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The Big One at the Bike
This year the $5,000 buy-in World Poker Tour (WPT) tournament at the Bicycle Club in Los Angeles brought out more than 800 entrants (with a first place of $1.1 million). This championship finale, capping a one-month-long series of tournaments in August, has some serious history and prestige, and has been on all the top poker players’ schedules for 17 years running. And that prize pool has changed over those years! Way back when, in 1988, I won this event and a whopping $145,000, out of a prize pool of $365,000. In 1989, I finished in third place, and the prize pool had already risen to $800,000. But about 1996, that upward trend reversed course, and by 2001 a mere 32 players entered, fighting for a prize pool of just $160,000.
Of course, in 2005, with 816 players, the prize pool was $4,07 million! With that many players, we had to have a split two-day start, and I drew day one. I made it through Saturday (day 1), and came back to face the other 301 players on Monday. Things didn’t go well for me in the first couple of hours of play, and my starting chip stack of $24,000 was now down to $8,200.
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Hitting a ‘Gutshot’ in London
Before I get into it, you should know that, from here on in, all the words and phrases in this column surrounded by quotes are the — much beloved by me — local London lingo. For those of you who’ve already guessed it, “bloody right,” this piece is about a little UK poker!
While in London last weekend shooting three parts of a reality show (the “UltimatePoker.com Showdown” on Channel 5), I thought it would be a treat to make an appearance at a poker club, out of respect and “honour” for the United Kingdom’s poker scene and its players. So at 3 a.m. on Sunday night, after filming the reality show’s finale, I strolled into the Gutshot Club in London’s west end to say hello. By the way, a “gutshot” is an inside-straight draw, or more precisely, a one-card straight draw. (You may remember when your granddaddy told you, “Never draw to an inside-straight,” and wondered what he meant.)
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Phil’s Charity Tournament
I guess everyone who’s been watching the Katrina TV coverage is as shaken up as I am. To do something about it, I decided to host a charity poker tournament at UltimateBet.com (UB) for the Red Cross Hurricane Relief Fund last weekend. With a $300 buy-in, $150 of that going to charity, and UB matching all donations, and with 1994 World Champion Russ Hamilton and I matching up to $10,000 each in donations, I asked a few of my celebrity friends to give us some special prize packages.
So there were tennis great Andy Roddick and me giving back-to-back hour-long lessons (he in tennis and me in poker) in Austin — a nice first prize. Then we had “Hollywood Home Poker Game” with “That 70s Show” stars Laura Preppon and Danny Masterson, “Malcolm in the Middle” star Chris Masterson, and poker legend Johnny Chan giving lessons to the stars and to our contest winner during the game; “Lunch with Troy Aikman” in Dallas; lunch with actress Jennifer Tilly, and with poker stars Phil “The Unabomber” Laak and Antonio Esfandiari in Los Angeles; two press-box passes with ESPN color commentator and UCLA Rose Bowl quarterback David Norrie; a golf lesson with golf great Corey Pavin in San Diego; lunch with poker great Annie Duke in Los Angeles; a one-hour poker lesson with poker great T.J. Cloutier in Dallas; and another one-hour poker lesson with Esfandiari. To all of you “Stars,” your donations are deeply appreciated — they really made the event special!
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Phil Gordon’s ‘Thirty Miles’
“Celebrity Poker Showdown”‘s co-host, Phil Gordon, can really hustle. He has books coming out, business interests to watch out for, and his TV show to shoot. He’ll be making so many personal appearances during the rest of 2005 that he’ll only have time to play a few poker tournaments. But Gordon misses playing big-time poker tournaments! I know the feeling. It’s hard to be a businessman, promoter and writer, and still maintain your poker schedule, which, is, after all, how we made our names.
Gordon and I, along with all of the other top poker players in the world, share a love for the World Series of Poker (WSOP). All of the great players, in fact, keep that six-week stretch open each year, so as to focus on winning gold bracelets and making additional poker history. During that six-week stretch, you can play in a meaningful event almost every day. The rest of the year, you have to fly to Reno, Paris, Atlantic City, Connecticut, Mississippi or somewhere else far away just to play in one meaningful tournament; and no matter how good you are, you’re a long shot to win it, because the tournament will be fielding 800 players.
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Matusow Exploits Tell to Cripple Opponent’s Stack
Given one “TV table” for ESPN at the 2005 World Series of Poker (WSOP), who would you choose to play on that table: “Table A” with Mike “The Mouth” Matusow and nine unknown amateurs, or “Table B” with Hall-of-Famers Phil Ivey and John Juanda, alongside great players Can Hua and Farzad “Freddy” Bonyadi? Not surprisingly, ESPN chose the mouth and the nine amateurs.
Poker is about entertainment these days, and whether Matusow ever reaches the Hall of Fame, he is certainly entertaining to watch. You never know whether he will laugh or break down and cry, needle someone else, do the now famous “Matusow blow up” (giving away all of his chips in one fell swoop after days of great play), or get in a verbal fight with another player, resulting in a 10-minute penalty for him and the other player.
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So You Want to Make a Deal?
With about six players left in the $5,000 buy-in championship event at Harrah’s “Carnavale of Poker” in January 2000, 1999 Card Player magazine “Player of the Year” Hieu “Tony” Ma whispered to me, “Phil, how sweet is it for you that this Frenchman keeps moving all-in pre-flop. You’re going to bust him for sure!” At the time I smiled and nodded at Tony; I too believed that Angelo Besnainou (the Frenchman)’s chips were mine to win. I love to play against a “slider” (someone who moves ALL of his chips into the middle, regardless of blind size), because once they do slide it all in, they can’t fold when I eventually pick up a powerful hand behind them.
So when the tournament came down to Farzad “Freddy” Bonyadi, the Frenchman and me, and the two of them asked me to make a deal (deals are common in all tournaments near the end), I told the Frenchman, “No deal.” His proposal was that we would take about $200,000 apiece off the top (I had more chips and stood to receive $250,000), and play for $100,000 for first, rather than for the scheduled $400,000 for first, $200,000 for second and $100,000 for third.
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