The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King

by Michael Craig

  Everybody wanted a piece, or a piece of a piece. In sixteen months, the Andy Beal legend had grown and become distorted to the point that he sounded like an incarnation of the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and Monty Hall. No one seemed to remember him decisively beating Jennifer Harman, Todd Brunson, John Hennigan, Ted Forrest, and Chau Giang in succession.

  The situation brought in politics, egos, and greed. The old group was just the Table One regulars in town whenever Andy showed up. Now, high-stakes amateurs like Lyle Berman took shares. Although Lyle was universally liked and respected among the pros, the irony was unavoidable. If Lyle woke up one morning and decided he wanted to play a certain game for especially high stakes, higher than anyone else wanted to play, would they ask Andy Beal if he wanted a share? Furthermore, despite Lyle’s poker skill, no one expected that he would play Andy (and, other than a few impromptu sessions, he never did).

  There was additional grumbling about Barry Greenstein, a regular in the biggest games in L.A., joining the group. Barry was winning big in the largest side games during the Series, establishing himself, along with Brunson, Reese, Giang, Berman, and Bellagio president Bobby Baldwin, as a regular in the $4,000-$8,000 mixed game. (Baldwin was not part of the group because of the obvious appearance of a conflict of interest, which was also why the group played at Sam’s Town, a casino mostly catering to low-stakes locals, whenever Baldwin joined the game.)

  But how could Greenstein be excluded? The two biggest recurring games in the world were the Series side games and Larry Flynt’s $1,500-$3,000 stud game. Barry had a reputation of being the big winner in both.

  The aformentioned Flynt game was a sore subject with a few of the pros. Until Flynt opened his L.A. casino in June 2000 and held the game in public, it was a private game, usually at his house, and players had to be invited. Eric Drache, who was staked by Flynt in the game but did not receive a fee for putting it together, turned down numerous opportunities to profit from his position as gatekeeper.

  His decisions were bound to make some players unhappy. There were more interested players than spaces in the game. He also had to balance keeping the game challenging for the host but not too challenging. If the game was just Brunson, Reese, Drache, Forrest, Greenstein, and some other superstar stud player, what chance would Larry Flynt have? Flynt was a talented amateur, but he was an amateur. He could handle being an underdog, and even cheerfully lose in a challenging game and come back for more, but he would lose interest pretty quickly if his only competition was the six best stud players in the world, which is what the game would become if Drache invited only the best players who asked, or only his best friends in poker.

  Chip Reese and Eric Drache went back thirty years and were good friends. Chip wanted to get into the game, but he understood. He certainly had no animosity toward Barry Greenstein just because Barry had been able to get inside. In fact, before Reese and Greenstein had played together much, Barry thought Chip was trying to hustle him into high-stakes games as an easy mark.

  “Buddy,” he remembers Chip saying in his most charming voice, “this is the perfect game for you.”

  At least one player took the regional rivalry personally. “That was their home game, so they didn’t let me in. Fine. But this is my home game, so fuck you. You’re not getting in mine.”

  Although most players were of the opinion that anyone willing to post at least $500,000 could join the group, the atmosphere was heavy with conflict. Poker players were comfortable in adversary situations, but that was usually because they could resolve their differences in the game. As Lyle Berman mentioned in an interview with poker player and writer Wendeen Eolis, “In poker, Jews, Muslims, and Arabs get along just fine.” Players from conflicting backgrounds could get along in poker because they didn’t take those conflicts to the table. These arguments, however, could not be resolved by a showdown of hands.

  Some players looked at the avalanche of interest as cutting into their financial return. When the word circulated that someone had arranged for the Doc to have a couple of points without putting up money, a few players decided to make everyone not in the group from the beginning justify their participation.

  Todd Brunson had a problem with this attitude. Todd was not a frequent presence in the ultra-high-limit side games during the Series. More often than not, he might not even be playing in the $1,000-$2,000 mixed game at Table One during the year. But it was not because of lack of skill or financial means. He did not live and breathe poker and played less than any of the other Las Vegas pros. An astute investor away from the poker table, when he did play, he often passed up the biggest game in favor of the best game.

