The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King

by Michael Craig

  Despite Drache’s youthful appearance—he still wore his graying hair in the Beatle style he favored thirty years ago—he emerged from the poker boom as an elder statesman for the business. The new owners of the Golden Nugget hired him to consult in 2004 when they reopened their poker room. He also worked on a variety of other projects, including arranging some of the one-time televised poker tournaments that have sprung up during the current craze, including Fox’s Poker Superstars Invitational.

  But during the 1990s, poker in Las Vegas was dying. To some degree, the Mirage’s commitment to poker (and the Horseshoe’s emergence as the downtown poker destination for the low-stakes locals) pushed out some marginal poker rooms. For the most part, however, the Mirage was dominating a market no one else wanted.

  The Mirage became the home of many of the world’s best poker players, but even Steve Wynn’s commitment to poker was put to the test. Wynn became furious when he learned that one of his biggest baccarat players, George the Greek, had started splitting his time (and his money) between the baccarat pit and the poker room.

  Steve Wynn is a bottom-line sort of guy. A $1,000-$2,000 poker player pays the house a maximum of $10 per half-hour to play; wins and losses are between the players, not (as in the table games) between the players and the house. A $2,000-per-hand baccarat player, facing a 1 percent disadvantage, is theoretically giving the house that much per hand. At 100 baccarat hands per hour, the casino expects to make $2,000; when that player goes into the poker room, the casino gets $20.

  When Wynn heard that George had gone off for a big number in a poker game, he was beyond arguing about theoretical loss rates. He wanted to close down the poker room. “I didn’t build this place to make Doyle Brunson and Chip Reese richer,” he said. It took all of Bobby Baldwin’s persuasive ability to keep the room open, and to keep Wynn from adopting his other sanction—barring Brunson and Reese from the property.

  Ultimately, keeping the room open was a wise decision. George the Greek was originally a Caesars Palace customer. Caesars had closed its poker room when the Mirage opened. Even though George originally played poker for relatively low stakes, he took his action next door because Wynn’s property allowed him to play both baccarat and poker. The Mirage, and then the Bellagio, also built by Steve Wynn, in part out of the Mirage’s profits, have made large sums of money because big players have checked out the poker room and lost in the pits before returning to their “regular” place, or switched allegiances to the casino offering them poker along with their favorite pit games such as craps, blackjack, baccarat, or roulette. In addition, the big winners in the poker room frequently gave their profits back to the casino in the pits. Many poker pros have kept the Bellagio from winning customers’ money by taking it off them in the poker room, only to lose gigantic amounts at blackjack, craps, and sports betting.

  Wynn’s last big deal at Mirage Resorts (the name of the public company after it outgrew Golden Nugget Corporation) was building the Bellagio. Wynn was not completely committed to putting a poker room in the new resort, which would be one of the most expensive and lavish ever built in Las Vegas. Baldwin and Doug Dalton, who ran the Mirage poker room after learning the business in the 1970s and 1980s in various rooms operated by Reese, Brunson, and Drache, lobbied hard for a poker room in the new property. Dalton believed he could run poker rooms at both the Mirage and the Bellagio, and fill them both. Baldwin trusted his judgment, and argued to Wynn that poker contributed indirectly but significantly to the Mirage’s bottom line and the company’s best property, attracting its highest rollers, should have the best poker room.

  Wynn relented, and Dalton proceeded to make the poker room into a marketing tool for the resort. The carpeting and wall murals gave the room the feel of a luxurious English parlor room from the nineteenth century. Dalton promoted the room around the world, attending poker tournaments and encouraging the top players to visit.

  Dalton also brought in Jack McClelland, another Las Vegas veteran who worked with Eric Drache and Jack Binion on the World Series of Poker, as well as pioneering poker tournaments at other venues. They played an important part in starting the World Poker Tour, establishing the Bellagio as the host of the first WPT event and as the home of the season-ending WPT Championship. Dalton and McClelland had the Bellagio host other poker tournaments to show off the property and promote poker. In the current environment, the Bellagio was the closest thing poker had to a home field.

