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Losing, and Winning, in the ‘Big Game’
In October and November I began making forays into the “Big Game” at the Bellagio, a high-stakes affair seemingly always in progress. The first four of these occasions I won almost $500,000 without a single loss. Then, in December, I played three more times over a weekend and lost $176,000. After arriving in Vegas that Friday night, I should have gone straight to bed, but instead lost $80,000. Saturday, still tired and off my game, I lost another $43,000, and finally, on Sunday, I risked all the remaining cash I had in town, about $53,000 or so, and lost that. My thinking on risking the last $53,000 was that I didn’t want to have a losing trip in the Big Game! Tough weekend, but it was fun. And bad as it was, it didn’t wipe out the $500,000 I had won earlier.
Playing in a poker game where you can win or lose that much in one night is always exciting, but I especially enjoyed the camaraderie with some of the people I used to play high-limit poker with back in the 1990s. Great players like Johnny Chan, Jennifer Harmon Traniello, Doyle Brunson, David “Chip” Reese, Gus Hansen, Chau Giang, Eli Ezra, and Barry Greenstein. That weekend I did manage to win a few pots, one of them a big Hold ’em hand vs. Traniello.
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2006: What a Year, So Far
Last month, I was emcee of the W Las Vegas Hotel, Casino and Residences event held at the Sundance Film Festival. I had flown from the heat of Miami to the frigid mountains of Utah. At Sundance, where there were also stars galore, I joined the 50 players who opened the event. After all, first prize at Sundance was a $700,000 condo, and since I wasn’t getting paid to comment, I wanted a shot at winning it.
The event had attracted a huge audience, and the final table included Annie Duke, Chris Masterson, Shannon Elizabeth, Gina Gershon, W Las Vegas Hotel founder Reagan Silber and me. Through most of the tournament I had been paying scant attention to playing poker since I was teasing all the stars in the room and announced key pots at all five tables. For the first three hours of play, I looked at barely 40 percent of my own hands. I mean, I was in Sundance for the microphone, the mingling, the ambiance, and to watch a few films.
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Sundance Poker Festival
One night I played emcee at A-Rod’s star-studded charity event in Miami, teasing the likes of Jay-Z, Beyonce and Tom Brady (which I wrote about in my last column). The very next night, I was the emcee at the W Las Vegas Hotel, Casino and Residences poker event at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City. In Miami, I drank nothing and didn’t play in the tournament, but at Sundance I drank Dom Perignon and joined the 50-player event. After all, first prize at Sundance was a $700,000 Las Vegas condo, to be built in 2008, and since I wasn’t getting paid to comment, I wanted a shot at winning it.
The event at Park City had a great vibe, with a huge audience watching players like Laura Prepon, Shannon Elizabeth, Gina Gershon, Danny and Chris Masterson, Kevin Smith, Emile Hersch, Good Charlotte’s Benji and Joel Madden, Dave Navarro (with Carmen Electra sitting behind him), Lance Bass, DJ AM, Summer Altice, Anne Heche, and poker pros Annie Duke, Phil Gordon, Phil “the Unabomber” Laak, and Antonio “the Magician” Esfandiari, to name a few. The crowd was watching us play in a huge white tent, with a DJ and video monitors covering the action.
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A Hot Time for a Worthy Cause
Under an expansive white tent in the back yard of a spectacular private mansion on the water in Miami Beach, a rapper recently won a pot. “Young free, cruising down the Westside Highway … Just me and my girlfriend,” I sang over the PA system. There were a few chuckles from those who recognized this lyric from a rap song by Jay-Z. You see, I was good-naturedly needling the Jay-Z himself, who won the pot, and his girlfriend, Beyonce, who was sitting behind him.
I was in Miami as emcee for the “Alex Rodriguez Hosts the Dewar’s 12 Texas Hold ’em Poker Tournament” for A-Rod and his charity of choice, The Boys and Girls Clubs of Miami. And what a lineup for me to tease and lay props on! Among the celebrities were New England quarterback Tom Brady, Jay-Z and Beyonce, Evander “The Real Deal” Holyfield, slugger Sammy Sosa, NFL defensive MVP Ed Reed, NY Giant Jeremy Shockey, NCAA football and NFL champion Bernie Kosar and NCAA basketball and NBA champion Glen Rice, so smooth dropping shots from way downtown.
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A Busy Day for Annie Duke
Recently, UltimateBet.com held a $1 million guaranteed no-limit Hold ’em tournament. Surprisingly — for a guarantee of that size — the buy-in was only $500. Incredibly, there were 2,774 players, and the prize pool was a whopping $1.387 million. First place was $260,000, pretty amazing for a $500 buy-in poker tournament. Only on the Internet!
Joe Reitman, who didn’t even know he was playing that day, was handed a laptop in bed by his girlfriend, Annie Duke. He responded by saying “Annie, leave me alone, I’m trying to sleep.” Duke replied, “Phil Hellmuth is playing, and I can’t because I’m doing the final-table commentary, time-delayed. So I want at least a chance to win some of that “gi-normous” prize pool. Honey, you’re playing!”
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Norrie and His Chums Jet West
Welcome to our New Year’s no-limit Hold ’em poker tournament on my friends Carl and Jimmy Lou Westcott’s Challenger 604 jet. The buy-in is as high as the 45,000-foot altitude we hit as we head from Vail to Los Angeles for the Rose Bowl. (Nah, it was $20.) Although the buy-in is modest, the company is another matter. Jimmy Lou, Chart and Court Westcott, Pam and David Norrie, and I begin our no-limit Hold ’em tournament with $500 apiece in chips.
Former UCLA quarterback and current ESPN college football announcer David Norrie takes an early chip lead in the six-player affair. David knows a little something about Texas Hold ’em, having played a lot of poker at the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles in the 1990s. Of course, David knows a little something about Rose Bowls as well, because he played under center in the 1983, 1984 and 1986 Rose Bowls.
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