The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King

by Michael Craig

  Ted agreed with Barry Greenstein that Andy was outplaying them. Beal had made himself hard to read, and was doing a good job at noticing when they changed speeds. He was always dangerous with his aggressive style, but if he could keep such tight control of himself and remain methodical, he had an excellent chance of winning.

  Not all the changes in Andy’s game were positive. The players may not have known the depth of his knowledge of pot odds, or recognized that the pocket watch he set on the table was a random number generator for making decisions based on odds and probabilities, but they immediately noticed another aspect of his mathematical approach. In fact, it would have been hard to avoid noticing.

  Andy had at least 1,000 blue $1 chips with him at the table. He sat in Seat Four, around the corner to the dealer’s left. The chips took up the space on the table in front of Seats One, Two, and Three. He was using the chips as a giant abacus to measure the likelihood of his opponent folding at each decision point in the hand.

  That Beal had focused on trying to figure out an opponent’s likelihood of folding demonstrated a very advanced analytical approach to the game. If you played passively, checking and calling, your chance of winning was precisely the same as the chance you would end up with the best hand. But if you took the lead in betting the hand, either opening or raising, you could win in an additional way: by getting your opponent to fold. That was the reason why aggressiveness was essential to every top pro’s strategy, especially shorthanded. Having accurate percentages on such behavior would be a breakthrough and incredibly valuable to whoever had them and knew how to use them.

  Gathering that information in this fashion, however, was a hopeless task. How many different decision points were there in a hand? There were four betting rounds, but play progressed differently depending on whether you were acting first or last, so add another four. For the last three betting rounds, the character of the community cards could have a significant bearing on a player’s decision to fold in the face of a bet or raise. Even broadly characterizing the character of the board created a large multiple of the six decision points after the flop. Whether the player you were trying to induce to fold had themselves bet or raised at a prior decision point would create separate situations and the size of the pot would always figure into the decision whether to fold on a later betting round. In addition, the cards of the opponent obviously played a role and because they could vary, you needed a huge number of trials to have enough data from which to generalize. The exercise, though admirable in its goal, was a waste of time. Worse, it took a lot of effort and attention better spent elsewhere.

  Before Andy and Craig left the Bellagio poker room on Wednesday night, Andy stopped by Doyle Brunson’s table and asked, “Same time tomorrow morning?”

  ”Sure thing, Andy,” Doyle replied without looking up from his game. Who would he get to play Andy at seven the next morning?

  Barry Greenstein had made the sacrifice of coming down to play at seven in the morning for two straight days. He didn’t particularly want to try for three, especially in light of Beal’s performance on Wednesday. The early games also created the possibility that he could be worn out when the $4,000-$8,000 game next picked up. He wouldn’t let down the team, but he was doing extremely well in that game during the Series, and didn’t want to compromise his performance there.

  Consequently, Doyle was back home at 2:00 A.M., still without a player for Thursday morning. He called Jennifer Harman.

  Harman had the hold ’em credentials to handle Beal if anyone could. She had not distinguished herself yet against him but that had nothing to do with actual ability. Limit hold ’em, especially heads up, was a game of the long run. Individual hands, even individual sessions, were not necessarily indicative of a player’s skill. Even relative to other poker players, however, Jennifer loathed waking up early in the morning.

  “How would you feel about playing Andy Beal at seven?” he asked.

  “Not good.”

  As proof of the differences between the lifestyles of poker players and the rest of the world, neither Doyle nor Jennifer thought there was anything unusual about him calling her at 2:00 A.M. In fact, she was where he expected she would be: at the Bellagio, in a poker game.

  “Well, I guess I’ll have to ask someone else,” he said in resignation. Thinking out loud, he mentioned some other players in the group.

  Doyle Brunson’s genius about people manifested itself in so many subtle ways that you could overlook it if you weren’t paying close attention. Making a joke at the table. Asserting vaguely defined authority to end an argument. Appealing to the right person with the right reason. This transcended poker. Whether it was natural talent or a lifetime of experience dealing with so many people in so many situations was moot. It was a rare and remarkable ability.

  In this case, he hit the bull’s-eye with Jennifer Harman. They had not spoken about how most members of the team were not especially good hold ’em players, and many of them had vastly underestimated Andy Beal’s ability. Doyle just happened to mention a name or two that she would not want playing with her money in a big game.

  “Well, okay, I’ll be there.”

  Jennifer hung up, angry, and went home to get a few hours of sleep. She was angry that she had to leave her game, angry that she would have to play Beal on little sleep in less than five hours, and angry at being so thoroughly outfoxed by Doyle Brunson.

  She slept less than three hours before dragging herself into the poker room the next morning. Like the first time she played heads up against Andy, all the problems associated with the game—the waiting around, the scrambling, fitting in with his schedule, the uncertainty about playing for such high stakes, other players’ money riding on the outcome—disappeared when it came time to play. In fact, unlike some of her earlier sessions with Andy, and despite being dazed from lack of sleep, she came into this game playing well, loaded with confidence.