  Steve Wynn no longer has a place in this empire. He left after MGM Grand acquired Mirage Resorts in 2000. But Wynn’s influence is still apparent and many of his chief lieutenants stayed on. For Doug Dalton, Wynn’s presence is more tangible. He snagged Wynn’s last office chair from storage for the tiny office he maintains behind the poker room. The chair is so nice that Kerry Packer, the Australian media billionaire who occasionally drops by the Bellagio to gamble astronomical sums at blackjack, specifically requests it for his room.

  Despite the tremendous growth in poker’s popularity, its hold in the casino has always been tenuous. That Andy Beal wanted to play for the highest stakes in history at the Bellagio added to the poker room’s reputation, but it was still making only $20 per hour off the millions he was willing to bet. (The time charge later increased to $100 per hour, plus a similar amount to tip the casino staff. It was still just a fraction of what the casino would expect to earn if he brought, say, one-tenth the bankroll to the Bellagio, but bet it at craps, blackjack, baccarat, or roulette.)

  Kerry Packer could have Doug Dalton’s chair. For Andy Beal, Doug Dalton would get up from his chair, but only to tell Beal that the Bellagio would not change its rules for him. What he wanted interfered with Nevada regulations and the prevailing practice in Las Vegas for over thirty years. And the people most likely to complain were the high-stakes pros shut out of whatever exclusive game Beal wanted to stage, and some of them were the casino’s best customers.

  Doyle Brunson came up with the solution. Even at very high stakes, a lot of players wanted to be in a game with Andy Beal. The waiting list from the $4,000-$8,000 game the month before proved that. At those stakes and higher, players would simply sell a percentage of themselves to get into the game. Professional poker players were the ultimate independent businessmen. They had no bosses, no employees, and no set hours. But they were thinly capitalized—more so in the highest games than at the lower rungs—and their bankroll requirements could vary drastically. No one regularly played at Table One on other people’s money, but players would sometimes take a financial partner for a higher-stakes game.

  What if all the players who wanted to play Andy took a piece of one another and he played just one of them (or several of them, one at a time)? If everyone who might sit down at the table was part of the group, Andy and one player could play undisturbed. This also provided the players a financial cushion, though a few of them might play Andy at the stakes he sought on their own bankrolls and others would have simply found nonplaying financial backers.

  Doyle did not have much time to arrange this. Andy pressed his demand when he arrived at the poker room and, though he sat down to play a ring game for a little while, he insisted that he wanted to play $15,000-$30,000 and would do so only if he could play heads up. In fact, if he couldn’t play heads up, he might just go back home to Dallas.

  Brunson canvassed the other players in the game, and then called around town to reach others who could conceivably sit down in a game that size. His goal was to keep players from walking in on the game, not spreading the wealth or creating a fraternity of high-stakes players. He limited his efforts to Las Vegas players, not even inviting Todd to join because he was out of town.

  The business of presiding over a group of poker players was not something Brunson wanted to do. He took the task reluctantly and only because the circumstances required it. Beal was a new face in the poker room, someone clearly capable of losing a lot of money. Many players wanted a shot, but Andy threw a wrench in the meritocracy by insisting o
n playing heads up.

  If someone didn’t take charge, it would be bad for poker. First, Beal could leave town, giving up high-stakes poker forever or until he could get what he wanted. Apart from Brunson’s economic motive to keep that from happening, it was antithetical to how poker players operated to let anything get in the way of a game. A poker player who knows he has an edge considers his flexibility an important tool of the trade.

  Second, for Beal to get what he wanted, he risked getting hustled, which was bad for poker, bad for Beal, and bad for pros like Brunson who felt the way they comported themselves affected how other players behaved, and generally set the standard for the business. Without some means of organizing, individual players might approach Beal about playing him heads up. Because, as Jennifer Harman recognized, that wouldn’t fly in a public room, these would be private games, without the security offered by the Bellagio.