  When he thought his membership was in question, he was ready to go to the mat. “I’ll get my own group and play him myself.”

  Jennifer Harman thought this exclusionary attitude was nonsense. They should not be turning anyone down, especially a hold ’em player of Todd’s caliber. The group was getting heavy with players who had big bucks but who she wouldn’t take in a high-stakes hold ’em match. Despite Todd’s one undistinguished performance against Andy in December 2001, she would have taken Todd over nearly anybody in the room to play Andy with their bankroll on the line. When he asked if she would contribute to his bankroll if he needed to play separate from the group to get a shot at Andy Beal, she said yes, though she didn’t think it would come to that.

  Doyle Brunson made a rare gesture on his son’s behalf. “Either Todd is in or I’ll give him some money and he can sit down in the game whenever he wants. He’s in the group.”

  That resolved the matter. Few players actually favored limiting membership in the group, and this shut up the malcontents. The group had expanded from its original eight. Doyle and Chip Reese, obviously, were still members, as was Chau Giang. Todd Brunson was finally a member, along with Table One contemporaries Jennifer Harman, Howard Lederer, Ted Forrest, and David Grey. Barry Greenstein and Lyle Berman joined, along with some other high-stakes and tournament pros who bought partial shares.

  Doyle Brunson had the task of lining up players to face Beal. Between the side games and the World Series, it seemed like everybody had something else to do. Howard Lederer was playing more World Series events this year than in years past. (He made it to the final table of the Deuce-to-Seven Championship that day and finished fifth.) All this was in preparation for the main event, which he was taking very seriously this year. Jennifer Harman was also playing more in the tournament. Even though Doyle had already won his bet with Chip, he was playing a few more events, as were David Grey, Barry Greenstein, and some others.

  Then there were the cash games, which suddenly seemed to have gotten huge. Apart from the prospect of making a million dollars for a few days’ work, the stakes had become so high, and so few players regularly played, that part of the fun was the familiarity, the camaraderie. There were seven-figure winners and losers over the course of the 2003 World Series, but everyone had a good time. Ultimately, even the losers looked forward to doing it again.

  At the same time, they couldn’t take their game lightly. It was a loose, wild $4,000-$8,000 mixed game, where they individually had more at stake than their 5 percent to 10 percent individual shares in the outcome of the $30,000-$60,000 game with Beal.

  Besides, this was where the team concept could pay off. Let one of the players who specialized at hold ’em, someone not as interested in playing $4,000-$8,000, beat up on Andy Beal while they tried for a separate killing against each other.

  That was Barry Greenstein’s thinking. He was winning big money in the side games and didn’t want to jeopardize that. But Doyle asked him on Monday night if he would play Beal on Tuesday morning and it was hard to refuse Doyle. There was also a shortage of players willing to play at Andy’s requested time of 7:00 A.M. Usually, if a poker player was in action before noon, it was from a game that started the night before. But Barry would do his part for the team.

  On Tuesday morning, April 29, Barry came down to the poker roo
m to find Andy Beal and Craig Singer already waiting for him. Andy and Craig were surprised to see him. Greenstein had not been on the team during Andy’s previous games and had no poker reputation to the outside world because he wasn’t a Las Vegas character or a tournament star. Having carefully evaluated the styles of the players, Beal felt a bit unprepared.

  After the introductions, Barry called for a supervisor to arrange delivery of his chips. The night before, Doyle Brunson and Chip Reese had gathered the group’s bankroll and deposited portions of it in accounts of the players they expected to play the next day. (In addition to safe deposit boxes, which physically safeguarded money, chips, or whatever a player placed inside, individuals—but not groups—could establish an account with the cashier and maintain a balance, which could be accessed to obtain chips or a cashier’s check.) Barry could handle the paperwork from his seat in the poker room, though he would have to go to the cage in person afterward to transfer the balance to the next player. They had deposited approximately $2 million in his account.