  Harman was in control through the morning and early afternoon. When she was on her game, she could make an observer believe in extrasensory perception. Jennifer could sometimes feel when her opponent was weak and when he was strong. Despite Beal’s many measures to prevent any attempt to penetrate his mind, Jennifer felt she had a good read on him.

  In limit hold ’em, the match rarely turns on one hand. One player’s superiority asserts itself in ways almost imperceptible to all but the closest observers. Harman and Beal played for about eight hours, during which time they played nearly 400 hands. When Jennifer left the game, she was ahead by $3 million. Because of the aggressive style of play, there was a lot of raising of the $15,000 and $30,000 blinds. Several pots were worth in the neighborhood of $1 million. But there were also plenty of hands where one player raised and the other folded. If the average pot was $150,000, this would be the equivalent of Jennifer winning just 5 percent more than Andy. (It probably was not even a matter of her winning more hands. Even more subtly, she was able, compared with her amateur opponent, to get an extra bet every so often on her winning hands or save a bet on losing hands.) The match was not like a brawl, where you could guess who the loser was by looking at one fighter’s bloody nose or bruised face. It was more like a tug-of-war, where the flag in the middle moved only inches after hours of force.

  Harman had actually gotten ahead $5 million, and lost a big pot. Then she misplayed a hand, and realized it was after 2:00 P.M. and she could barely make out her cards. During that short lapse—really just one hand of mistakes and one big one lost by the luck of the draw—she gave back $2 million. Ted Forrest was playing in a game at the next table, and she pulled him out of his game.

  “You have to take over for me.”

  He immediately sat down in her seat and continued the game with Andy Beal, leaving her to take care of his chips and his spot in the game he had been playing.

  For reasons only experienced players understand, Jennifer, though exhausted, sat in Ted’s seat and played several hands. In variations of stud (including Razz and
high-low), players pay the same ante to see every hand. In hold ’em, Omaha, and Deuce-to-Seven, however, they post blind bets twice per round and see the initial cards for free the rest of the time. Jennifer couldn’t play Andy anymore, but she thought it was unfair to make Ted leave his game while he could still see a few hands for free before the blinds came around to him. Generally, if a player leaves a game other than before being required to post the blinds, it is safe to assume that player is (a) new to the game, or (b) in serious physical distress.

  And the physical distress had to be pretty serious. The following account is typical in Las Vegas poker rooms. A player moves from one game to another. Asked about why he moved from the other game, he explains, “This big gross guy sat next to me. You can see him over there. [Players turn to look.] Geez, don’t draw attention to him. I feel bad enough already. When the guy sat down, he was so big that he just overflowed onto my seat. He had the worst body odor ever. His sweat was just percolating onto me. Then he had these sores all over his arms that he was scratching and picking. [Players act nauseated.] So you see why I had to get out of that game. As soon as it was my turn to post the big blind, I got up as fast as I could and came over here.”

  Therefore, Jennifer played in Ted’s game until it was time for his big blind, then she picked up his chips and brought them over. In the meantime, Forrest’s struggles against Beal continued. He lost $1.5 million of her $3 million profit, then clawed back to recover about half of those losses. He again felt like Andy was at the top of his game, and playing better than Ted.

  Of course, Doyle Brunson asked her to play again the next morning. This time, Brunson’s fifty years of experience in every conceivable situation were no match for Harman’s stubbornness. She refused him the next day, too, though she agreed to try to make it into the room early to be on call.

  When she arrived, she saw that Doyle was playing Andy. This was not where Doyle Brunson wanted to be on Saturday afternoon, playing hand after hand after hand of hold ’em with Andy Beal at Table Seven. He would rather be one table back, at Table One, playing in the big mixed game, playing the role set aside for him at the World Series, that of poobah-ringmaster-wise guy-elder statesmen—shaman-class clown-godfather-homespun philosopher. He could make big money at Table One, but also have fun. This was work.

  Heads-up hold ’em was not Brunson’s favorite form of poker. Brunson has admitted that, once, his no-limit hold ’em skills were so advanced that it was difficult for him to adjust to limit poker and he was not, by his standards, especially good. That was a long time ago, because even in his game, they played mostly limit poker and the fact that he still had the money to play meant he must have figured out how to play it very well. And even though he could play in a wild, loose shorthanded game with the best of them, the unrelenting action of playing heads up took a physical toll on him.

  The force of Brunson’s will could be unbelievable. He used to describe playing in games that went on for days, and how his leg might become sore or cramp up from being in an uncomfortable position. He would force himself not to work out the soreness, to use the pain to make him focus on playing better. Nearly seventy, with the accumulated aches and pains of age, especially the leg that became more painful and less useful with each passing year, he could force himself to do that. But would he want to? And would he want to force himself to play through discomfort instead of playing in a fun high-stakes game with his buddies, who gather here every year just so they can have a good time and try to take each other’s money, one table over?

  Harman took over and mowed through Andy a second time, winning another $3 million. She repeated the feat a third time a couple days later, relieving another player and winning $3 million during her session.

  Other players won along the way, but it was Jennifer’s consistent winning that sent Andy Beal back to Dallas a loser. Once again, he could only question why he stayed so long, why he played so many hours, and why playing this silly game had taken on so much importance in his life.

