "These boys is too good for me. Only place round here Ah can hold mah own is when I go to the men's room." Hyeah, right. Besides a WSOP gold bracelet (one of several he's won) and what looks to be a twenty-four-carat (and twenty-four-pound) belt buckle, he's wearing his trademark pale Stetson festooned with the skin of a rattler Slim claims had bitten him. "But Ah got `im back, yessir. Killed the sumbitch with mah bare hands, skinned `im and stuck `im up here." The sumbitch projects, fangs ajar, from the front of the brim, aimed straight at whoever old Slim has his sights on. You almost can hear the thing hiss.

After the 3:15 break I am blessed with a brief run of cards--big aces, wired pairs--which I use to attack the antes and blinds with, then make sure to advertise after everyone folds. I want my opponents to remember these cards later on, when I try to steal pots holding rags. But for some goddam reason, they don't. They reraise me. Still feeling my chip-leader oats as they leak from the hole in my feedbag, I keep making loose calls and raises. When my opponents play back at me hard, I have little choice but to fold. Bawk buck-buck-buck!

And now, once again, it's been checked around to me in the small blind, where I anxiously sit with K-7 offsuit. So far I haven't been shy about raising Slim's blind, if only for the pleasure of messing with a legend. "That boy's raised me 71 times in a row," he complains to a video camera. His intention, of course, is to make my wheels turn by implying that this time he's gonna retaliate. "But he's playin' all right," he says now, changing up once again. "Offense wins a lot more than defense does . . ."

Leaning back in my chair to see past the dealer, I study Slim's countenance, trying to pick up a feel for the strength of his hand. He stares straight ahead for ten, fifteen seconds, looking more than a little like Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, then suddenly turns his laser-through-water blue eyes on me, piercing my polarized lenses. "Son, if you can figure somethin' `bout mah hand from starin' at me, Ah'll letcha shit in this hat."

Bursts of laughter from around the table--that's right! You tell him that boy, Slim! But I have to laugh, too, if only from the jolt of getting messed with by a legend. After a moment or two I muck my K-7, less out of fear than in deference, then watch Slim turn over . . . 10-2. He shoots me a sly, sideways grin as he rakes in my blind and the antes. The sumbitch who bit him grins, too.

Yet despite his bold moves against me and the rest of the table, Slim has been cold-decked all day. Down to ten or eleven thousand, he eventually decides to make a stand, shoving all of his chips in preflop. Smirnoff, unfortunately, has found pocket aces, so he's only too happy to call. All Slim can show him is the king and seven of spades. As a 6-1 dog, he needs a flurry of spades or a "set" of three sevens or kings. And he's well on his way toward a comeback when a spade and the seven of diamonds appear on the flop. You can feel the reporters and the other seven players silently pulling for kings, sevens, spades. But as George W.'s daddy might say, Nah gah happen. To a round of respectful applause, Slim is gone. Right away I hear Andy mention that Chan, playing behind a lilliputian stack at the table to my left, is the only former world champion still in the hunt.

"Sounds like they're getting ready to make another announcement," Chan cackles ruefully. Has the Orient Express gone on tilt? Highly doubtful. But a few minutes later he takes an A-J offsuit against Ali "Baba" Sarkeshik's suited A-K and exits in 32nd place. (While we have nothing to rival "Pubic Hair" Thomas, the Million's all-name team still can boast Hamish Shah, Ozzie Mustanoglu, Surindar Sunar, Bjorin "Again" Christer, Xenophon Constantinou and, most apropos for this venue, Man Ip. I can already picture the headlines: Man Ip Slips Up on Man---Flops Sixes Full, Falls to Surindar Sunar's Quad Deuces . . .) The empty seats at my table have meanwhile been filled by Londoners Dave Welch and Tony "the Lizard" Bloom, and by big, friendly, white-maned Dewey Weum, who's been high-carded by McClelland into our 7 chair. Dewey's home game in Wisconsin includes Larry Phillips, author of Zen and the Art of Poker, a book that I teach in my poker course at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. But now's not the time for exegetical analysis or Bear-Packer jabs. Our table's new chip leader, Smirnoff, must be on his fifth or sixth cooler by now, using them as fuel for bullying soberer cohorts. With the blinds at 1,000-2,000 and 200 antes, it's expensive to try to fight back. We know that he's probably bluffing with most of his raises (as I had been yesterday), but we're also aware that two or three times out of ten he's attacking with genuine hands, and it would be just our luck to play back when he's raising with aces or kings. Ruthlessly taking advantage of our uncertainty is not only Smirnoff's right, it's his job. I have much the same responsibility myself, so long as I don't take on Smirnoff. Yet when I try to steal from behind the second biggest stack, Bloom or Skultelsky or Weum have seen fit to reraise me, forcing me to lay down hands like A-10 or K-Q. In the next ninety minutes I bleed off a third of my stack, leaving me with 39,000 and change. To regain the momentum I started the day with, I need to cowboy up fairly soon.