  Before they started, Greenstein asked Andy what stakes he wanted to play, suggesting $20,000-$40,000. This was according to the group’s plan, and it seemed like a reasonable place to start. It was the highest Beal had played previously, and it fit with Barry’s estimate of the game his $2 million allotment would comfortably support.

  Beal acted like he had been insulted.

  “Twenty-forty? I worked this out with Doyle Brunson yesterday. I didn’t come all the way from Dallas to play that low.” Beal’s tone was between a whine and a bellow.

  Greenstein was at a loss. For somebody who was supposed to be so easygoing, Beal seemed very put-upon. Nor was he mollified by Barry’s offer to go to $25,000-$50,000. It even seemed like Andy might walk.

  Barry agreed to play $30,000-$60,000. Even though this was higher than the players had discussed the day before (by a margin that was itself higher than any of them, besides Ted Forrest, had ever planned individually), he was not going to call Doyle Brunson at 7:00 A.M. to get him involved.

  Greenstein was not trying to flout authority (though he found the team concept foreign to how he and other poker players operated). Even if he was supposed to hold the line at $20,000-$40,000, he was sure Doyle would agree with his reasoning.

  Barry admired few poker players, but Doyle Brunson and Chip Reese were in that small group. They understood that you needed to give action to get action. It was no coincidence that Barry was closer with Ted Forrest than most other high-stakes players. Their approaches appeared very different—Barry, dour, quiet, and calculating; Ted, seemingly oblivious to what’s going on around him—but they achieved precisely the same goal. They tried to create conditions wherein their opponents felt comfortable losing.

  The men who lost money to high-stakes poker pros were intelligent and, by definition, wealthy. Nearly all were extremely successful at what they did. Barry Greenstein gave them credit for understanding that they were generally getting the worst of it. To insist on getting all the details your way when you already had the skill advantage was bad form and bad business.

  While waiting for the paperwork and the chips from the cashier’s cage, Andy and Craig carefully examined both decks of playing cards in the setup. They watched the breaking of the seals on the cellophane packages and carefully looked at the backs of all the cards as they were spread across the table.

  This was part of a procedure Beal and Singer established before coming to Vegas. At Craig’s urging, they had spoken with a consultant with experience in the casino industry about potential cheating. Beal had no reason to believe he was or could be cheated; he was just being prudent.

  The consultant confirmed Andy’s basic beliefs. Although the consultant acknowledged the possibility of “funny business” in the old days, the modern Vegas poker game was clean. He declined Beal’s offer of a retainer to watch his heads-up games against the members of the group. There was nothing to be gained; the consultant knew and had played with some of them and they were honest players.

  In addition, by playing heads up, Beal had eliminated just about all possible cheating opportunities, except for a crooked dealer or casino staff member bringing in marked cards. Again, that would be extremely unlikely.

  As a precaution just the same, Singer picked up some books and videos on card marking and manipulation. Andy reviewed some of these, though Craig had the unofficial responsibility of inspecting the decks and observing the dealer with these lessons in mind.

  Eventually, they abandoned all but the most perfunctory review of the cards. There simply wasn’t any possibility, based on the property, the people, and the controls in place, that the pros, the dealers, or the casino could be cheating.

  For the next several hours, neither player especially impressed the other. Greenstein’s reputation as a hold ’em player was excellent, and he had been playing with tremendous confidence and success over the previous year, but Beal had never heard of him. Andy had worked hard on his game, but Barry felt the banker was staying in the match solely with lucky draws. On one hand, the pro started with seven-six, the amateur with six-deuce. The flop came three-four-five, making both players a straight. Unfortunately for Andy, he was in a horrible position because Barry had a higher straight. They kept raising, both after the flop and after the turn produced a blank (a card unlikely to affect the outcome of the hand). A seven—one of only three outs Andy had in his almost hopeless position—came on the river, forcing Barry to split the seven-figure pot.

