A Festival of Poker 
by Lou Krieger
(July 2003)

Here I am, to use a term recently come to fashion, embedded in poker. And why not? It's springtime in Las Vegas, and that usually means only one thing, the World Series of Poker. But there's a difference this year. It's hot, it's new, and it's made for TV. It's the finals of the World Poker Tour. This pricey addition to poker's tournament circuit is a four-day, no-limit Texas Hold'em event featuring a $25,000 buy-in. That's two-and-a-half times the cost of entering poker's big kahuna, the $10,000 buy-in, no-limit Hold'em tournament at the World Series of Poker, scheduled to begin just as the World Poker Tour wraps up its inaugural season.  

In Texas Hold'em, each player is dealt two cards face down and then has a chance to bet before three shared cards called the flop are turned face up on the table. Another round of betting takes place and two more community cards are exposed, one at a time, with a round of betting in between. The player making the best five-card hand from the seven available cards wins the pot. As opposed to limit Hold'em, in which betting limits are fixed, in a no-limit game any player can wager all his chips at any time. It's not a game for the faint-hearted. 

Not only does it cost more to ante up for the finals of the WPT, but viewers who watch it on the Travel Channel will see something unique. Aside from mountains of chips moving in and out of the pot, they'll see each player's hole cards, courtesy of some very neat, cutting-edge technology. As a result, the audience will know what the competitors won't: who's bluffing and who really has the goods. Wouldn't life be sweet if you had that kind of an edge in your weekly poker game? 

By the final day only a handful of competitors remain. They're the players who will be seen by the Travel Channel's audience, and this group includes a few poker legends, a few of poker's young guns, and one player who's a complete unknown to most of the cognoscenti. The reigning legend is Doyle Brunson, two-time winner of the $10,000 buy-in, no-limit Hold'em event at the World Series of Poker and holder of a record nine WSOP bracelets. He's a legendary Texas road gambler whose career spans poker's modern era of brightly-lit casinos as well as the bygone days of dingy hotel rooms where cattle barons matched wits with guys who traveled around from town to town looking for the biggest games they could find. Back in their salad days, Brunson and his ilk honed their poker skills in that kind of crucible.

Ted Forrest is another legend of sorts. Though younger than Brunson by quite a few years, Forrest earned a reputation as one of Las Vegas' best cash game players. And some of these cash games come with betting limits of $500-$1,000 or more, where any given hand might be big enough to pay off the mortgage on your house, and you're likely to see more than $1 million in chips on the table. 

Phil Ivey, with his eyes continuously darting about the table, is a young gun who has been tearing up the tournament circuit of late. He may be young, but he's got the right stuff, as any cursory glance at his recent results will attest. Alan Goehring is a player who made his mark a few years ago, finishing second to Ireland's Noel Furlong in the finals of the World Series of Poker. Since that breakthrough performance, he's a force to be reckoned with in any tournament he enters. The wild card is Kirill Gerasimov, from Moscow, Russia. He's the guy trying to build a lumberyard out of a toothpick. Gerasimov won a $125 buy-in satellite to gain entry into a super-satellite. He won that too, and along with it the opportunity to parlay his initial buy-in into the cool $1 million dollars that will be awarded the winner.

No limit Hold'em is like a calm sea punctuated by occasional tidal waves, and one occurs when Doyle Brunson bluffs at the pot by betting all of his chips with Q-8 in his hand. Ted Forrest ponders, and ponders, and ponders, wondering whether Doyle really has a big hand or is simply making an aggressive move at the pot. Forrest finally calls, figuring that this pot will be played heads-up against Doyle, and that the ace and jack he holds in his hand will prevail. He can't be happy when Alan Goehring calls too. Since Doyle and Ted are all-in, there's no further betting and the players all turn their hands face-up. Alan holds a pair of jacks. Doyle needs a queen to jump out of the deck to save his bacon, while Ted is praying for an ace. But the shared cards bring no help to either of them. Alan's pair of jacks survives, and he eliminates two of poker's legends with one deft stroke.

Shortly after Brunson and Forrest are dispatched, Phil Ivey's ace-queen is dominated by Kirill's ace-king. An ace with a queen is usually a terrific starting hand in Texas Hold'em, but it's toast when your adversary holds an
ace with a king. After all, only a queen can save the dominated hand, because an ace will work in favor of the hand with the better side card, in this case, the king, and the fellow holding ace-queen is drawing dead to all but three of the remaining queens in the deck. Ivey, a big underdog in this confrontation, gets no miracle from the deck, and is eliminated in third place. It's a nice payday to be sure, but not what poker's hottest young star was hoping for. 