A round or so later I watch Welch, sitting across from me behind 50,000, raise twelve percent of his stack. Welch is the third-ranked hold'em player in Europe, so I have to respect moves like this. When it gets passed around to me in the small blind, I look down and find an A-J. So I call. On the Q-7-8 rainbow flop, I bet 6,000. Even before the six yellow chips leave my hand, I realize I probably should have pushed all of them in, since (1) I have nada, but (2) about the only hand Welch could call with is six titties, and I don't think he's got them. Maybe four, but not six. Please not six . . . When he calls the 6,000, I gulp, feeling trapped. Fourth street arrives a black ten, and I check. This time Welch leads with 6,000, a significant wager in the face of the strength I've represented. No way should I call with an inside straight draw and one measly overcard, but that's what I do. Chalk it up to a braincramp borne of testosterone, impatience and youth. (I'm only 49, after all.) Fifth street is the seven of spades, and I check. Welch bets another 6,000. With my deeply pathetic ace-high, my only real chance to take down this pot is going all-in. Which I do, pushing forward my last £24,500. What I'm representing now is trip sevens or, much less likely, a straight.

Welch is a big guy with a modest black pompadour--a drug-free London Elvis in glasses, ordinary sport coat and shirt. He appears unconcerned as he fingers his chips, breaking off 18,500 then counting out what he'd have left: 12,000, it looks like, enough to play on if he's beaten. If he calls I am out of the tournament. These things happen, of course, but in this case I'll have to wait around Man for three days counting sheep, second-guessing myself and, worst of all, watching other people chase the million pounds and the title. As Welch coolly looks me up and down, I stare off into [sign for infinity], trying to impersonate a guy who'd be thrilled to be called but without making a John Lovett production out of it. In any event, I don't flinch. I'm excruciatingly aware that Welch is retracing the sequence of bets, wondering why I would call his original raise with only J-9 or 9-6. I wouldn't, of course, and he knows that. My scariest hand, from his point of view, is A-7. I believe he is holding A-Q.

Welch shrugs minutely, and I take this to mean that he's calling. Folding two queens and ace kicker with no king on board is simply too tough, and I have to admit I don't blame him. So when he slides his cards into the muck, I can hardly contain myself. Yea-ah! Thanks, Welch-man! I ruuuule! Not only that, I am going to win your damn tournament! Such is my euphoria that, breaching three or four sound rules of etiquette, I snap my A-J face-up on the baize, drawing aahs and oohs from the railbirds. Even Welch, a cool veteran of tournaments and high-stakes games down in London, seems surprised--by my stone-cold bluff or godawful manners, I can't really tell. I try to regain some coolth and restack the 58,000 as the next hand gets dealt. Just sit tight now, Good Jim recommends. Bad Jim responds, Not a chance!

The first two players pass, but now here comes Smirnoff, from middle position, raising to 5,000. The action gets passed around to me on the button, where I halt my restacking to peek in and find A-2 offsuit. Bad Jim reminds me that Smirnoff has been pushing us around too darn long, that he's "obviously" trying to steal. Feeling bulletproof from the previous hand, I'm also in ideal position, and in the right mood, to outplay him, whatever cards come on the board.

I flat-call. That is, I call when a raise or a fold is expected. Because unless you are holding a heavy favorite like aces or kings (in which case you reraise), you're a fool not to fold when the biggest stack raises. As Matloubi and Glazer have patiently explained to me, A-2 isn't much of a favorite--only about 1.3-to-1--even vs. rags like 8-3. Against any pair, or even A-3, it's a whipped, panting, desperate dog.