  Beal then quit Greenstein to play Chip Reese. Barry felt that Andy pushed him aside because he wanted to play a bigger name. Andy viewed it differently, switching players to someone he at least recognized. He didn’t think he had Chip figured out by any means, but he had been practicing for months with Chip’s style in mind. Beal won from Reese, not a huge amount, but enough to get him feeling comfortable playing again with the top pros.

  Later that day, Andy played Howard Lederer, his chief nemesis (along with Ted Forrest) back in 2001. Lederer had taken a break from what had been to this point, the Deuce-to-Seven event notwithstanding, a disappointing World Series. Things didn’t go any better for him against Andy.

  Howard had an entirely different impression than Greenstein of Andy Beal’s play. The banker had come a long way since he had been dominated by the pro in several matches in 2001. Other than the extreme aggressiveness that had become his trademark, he barely resembled the player the new members of the group were expecting. He had obviously devoted a lot of effort into making himself difficult for his opponents to read.

  He looked exactly the same at all times during every hand. Immobile. Peek at the hole cards. No expression. Pause. Bet. Pause. Look at the flop. No expression. Pause. Bet. If not for the small hand movements on the cards or the chips, he could have fallen asleep at the table without Lederer knowing it. It was an impressive performance.

  Playing Beal at $30,000-$60,000, Howard Lederer lost $1.8 million. Howard had a rule about ending a session if he lost thirty large bets. He would make exceptions, but he saw no reason to think things would change. He knew at the end of Andy’s December 2001 trip that they had a game on their hands. Today, Beal was aggressive and in control. He ended the day ahead by over $2 million. It was an impressive return after a sixteen-month absence.

  Barry Greenstein woke up early on Wednesday to play Andy Beal for a second consecutive morning. This time, Beal got the better of the match, winning $2 million. In addition, Andy left a different impression on Barry this time. He showed the pro a great deal of skill, both in general as well as in adapting his play to what he saw of Barry the day before. Greenstein played in the aggressive style that was typical of the pros in heads-up hold ’em. Naturally, he varied his play and tried to get into sync with Andy’s style, but the banker seemed to be one step ahead. Beal was more aggressive, and when he drew back, it was to trap Barry or save chips on weak cards.

  Aggression and mixing it up? That was how Barry had wanted to play bu
t Andy got there first. It was an excellent, mature performance by the amateur. That was when it dawned on the L.A. pro that their edge was not that great. It was not a given that the pros were going to win.

  Barry admitted to some of the other players that he felt he had been outplayed. He was being honest, and he wanted to warn the other players, especially those who had not played Andy, and naively thought that Beal had come to town to give his money to the pros.

  A few high-stakes players reacted as if Barry had confessed to some ghastly crime. This just solidified Barry’s view of the majority of poker players, even the big-money pros: some ability, not much backbone, and no understanding of what being a gambler was really about.

  Barry Greenstein was not the only player declaring that the amateur had a chance to win. Ted Forrest also struggled in his first encounter with the 2003 version of Andy Beal. Ted Forrest took over for Barry on Wednesday afternoon.

  Forrest was an obvious choice to play Andy Beal based on his past performance (though a few in the group still maintained that Ted wasn’t really a hold ’em player). He purposely kept a low profile and did not nominate himself to play at the beginning.

  Ted felt if he played Andy early and won big, Andy might feel Ted had his number and would become discouraged and give up. Not that Forrest had some super-secret, never-fail strategy. Even if he had some incredible insight, he could act on it perfectly and still lose a session. But another big win by Ted might give Beal the impression that he had no chance, something the same result by another player would not necessarily do.

  The whole issue became academic after Ted Forrest lost, too. In fact, he was lucky that it was only a small loss. Forrest got himself stuck $800,000 in a hurry and had to battle back to settle for just a small loss before Andy called it a day.