Now it's heads-up, mano-a-mano poker between a guy who was the bridesmaid in poker's oldest and most prestigious tournament and a young Russian with an uncanny resemblance to Rounder's star Matt Damon. Gerasimov's story is rags-to-riches, Horatio Alger revisited, as it were, since the Russian was fortunate enough, and good enough, to gain entry to this regal event for the most unprincely sum of $125, an amount of money that won't even buy you a night's stay in the host hotel. They duel back and forth for a while with the lead changing hands on more than one occasion. Then, with Alan in the lead, though the chip counts are close, the improbable, almost unbelievable, deciding hand occurs. It was a fitting conclusion to the first season of made-for-TV poker, though it's more the stuff one expects from Hollywood than from real poker itself.

The lead seesaws back and forth on every betting round, and that's something you rarely see in a poker game. Kirill is ahead before the flop, though just barely, holding 8-6 to Alan's 8-5. The flop was 8-5-4, propelling Goehring into the lead on this betting round with two pair. But Kirill still has some life with top pair, a draw to a straight, as well as a chance to pair his side card. With Kirill all-in, there's no more wagering so both hands are turned up for the audience to see.

As the crowd gasps, the turn card brings forth a miracle for Gerasimov. It's a seven, giving him an eight-high straight. But the final card is another miracle; only this time it's Alan's. An eight falls, giving him a full house, a million-dollar payoff, and the World Poker Tour championship in its initial year. You couldn't ask for a more dramatic finish, particularly when the lead swung back and forth on each betting round only to end with the crescendo of a full house skewering a straight. But it's all good for Kirill too. After all, parlaying $125 into half-a-million wasn't bad for a week's work. 

Now, let's fast forward to mid-May. In the intervening weeks I returned home to Palm Springs to finish up my new book, and returned to Las Vegas in time for the WSOP's main event. But first there's the media tournament, a no-limit Hold'em event designed to give members of the working press the look and feel of a real tournament. Rather than costing $10,000, the buy-in is gratis, but you don't stand to win two million dollars. Instead, the winner gets to designate a recipient charity of his or her choice. Because I'm the best-known poker player among the media representatives at my table, I'm the big favorite. But the chalk doesn't hold and I'm eliminated after twice taking the best hand to the river, only to lose when an opponent makes two pair to best my top pair. 

Monday, May 19, marks the beginning of the $10,000 buy-in, no-limit Texas Hold'em event, and this year's event tops all prior events for sheer size as 839 players, a record and by a wide margin too, have entered. Poker tables are shoehorned into what is normally aisle space and poker will be played in the aisles until enough players bust out and remaining contestants can be moved to other tables. To give you an idea of poker's growing popularity, when I last covered the WSOP for this magazine in 1997, everyone was ga-ga over the size of the field, a then record 315 entrants. Now, six years later, it has grown to nearly 2.7 times that size. 

Although this five-day event will not really generate a lot of spectator excitement until the final table, each player who is eliminated will have his or her own exciting tale to tell. While the surviving players deal with the long, marathon middle of poker's premier event, we'll take you back to the beginnings of the World Series of Poker, which began humbly enough in 1970, as a small gathering of top poker professionals invited to the Horseshoe by the late Benny Binion to play a few friendly games of poker at very high stakes. When the dust cleared, the assemblage cast votes for the player to be named world's champion. Johnny Moss, who passed away in 1996 and was still a competitive force among poker players in his 89th year, was chosen. Moss was a fitting choice, for Johnny Moss and his old friend Benny Binion can take most of the credit for popularizing poker in Las Vegas.  

Moss, the Grand Old Man of Poker, was an old-time Texas road gambler, a breed made redundant by the proliferation of casinos and legalized poker rooms. Back in 1949, however, only Nevada had legal gaming. That's when the legendary gambler Nick "the Greek" Dandalos came to town. The Greek wanted to play no-limit poker, and he wanted to play against a single opponent. Benny Binion agreed to host the game, and there was no question in his mind about the man for the job. He immediately called Johnny Moss, who caught the next plane from Dallas, took a cab to Binion's Horseshoe, and sat down to a friendly game with Nick the Greek. Binion positioned the table near the casino's entrance, and the crowds, intrigued by the biggest game the town had ever seen, stood five and six deep to watch. The confrontation between Moss and Dandalos lasted five months, punctuated by breaks for sleep every four days. In the end Nick the Greek, who had broken all the gamblers on the East Coast including mobster Arnold Rothstein, stood up from the table, smiled and said: "Mr. Moss, I have to let you go." Over that five-month period Johnny Moss had beaten Nick Dandalos for more than $2 million. 

