Upper West Side World Series of Poker Day 1
spies
That had to be some kind of omen, I'm sure, but I ignored it and
boarded the next flight out of town anyway. There is a line from
Positively Fifth Street we often quote to each other, about how every
time a plane leaves for Vegas from Ohare, a little piece of my heart
goes with it.
The guy next to me on the plane was enormous. He had a shaved bald
head and a chinstrap beard and hoop earrings. He looked like a giant
black pirate. He noticed me reading "How Good Is Your Pot Limit
Omaha?" and asked "do you play poker?"
"Yes, I play poker. Do you?"
"Actually, I play Texas Hold'Em."
This guy wasn't the first person to distinguish for me Texas
Hold'Em from the more generic 'poker.' To this guy, and
countless others entering our sick, sick world, the game of Texas
Hold'Em has more reverence than garden variety 'poker.'
'Poker' is what you play in your kitchen. Texas Hold'Em is what
you play on ESPN.
"You must be going out for the tournament then?" I asked him.
"What tournament?"
Great. Just great.
This is what really perplexes me about our yearly pilgrimage to the
World Series of Poker. Here next to me on the plane is just the kind
of donkey I need to be playing against, yet probably won't be. I
take every penny of my bankroll and some more money I probably can't
afford to lose with me to Vegas once a year for the WSOP and risk it
against the best players in the entire world. Why? How on earth is
that good game selection?
It has to have something to do with a feeling of belonging, of
membership in this deranged community. As I walked in to the
gargantuan arena that serves as this year's playing field, I can't
tell you how little I felt I belonged.
The railbirds were heavy in full force, all railbirding the usual
suspects: Negreanau, Lederer, Raymer, Fischman, Duke, Matusow, all
easily identifiable by their ill-fitting basketball jerseys with their
last names spelled in 8 inch letters across the back. In the crowd
guys with "Im all in" t-shirts excitedly point and say "there's
David Williams! Get a picture of him!" "What is this, Omaha? I need
to watch this to see how this works." "Who is Jim Meehan?"
Minneapolis Jim Meehan is only the guy with the healthy stack of chips
in the final two tables of the Omaha 8 tournament when I walk up to the
rail, and he's adding to it with gusto. I heard a short while ago he
was chip leader at the final table, going on as I write this, and it
doesn't surprise me. Jim the Nit is an unsung hero of this game, one
who doesn't have and probably doesn't want his name across his
shirt in 8 inch letters.
I go sit down and play a $225 satellite, hoping to win some lammers to
get into this Friday's $2k No Limit event. This is the event we
timed our trip this year for. The event we all plan on taking a stab
at. This is going to be my first ever shot at a bracelet. But I want
in as cheaply as possible, and so I must try a satellite.
Or two, I suppose, as my three 9s are obliterated by a straight and
I'm crippled in chips. So I buy in for another, and last a little
longer but the same result, zero lammers. I try one more and finally
cry uncle. Its late in New York and I have yet to eat anything today
but an apple.
I go to the Horseshoe where we are staying for the next couple of
nights (John met me out here early, and he convinced his friend Keith
to come as well) until the gang gets in to town and we move over to the
Mirage.
The sad thing is that I always wanted to stay at the Horseshoe during
the WSOP, and now that the tourney has moved, I finally can. I'd
rather be anywhere but here, though. This place is just a poker
mortuary, a fucking morgue. The poker room is sad enough, empty and
quiet and not even all that smokey. The alley outside, once filled
with excited smoking poker players regaling each other with bad beat
stories and crackheads begging for change, is now only filled with
crackheads. Benny's Bullpen, once the most exciting place in the
world for 6 weeks a year, is now home to the Vinnie Favoritio comedy
revue. The worst part of all is that for some unknown reason,
Harrah's has stripped the name Horseshoe from the chips, the walls,
the shirts in the giftshop, and is in the process of stripping it from
the signs outside, opting for just "Binion's." Criminal.
This whole scene kinda makes me sick. The popularity could be great, I
suppose, but the whitebread corporatizing of this game is a real drag.
Where is the mystique? Where is the danger? Where is the allure of the
seedy backroom, the wiseguy card sharp, the Texas road gambler?
Getting your aces cracked by a twangy old cowboy who pats you on the
back and tells you "the sun will even shine on a dog's ass every
once in a while" is far preferable to getting them cracked by some
goateed frat boy who wears sunglasses inside and tells you how some bad
beat story about his aces getting cracked in the $215 on Stars last
week.
I'm shelling out two grand for the tournament on Friday, and taking a
shot at glory, demons begone. I won't be wearing sunglasses unless
they make us sit outside away from the shade. I hope I can keep my
composure and chip my way to the money, but mostly I just want to feel
like I belong. Barring that, I may not ever play again.
But the Upper West Side World Series is happening on Sunday, and I can
always make a good showing in that. There are some 15 people coming
this year for our yearly capers. I'll report on it nightly
godwilling.
Dave Hill
www.meatmachine.org/poker
Tanya AKA misst74
Dave,
I loved your report, and your style of writing. I feel exactly the same way as
you do. Hope I meet you this weekend, registered already for the $2K myself.
Tanya Peck
MissT74
> <a href="http://www.meatmachine.org/poker" target="_blank">www.meatmachine.org/poker</a>
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Howard Beale
Nice post. I share many of your sentiments. The "clubyness" of poker is
something that I've always enjoyed, the shared feeling you have with
another aficianado. Now it's mainstreamed and the vulgarians have
arrived. They've been playing online for a year and now consider
themselves the hip, cool ones even though they look like clones and moo
like a herd of love sick bovines over their favorite "name" players. It's
good for the game but lousy for the atmosphere.
Howard Beale
"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
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