  In fact, he even left Vegas for three days, then came back to play again. On Thursday, May 8, Beal went to North Carolina, to attend his daughter’s graduation from Duke. On Sunday night, however, instead of returning to Texas, he came back to the Bellagio, thinking the time away would refresh him and return him to the careful form he displayed at the beginning of the trip. The next day, however, he got hammered by Howard Lederer and gave up trying.

  Jennifer Harman did not consider her $9 million in wins a defining achievement in her poker career. (She considered her biggest achievements being the only woman to win two open events in the World Series of Poker and writing a chapter—limit hold ’em—in the updated edition of Doyle Brunson’s strategic bible of poker, Super System 2.) At the same time, she recognized that, despite her impressive achievements from very limited tournament participation, she was a money player, and the only people who knew the accomplishments of the money players were other money players.

  “That makes me feel good, that people like Doyle and Todd and Howard trust me enough to get in there and play. They actually trust my ability to play hold ’em that well to gamble their money. It gives you a sense of accomplishment, a sense that you are doing the right thing.”

  So the professionals were successful once again. Jennifer Harman rose to the occasion, like Ted Forrest and Howard Lederer before her, and validated the judgment of everyone in the group that the pros would come through in the end. The home team would always win.

  Jennifer’s triple play started a big month in poker in Las Vegas. The World Series ended in an explosion of excitement. Spurred on by hundreds of Internet players qualifying through online satellite tournaments, a record 839 players entered the main event.

  For the second year in a row, an amateur took home the big prize, this time a tournament-record $2.5 million. More significant, he was one of the hundreds of Internet entrants, the improbably named Chris Moneymaker.

  Howard Lederer ended his fifteen-year involuntary vow of poverty in the main event, finishing in nineteenth place. He was disappointed for days afterward, but looked forward to trying again in 2004. David Grey—allegedly not a tournament player and not a hold ’em player—outlasted his friend, made it to the final table, and finished in eighth place. Barry Greenstein was the tournament leader after Day One and also finished in the money.

  The group had much to be happy about—so much so that they ignored some ominous signs. Especially as poker was becoming bigger, the games were becoming bigger, and they were becoming bigger, the incongruity of poker players in a team activity was threatening to erupt.

  Increasingly, a class schism was developing among the players. The biggest side game during the World Series was $4,000-$8,000. Some members of the group always played in it: Doyle Brunson, Reese, Giang, Berman, and Greenstein. The other Table One regulars played it occasionally, or took on a partner when they played. The $4,000-$8,000 regulars generally wanted the players in the lower game, as if a $1,000-$2,000 to $2,000-$4,000 game could be characterized as “low,” to do the heavy lifting against Andy Beal.

  If two players had a 10 percent investment in the group’s bankroll against Beal, their interest in the $30,000-$60,000 game would be the same as having 100 percent of the action in a $3,000-$6,000 game. If one of those players normally played $1,000-$2,000 and the other played $4,000-$8,000, the $1,000-$2,000 player was making a bigger investment relative to bankroll and expected profit. If the $4,000-$8,000 player had a positive earning opportunity in his game—and these players always thought they had a positive earning opportunity—they would rather have the $1,000-$2,000 player, who had relatively more at stake anyway, be the one who played Andy.

  It was not an unreasonable position, especially because most of the players in the bigger game had not played especially well against Beal. Part of the package, however, was the ultra-high-stakes players’ apparent indifference to the game. On one of the occasions when Barry Greenstein was playing Andy, he took a short bre
ak and let Mimi Tran, who was sitting watching him, play in his place. Tran, a high-stakes player in Los Angeles, was a protégée of Barry’s and a former girlfriend. She had a reputation as a good hold ’em player, had made some World Series final tables, and was among the top five women in all-time World Series earnings.

  She played about five hands while Barry was away, giving up the blinds in a few and losing showdowns in the others. That quickly, more than a quarter-million dollars was gone. Even though the same thing also happened to Lyle Berman during the series of matches, and the players knew Greenstein could have lost the same amount if he played the same hands with the same cards, it bothered some members of the group. At least one player suggested that Greenstein reimburse the group for Tran’s losses.

  Berman, at least, was part of the group. Lyle had also stepped in while several members of the group were watching from the other game, including Doyle Brunson. Berman’s stunt bothered some of the same people. It was the appearance of indifference to the game that annoyed them.

  The other development that Jennifer Harman’s success allowed them to ignore was that Andy Beal was becoming a very talented heads-up hold ’em player. He had improved and adapted. Ted Forrest was a net loser on the trip, and Howard Lederer came out only a little ahead, and he wouldn’t have done even that well had Beal not made his ill-considered decision to return to Vegas for a day after his daughter’s graduation. Forrest and Lederer had been the most consistent winners against Andy Beal in 2001. Barry Greenstein also lost overall in his sessions against Beal. Had Jennifer and one other player not stepped up, could the group have lost? Who would be the go-to guy if Andy Beal, who seemed to have learned to beat Forrest, Lederer, and Greenstein, figured out how to win against their go-to girl?

  9

  A LAWYER, NOT A GAMBLER