Nevada Again

Nothing prepares you for Vegas. No matter how many times you’ve seen Ocean’s Eleven or listened to Sinatra at the Sands (“Get your hands off that broad!”) or seen poor hapless Fredo dissed by Moe Green, nothing prepares you for Vegas.

The first thing that strikes you is the heat, and strikes is just the word. It’s like walking into a blowtorch. You might have come to Vegas to play poker but even the Mormons dive for the casinos to get away from the awful, Hellish heat that scorches all it touches.

The casinos themselves present a different challenge. The sheer size of them is stunning; as feats of engineering they are astonishing, and have a strangely Disneylike air about them. They’re like really expensive malls in some ways, with high-end shops instead of K-Mart and Burger King.

And then there are the poker rooms, the heart of the Las Vegas experience. The main gambling floors are dedicated to slots and table games like blackjack and roulette. They’ll have a sportsbook in the corner with big soft easy chairs and banks of TV monitors showing games and horse-races from all across the States, and a wall of cashiers to take the bets. And then, in a room entire to itself, there is the poker room.

When I went to the poker room in Caesar’s Palace last year, the night San Antonio won the NBA Championship, I asked for seven-card stud, the chicken and chips of modern poker. An Spailpín Fánach plays Hold ‘Em of course, but just well enough to get beat. Your correspondent will not be at the final table of the WSOP anytime soon. But seven-card stud was what I was weaned on, and Herbert Yardley’s famous book gave me some little insight into the game.

“We don’t have stud,” the lady told me. “Nobody plays it anymore. All we have is hold ‘em.”

“Then take me to the hold ‘em cells,” I said. Sometimes, it’s too late to back away.

If you sit down at a Hold ‘Em tournament in Las Vegas, two hundred dollars in chips doesn’t like one hell of a lot, even at the baby infants level. Imagine playing in the US Open with just a seven iron, and standing next to Tiger with the full bag and the yardage books and the multiple major wins and all that staggering talent. Your inferiority complex becomes very simple in those circumstances.

I sat to the right of the dealer. To her left an overweight man, probably a businessman, who looked neither confident nor comfortable. Left again, a guy in his fifties, wavy hair, sitting back and enjoying it all. Another guy with a moustache. And then two younger guys, teenagers or early twenties, who didn’t look like they saw the sun much. Brett Maverick chic wasn’t for them – they favoured leisurewear, and sat hunched over their chips, just as Gollum crouches over his Precious.

This wasn’t their first time in the poker rooms of Vegas, but it was mine. I felt like Hawkeye walking into the Huron camp, but without Daniel Day-Lewis’ bedroom eyes. My eyes were more of the Tex Avery out-on-stalks-in-blind-terror type of eyes, something that may have been picked up by the opposition. I played for maybe an hour, never without any real idea of what was going on at any particular time. Playing at home, it was different. Online it’s different again, because you don’t have to worry about tells. In Vegas, in the arena, even at the baby infants level arena, I was out of my depth.

I was hung, drawn, quartered, skilleted, filleted, strung up, cut down, sliced, diced, shook up, shaken down, taken for a ride, led up the garden path and made offers I couldn’t refuse. I was carried out on my shield when all my dough was done and spent the rest of the night drinking sodas and looking at the fountains. And now, one year on, I’m going back, to see if the lesson was worth the price. What can I tell you? Vegas is that kind of place.





Technorati Tags: poker, WSOP

Mind Games

Poker isn’t a card game. It’s a head game. It’s a duel, where the cards take the place of the flintlock pistols. The cards don’t matter when the head is right, and when the head isn’t right the best hand in the world won’t stop the singing of the Undertaker Song.

Living proof of that this week in Las Vegas – where else? – at the World Series of Poker, the WSOP. To the outsider, it looked like Hoyt Boyle lost his reason, prior to his losing his all. He made a crazy call on the river against a hand that he never looked good to beat, and then John Sherman took out his bowie knife, cut out Boyle’s heart and posted it home to Gary, IN.

How did it happen? Boyle didn’t lose his head in the last hand – he had it taken from him an hour before that, when there were four others sitting at the table. It just took those sixty minutes for the penny to drop.

Boyle had been doing so well. He’s not a pro – he’s just a guy that played a little in college, played with the boys after work every Thursday payday, and then really got stuck in when online poker took off at the start of the 21st Century. Now he was in Vegas, courtesy of one of the online companies, playing in the Big Time and loving it.

John Sherman is no stranger to the big time, and has been playing as a pro since he started shaving daily. His reputation isn’t that of the old school gent and he doesn’t care. A dollar bill has yet to display feelings, and that’s fine with Sherman. He was the man everybody else was watching at the table. Especially when he gutted the hapless Hoyt Boyle.

The game is Texas Hold ‘Em, but what makes it particularly terrifying is that the betting has no limit. You can bet anything from ten bucks to ten thousand, and it’s a dizzying thing to push ten grand into the middle of a card table and know that it might never be coming back.

It was very dizzying for Hoyt Boyle. He’d been doing so well, only going on gold and pulling more than one clicker when he should have got a spanking. So when he saw the two eights in the pocket, he bet five hundred with some level of confidence.

A level of confidence that quickly evaporated when Sherman saw the five hundred, and kicked it up to five thousand.

Four thousand, five hundred simoleons to stay in the game. And with three rounds of betting left. What would the final bill be if it didn’t work out? How much could he afford to lose?

Not that much. Hoyt Boyle folded. John Sherman smiled at him, and casually flicked up his hole cards. The seven of hearts, the two of clubs. Nothing. He was sniggering as he pulled in the pot. Hello Rube – welcome to the big time.

So one hour later, after another player’s hand being almost good enough restored Hoyt’s nerve a little, he was ready when he drew ace-jack. By this time there was only Hoyt and Sherman left, Sherman with a considerable advantage in chips, but Hoyt still alive. Hoyt bet five hundred. Sherman called, but didn’t raise. The flop came two, ace, jack, all diamonds.

Hoyt had a high two pair, and two shots at filling a house. Sherman hadn’t bet – there was no way, surely, Sherman could beat aces and jacks? That sniggering SOB was never sitting on a diamond flush. Hoyt bet a grand.

Sherman saw, and raised fifteen thousand and fifty. It was the fifty that probably did it. Hoyt had fifteen thousand left in front of him, stacked neatly and easy for Sherman to count. The extra fifty was a goad, and a goad that worked. It was like he was saying “Come prove that I haven’t filled that diamond flush, boy.” Hoyt went all in, and turned up his ace and jack.

Sherman didn’t turn any diamonds. Unfortunately, he did turn a pair of twos. Trip twos, never lose. Fourth Street was the eight of clubs, the river the suicide king and that was the end of Hoyt Boyle, of Gary, IN. Sherman moved on to the next table, Hoyt moved on to the bar.

“For me, it stung, but for him it was nothing personal, you know?” Hoyt told me. “That’s why poker is played in Vegas, I guess. You need cold blood to survive in the desert, like the lizards and geckos. You need cold blood to play this game too. Nothing else will save you.”





Technorati Tags: mind games, poker, WSOP