  In addition, even if everyone proposed honest heads-up contests with him, it would be open season on Andy. Some players would call him in his room to beat the competition. The next time, a player who missed out would wait in the lobby. Then someone would get a leg up by meeting him at the airport. That player would lose out to those who called him in Dallas. Yet another player might camp out in his bank’s parking lot to preempt the others. Such a competition would probably cost everybody money, especially because it is hard to imagine a new, wealthy player remaining keen on playing after such a display.

  It would be an understatement to say, however, that poker players are difficult to manage. Most chose poker because they didn’t want to be subject to anyone else’s rules. Every one of them was idiosyncratic about making financial and scheduling commitments. Although they tended to agree on strategic matters, that was merely because they all had phenomenal capacities for strategic thought. They generally had few opportunities to exchange opinions and rarely had to give in to someone else’s authority.

  Despite Brunson’s position of seniority and universal respect, he did not consider himself management material. Most of the other players weren’t even born the last time he held a conventional job. Doyle and those who loved him got a kick out of telling stories about his shortcomings in adapting his tremendous poker talents to seemingly mundane business and financial matters.

  But Doyle was the man for the job. He was regarded by friends and detractors (of which there were few, but poker players can’t agree on anything) as the king, the godfather. Now he would add another unofficial title: CEO.

  The most he could mount was a haphazard effort. Andy wanted to play at noon the next day, Wednesday, March 7, so Doyle had only Tuesday night to reach other players. Although many of the top players are friends, seeing each other several times a week and talking on the phone about travel plans, business ventures, or golf matches, poker players keep odd hours and are just not reachable sometimes. Doyle contacted and received commitments from Chip Reese, Jennifer Harman, Howard Lederer, John Hennigan, Chau Giang, and David Grey.

  He decided they should pool together $1 million. Those in the group, if they were not playing that night, had to retrieve the chips from their safe deposit boxes and give them to Doyle before noon the next day.

  That evening, Brunson explained the situation to Beal. He contacted everyone he thought might be a threat to get into the game, and though Beal would play only one opponent, that opponent would be playing his or her own money plus the money of other players in the group. This disappointed Andy a little, because he knew that even the professionals, at a certain level, would feel the pressure of the stakes, and joining forces would minimize their exposure. But his main objective was to play heads up, and he was getting his wish.

  They argued over the details. Andy wanted to choose his opponents. Doyle gave in, but asked if Chip Reese could play him first, because the match would be the next day and there was only so much time to make sure the player was available. Andy agreed.

  Andy wanted both sides to bring $1 million to the game, and Doyle agreed. He was willing to give Beal just about whatever he wanted; he expected they had a huge edge over Andy and wanted him to feel comfortable in the game. Doyle did, however, hold the stakes down to $10,000-$20,000. Those stakes would make the game the biggest ever played, but Andy had raised his demand to $15,000-$30,000, primarily because when he suggested $10,000-$20,000, the players didn’t seem especially worried. The pros were famous for being unconcerned with the size of the stakes, and he hoped he could get an advantage by making them concerned. But Doyle insisted on this, and Beal gave in.

  Before they parted for the night, Doyle reminded the banker that certain parts of this arrangement were beyond their control. The Bellagio poker room was open to the public. It was unlikely someone would just sit down at those stakes, especially because all the most likely players to do that were part of the group, but it could not be prevented.

  The next day, that is exactly what happened. Ted Forrest was one of those rare gamblers willing to bet everything on the right situation, and Doyle never reached Ted because he was in California. Unaware of the negotiations or the financial arrangements among the players, Ted sat down in Seat Six just after 1:00 P.M. simply because it seemed like a good game, a moneymaking opportunity.

  Almost instantly, he regretted the decision. The $500,000 he brought to the table was his entire bankroll, and he lost 80 percent of it in twenty minutes, and didn’t even get much action for his $400,000.