In 1970 Benny Binion decided to recapture that magic by inviting the top professionals to play in public. Five games were played at the inaugural World Series of Poker. Johnny Moss won them all. He won again in 1971, and when he captured the title a third time in 1974, the legend of Johnny Moss and the World Series of Poker were forever linked. Since it's relatively modest beginnings, the World Series of Poker has grown exponentially. From five events in 1970, it's grown to a 35-event, five-week long tournament. The grand finale, the $10,000 buy-in, no-limit Texas Hold'em tournament creates a prize pool sufficiently sized to reward the winner with $2.5 million and still pay the top 63 finishers too. 

At the end of the first day's competition 385 players remain, and more than half the field, 454 to be exact, have been eliminated. This makes for a nice, and still extremely large, four-day event in which the average chip count per player is now $21,972. Many top competitors, players with lifetime winnings of more than $1,000,000 at the World Series of Poker, were ousted on day one, including last year's champion Robert Varkonyi, nine-time WSOP event winner Doyle Brunson, Dewey Tomko, Layne Flack, Mel Judah, Erik Seidel, Huck Seed, John Bonetti, and Jay Heimowitz. These nine WSOP millionaires would fill a poker table tough enough that anyone else sitting in would be a huge underdog. 

But that's poker. To make it through this marathon, one must take risks. And sometimes the best hands get beaten and top players are eliminated. While 144 players still remain by 9 p.m. on the second day, the aisles are no longer filled, and all the remaining players have been moved upstairs to the poker tournament area. Among the living are former two-time champ Johnny Chan, his trademark orange partially peeled in a cup in front of him, noted high stakes player Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey, who won three events in last year's series, and former world champion Phil Hellmuth.

Day two ends at midnight with 111 players set to play tomorrow. After two long, grueling days of poker no one has yet won a thing, and 48 players must be eliminated before anyone is in the money, which will be $15,000 for those squeaking into the last few places. Amir Vehadi, winner of this year's $1,500 buy-in, no-limit hold'em event that paid him $270,000, is currently the tournament's chip leader with $303,400. He's trailed by Bryan Watkins with $247,900, former world champ Scotty Nguyen with $214,300 is in third place, Howard Lederer is in fourth with $204,800, Kassam Deeb is in fifth with $194,900 and Phil Ivey is in sixth place with $163,500. 

Day two also saw the elimination of a number of notables, including former world champs Tom McEvoy, Jim Bechtel, and Chris Ferguson. T.J. Cloutier, who is second in all-time money won at the World Series, and multiple-event winner Daniel Negreanu were also knocked out. And linked together again as if by destiny are Alan Goehring and Kirill Gerasimov. The two men who dueled it out at the World Poker Tour Championship a few weeks ago are eliminated one right after the other. As day three begins, the average number of chips per player is $75,585, and only 46 men and one woman, Annie Duke, are at par or better. 

   On day three Annie Duke, the tournament's lone remaining female is eliminated, along with Johnny Chan. The new chip leader is France's Bruno Fituoussi with $617,000, who is trailed by former world champions Scotty Nguyen and Phil Hellmuth. The day's most humorous moment occurred when Scotty Nguyen stands up from his seat and announces to the gallery, "this may be the craziest thing I've ever done," and raises Costa Rica's Humberto Brenes $100,000. Brenes goes into deep-think for what seems to be an eternity and finally folds his hand. Scotty shows his hand to the watching crowd. As they gasp at his total bluff with 8-3, he playfully says to the crowd, "I thought we were playing blackjack. I was gonna double-down." 

Day four begins with 45 players at five tables. Everyone is now in the money, but the day will be long and grueling, lasting as long as it takes to eliminate all but nine players who will return tomorrow to play at the final table. The penultimate day is as fickle as it is lengthy, fraught with pitfalls, as nine-time event winner Phil Hellmuth can attest to. One of the favorites, he is eliminated when he goes all-in with a pair of queens. His opponent holds a pair of jacks, making Hellmuth a rather large favorite to win that confrontation. But Hellmuth is sent packing when his foe catches one of the deck's two remaining jacks on the river. By 3:05 a.m. Friday the final table is set. Going into the last day, Southern California poker pro Amir Vahedi has $1,407,000 in chips, but he is in second place, trailing Chris Moneymaker who has $2,334,000.