But no-limit hold'em is a game of momentum and intimidation, and I'm counting on Smirnoff to sense that if he goes against me while I'm hot, he'll get scorched--that my call is more threatening to him than a reraise. But Good Jim still warns against hubris. When you win a big pot, he maintains, it's time to get patient again. Cultivate your taut leather ass. Don't make emotional decisions. Slow and steady wins the big pots. Let card sense and game theory rule, not your gut. Blah blah blah.

The flop, to my gleeful surprise, comes A-J-2, giving me aces up with two cards to come. Smirnoff glares for a moment, at me, at the flop, then taps his index finger on the felt. Now I've got him. Camouflaging my elation as well as I can, I check too. I've put him on a big ace (but not, oh please God, an A-J!) or a medium pair. So he's trapped. I'm about to get back in the lead.

Fourth street comes seven of clubs--a blank, I assume, changing nothing. When Smirnoff bets 10,000 I raise him 10,000 more, expecting to win it right there. He thinks for a couple three seconds, nudging his sunglasses back up his nose, then shoves the rest of his chips toward the pot. "Uh'm all-in."

So far he has given every indication that he's holding a powerful hand, and, one and all, I've ignored them. I've ignored them because I know he is bluffing, and I'm betting my tournament life on it. A quarter of my chips still ain't stacked, but that doesn't keep me from sliding the entire mess forward. "I call." Flipping over my hole cards, I position my ace alongside its lean partner on the board, my heart deuce beside its club cousin. Take that!

Smirnoff turns over two jacks. But, but . . . but nothing, you dunce! Dead to an ace, sober as I've been in my life, I feel like I've taken a bite of a fresh, vaguely yellowish turd. Noshing and munching for several long seconds, I cannot quite swallow it. All I can do, worthless pud that I am, is start praying for an ace. There are two of them left, after all. The other 44 unseen cards win for Ian, of course, but no matter. Nope. I have faith! I'm a cowboy! I'm fearless! But when neither ace shows up on fifth street, I'm out. Dead. Kevorked.

"Uh . . . was that . . . the next hand?" I ask all and sundry, too stunned to remember. Three people tell me it was. I nod, shake my head. As Silvio would put it, I'm four or five time-zones behind my own ass. Make that six. I've also got a graphite-and-glass phallic lens a foot, maybe less, from my eyebrow. There's a vast international audience in there, or out there, or somewhere, who wants to see my pain, so I don't have to pretend not to feel it.

Upstairs in my room, with the floral curtains drawn across the night, I vomit forth OJ, granola, espresso, garlicky prawns and tomatoes, a good deal of it out through my nose. After forty-five minutes of this, I manage to take off my shirt and my shoes, get in bed.

There are two ways to sleep like a baby. The better way is to fall asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow and stay asleep till you wake up, cheerful and well rested, your problems in more lucid perspective, in the morning. The other way is to sleep for an hour, cry for an hour, sleep for an hour, cry for an hour . . . I opt for the latter, of course.

Around 5 a.m. Saturday--it seems as good a time as any to abandon my siege of gut-soothing, brain-cooling slumber--I put on my coat and go out. Heading north, I believe, I wind up a half hour later at a place called Onchan Head, wobbling precariously along the top of a 150-foot cliff, not thinking of suicide as the diamond-black sea bashes the glittering rocks down below. Then I stop. Dizzy and weak, surrounded by whitecaps and sheep, I breathe out. I breathe in. With dawn coming up over Scotland, I scatosacriligeously pummel myself for the umpteen-googolplexth time for getting involved in that pot, for not tuning in to what so clearly was in store for me. Moron! I hawk up a chunk of acid-washed prawn from back in my right nasal passage, wrangle it onto my tongue. It's something, all right. Launching it dawnward, I lean out and stare as it spirals and bobs through stratums of breeze then mingles again with the sea. So, okay. I keep on inhaling the bright, salty air as I wend my way down off the cliff and hike the short mile to the Hilton and get back in bed. And this time I sleep like a baby.

Jim McManus