  Besides repeatedly wishing he had not sat down at this game, Ted also reminded himself to remain calm. Look for a good situation where you can make a stand and hopefully win a pot.

  He found such a situation, got his money in, and won. He was still down $270,000, but he was finding a comfort zone. He got into the rhythm of the game, won a few pots, and was soon even.

  Then he went on a tear—good cards, good draws, good bluffs—and Chip Reese couldn’t do much but stay out of the way while Ted manipulated Beal, getting the most out of his good hands, scaring Andy out of some situations where Andy had the better hand, and conceding some small pots.

  Andy was out of money before dinnertime. Without talking to Chip or the stunned onlookers at Table One, Ted Forrest left the table with more than three racks of flags, a profit of $1,035,000.

  He walked to the cage, requested his box, and dumped the three racks inside. He did not request a check (a regular practice when cashing out a large amount in chips). He already figured some of that money would be in action at the craps tables over the next few days.

  Then he retrieved the Mark VIII from the garage and went home.

  That night, Ted received two interesting telephone calls. In the first call, he learned about the group, Brunson’s earlier negotiations with Beal, and how sick everybody was that Ted walked in and won all the money.

  There were no hard feelings. As Doyle told Andy, it was a public room. Ted had the balls and the money to sit down and play, and reaped the rewards. The players wanted that money for themselves, and believed Ted kept Chip Reese from getting it, but they admired him for it.

  In fact, they wanted to prevent the situation from happening again. Would Ted like to join the group? Ted agreed, and then found out that Andy wanted a rematch, just the two of them, the next afternoon.

  The second call came from Eric Drache. Drache probably had the biggest Rolodex in the poker world. He knew Ted because he was responsible for getting Ted into Larry Flynt’s game. Drache worked for Flynt in setting up the game, though he turned down numerous opportunities to profit from it. Even though Drache rode the financial roller coaster more than most poker players, his sense of ethics would not allow him to profit in this fashion. On the other hand, he would borrow money from anyone and everyone. He was responsible for the adage “Only a fool plays poker with his own money.”

  Drache knew nothing of the poker game with Andy Beal and Chip Reese. Part of his daily routine, however, was calling around to borrow money and it was Ted’s turn to get a call.

  “Ted, I don’t
know if you’ve got any money these days, but I could really use the help. Could I borrow $12,000 from you?”

  Ted laughed. Ted Forrest has said of Eric, whom he likes and respects, “Eric lives the best out of anybody who’s broke. Many times on a plane, I’ve walked past him on the way back to coach, where I’d sit between two 300-pound people, and see Eric, who has $17 in his pocket, sitting in first class.”

  “Eric, I was coming back from California this morning and I was low on cash, but you’re in luck. I found a game at the Bellagio where Chip Reese and a stranger were playing $10,000-$20,000 hold ’em, and I just won a million dollars. I think I can help you out.”

  Andy Beal and Ted Forrest met the next afternoon for a rematch, this time heads up. No one joined the game this time (or ever again). Andy came out firing chips, even more aggressive than the day before, if such a thing was possible. Forrest had his opponent sized up, however, and rolled over him. On drawing hands, he would accommodate Beal and trap him. In mixing up his play, he noticed that the banker would not be bluffed. Consequently, Ted realized that if Andy had any kind of hand at all—even ace-high—he would stay in to the end, checking and calling. Although the pro would still throw in an occasional bluff attempt, just to keep the novice’s distrust level high, this allowed Forrest to get the maximum from his strong hands.

  Andy also continued to agitate to raise the stakes, this time to $20,000-$40,000. Ted obliged and won $2 million for the group.

  Jennifer Harman was feeling the pressure, but it had nothing to do with the stakes. After spending a couple of days in the poker room playing one game while she and the other players craned their necks to watch another game, she decided to wait at home for her turn. Andy was choosing his opponents, so she had no idea whether she would play him or when.