He's the tournament's big story. This is Moneymaker's first live action tournament, and he earned his way into the world championship the modern way. Chris Moneymaker won a satellite at PokerStars.com, an online poker casino that may represent poker's hi-tech, cutting edge - live play against real players 24/7 on the Internet. Chris did what so many players worldwide seem to be up to these days. They log onto an online poker casino and play real poker, for real money, against opponents who may be next door or in another hemisphere. His friends may call him "Money," but the 27 year old from Spring Hill, Tennessee still works two jobs to support his wife and young baby. Money, nevertheless, has run a $40 buy-in at a PokerStars.com online tournament into a commanding lead and his improbable ascendancy is poker's feel-good story of the year.  

Play begins at 2:00 in the afternoon. By 8:45 that evening, Amir Vahedi, who's seen his once imposing stack of chips bleed away during the past six hours, bluffs at a flop that contains an ace and a queen. Houston businessman Sam Farha, with an ace and a five in his hand, calls instantly. Vahedi is eliminated and Farha becomes the table's new chip leader with more than $3 million stacked in front of him. Moneymaker has $2 million and is in second place, while former champ Dan Harrington is the poor relation with only $1 million. 

Money takes a big pot a few minutes later when Dan Harrington bets $90,000, Chris calls, and is raised by expedition guide Tomer Benvenisti, who bets his last $490,000. Harrington folds, but Chris calls with ace-deuce and a flop of A-8-8 gives him two pair. Tomer, who raised with J-T, picks up a straight draw when a nine is dealt, but another nine on the river doesn't help him and Chris Moneymaker adds an additional $680,000 to his chips by hand's end. 

At 12:50 a.m. Harrington is eliminated. Moneymaker and Farha go at it heads-up for nearly 40 minutes before the final confrontation occurs. The flop is J-5-4 and Farha, with a jack in his hand, bets it all, more than $1 million in chips. Chris, who is holding a five and four in his hand, giving him two pair, calls in a flash and holds his breath as the dealer turns the final two cards face up, an eight and a five. Suddenly, after five long days, it's over. Moneymaker's full house gives him the championship and a first place prize of $2,500,000, while Farha consoles himself with $1,300,000 for second place. 

Chris Moneymaker jumps for joy, then hugs his father who had flown in from Tennessee to watch his son play at the final table. Money is a larger than life, improbable story come true. Not only does he have the world's best name for a poker player, but until this event he had never played in a "live" poker tournament. All his experience had been gained online. 

   Moneymaker, who donated $25,000 of his winnings to cancer research, said that being an unknown was advantageous for him. "I was underestimated because no one knew who I was, and if I can win it, anybody can." 

   By the time the press conference concluded it was late and I was facing a four-hour drive from Las Vegas to Palm Springs. I knew I wouldn't arrive home until dawn. But that's OK. As tired as I might have been, I was still jazzed from all that poker and I knew the feeling would carry me all the way home. As I drove off into the dawn of a new day, I thought about all that poker; the amazing hand that allowed Goehring to eliminate Gerasimov in the finals of the World Poker Tour's inaugural 2003 season, and how Chris Moneymaker emerged from a $40 Internet event to play his first live tournament ever and beat 839 players over five days, winning $2,500,000 and poker's most prestigious event in the process.  

Moneymaker was probably flying home to Tennessee at the same time I was driving across the desert, and I wondered how he must have been feeling. After all, a 62,500 times return on investment makes for a nice week's work, never mind the fact that he's sitting on top of the poker world after playing a grand total of just one live tournament. It's as incredible a story as it is an improbable one, and it's nice to realize that the age of miracles is still with us, even if it's just at the poker table. For all of us who also came to Las Vegas with dreams of spinning straw into gold, or running forty bucks into two-point-five mil, all we can do is take solace in a saying losing baseball teams have been spouting for more than a century, "Wait Œtill next year." 

- Visit Lou at www.loukrieger.com. His Poker For Dummies and Internet Poker: How to Play and Beat Online Poker Games are available at major bookstores and online at www.ConJelCo.com and www.Amazon.com.