Hugo's Blogspotting: 13 March

Doyle Vs The Bookies

Doyle Brunson has been quite busy lately from the sounds of it, but it’s good to know his priorities are still in the right place.

“I had three important meetings; the Extreme Poker Show at the Venetian sent a group in to discuss tactics as did High Stakes Entertainment – the golf tournament guys. The third meeting was maybe the most important…my bookie who owed me money from basketball.”

Unlike certain other name players who seem to spend more time on the business of poker and gambling than the actual game itself the Big Poppa is a true gambler. Obviously there is a lot of dough to be made from the various endorsements and deals on the side that have appeared since the boom, but at least Doyle somehow stays true to his roots of the professional gambler (yeah ok, he does have a big online poker room of his own to promote these days, so you could argue that he has become an “inside man”).

“There is an island in the Pacific called Brunson Island. That is where all the bookmakers go after they have me for a customer for a while. They retire and live like kings on my money.”

C.O.D

Talking of gamblers Tom Sexton’s superb profile of Archie Karas continues at PokerNews. Sexton addresses an issue that many gamblers and poker players would love to have a problem with. When you’ve won buckets and buckets of readies what do you actually do with it? Don’t forget Karas turned $50 into around $40 million during his legendary run in the mid 90s.

Even some of the sickest gamblers I know would have managed to put a win of that amount into normal things such as property or some kind of pension fund etc. How about Archie? Well, he just socked it away in cash in various safety deposit boxes around town.

"Bringing money from my bank boxes down to the Horseshoe to shoot dice is probably how I survived playing the highest stakes in the world for two and a half years I might add, that when I transported big money from the bank to Binion's Horseshoe, I did it in my car by myself. Only one time did I let someone go to the bank with me in my car to pick up $4,000,000 for the day's play, and that was my brother, who was visiting from Greece. He was so nervous to be transporting such a large sum of money, it looked like the color of his face had changed. Although I carried two guns with me for protection, it gave him very little comfort, I guess. I had an Austrian Gluck 40, which had 18-bullet clips, like a mini machine gun, and a German Sig Suier 45, that would go off like a cannon.”

Hmmm, usually I’m against guns, but for once I can see an argument for carrying them. What other tricks did Archie have up his sleeve to avoid getting heisted?

"I mixed up my routine a lot. I was very unpredictable. Many times I would return to the car with two security guards to get the rest, and quickly move the money inside. Quite often I would circle the hotel, looking for a door that had no strange people standing there, and would stop my car, sometimes leaving the motor running, while quickly scooting $2,000,000 through the door straight to the cashier's cage!... …

… …Again, I never let anybody know my arrival schedule. I was very careful. I might add, whenever I drove my car to the bank to pick up several million to play with for the day, I might drive around for an hour, checking my rear view mirror, making sure I wasn't being followed.”

I guess when you regularly carry up to about $5 million in cash on your person because you fancy shooting craps you have to be a bit careful.

Archie famously won every £5k chip in the Horseshoe and if you happened to be at the ‘Shoe back in the day and bought in for one of their bigger games then you may have received some of their $25k chips.

Binions used to have a reputation for rather filthy chips (although I suspect that the higher denominations may have been cleaner) so if you got your hands on one of these “quarter” chips you might have noticed it was a little shinier and brighter than their other chips.

“Finally, one day, Jack Binion asked me to sell some of the $5,000 chips back to the Horseshoe, and I agreed to sell back about $10,000,000, leaving about $8,000,000 in chips to gamble with.

"Mike Sexton will tell you, 'I was sitting next to Doyle Brunson in the poker room at the Horseshoe, when Jack Binion walked over with a rack of $25,000 chips and said, 'Look what Archie did to us. He won all the $5,000 chips in the casino and we had to mint these new $25,000 chips just for him!''"

TJ Plays Back

From one dice player to another and over to TJ Cloutier’s blog at PokerPages. TJ has been playing in the NBC Heads-Up tournament where he drew young Daniel Schreiber in the first round. Schreiber won the Heads-Up bracelet at the WSOP last year and, surprise, surprise, plays an aggressive game.

Well, you can’t raise an old warhorse like TJ Cloutier forever without expecting him to play back.

“He raised every pot to double the amount of the big blind every time he was on the button (the small blind and first to act in heads-up play), actually setting his bet to the side before the hand was dealt so that he could push it in. He did it quite often without consequence because all I held was a deuce or a trey every single hand, it seemed. Finally I got so tired of just holding baby cards that when he raised the pot pre-flop, I reraised him with 2-3. The flop came A-7-3. I led at it and he called. Then on fourth street came a deuce. So I fired at it again and Daniel called me. On the end, I moved in and he threw his hand away.”

I love the fact that this kid put his raise to the side before the hand was dealt – I’m guessing he plays a lot on the internet…

Spooky

Another serial tournament winner is one Julian Thew, EPT and dual GUKPT winner. It turns out that the secret of his success isn’t brilliant play; it was all in the stars. In Plymouth during the GUKPT event Thew took a stroll outside during one of the breaks.

“I noticed a young guy walking towards me; he wasn’t beaten up or anything but he was balling his head off, very, very upset.”

Probably just another kid who satellited in and then got knocked out by a standard runner-runner coup. Anyway Julian ignores this poor fellow and goes on to win the tournament. Fast forward to Brighton and…

“… … once again & I’m outside getting some air on the windswept promenade during one of the breaks – & the same thing happens, young guy, in bits, openly sobbing his heart out. Once again, I opt for the selfish route, but this time I see the incident as a sign that, as in Plymouth, I’m destined to win this thing.”

I must admit that is quite a spooky coincidence; mind you, if one hung about the outside of casinos regularly it would come as no surprise if one saw grown men crying their eyes out every night as they left. I’ve been tempted in my time to have a good old weep myself when I’ve slaughtered my money, especially if it was one of those nights where I decided there was no value in the game, so I might as well play blackjack or dice…

Lethargy

Speaking of degenerate behaviour, what’s up with prolific blogger Lucky Jim? He’s moved to Gutshot now, so he’s not quite so prolific anymore, but its business as usual.

Jim goes into a little detail about how he’s done his brains at online PLO and then follows it up with telling us how he’s out of a job. At least now he has a chance to catch up on all the things he has been meaning to do…

“My first day out of work was spent idling at home, posting on poker forums and failing to do anything I intended. I woke to crisp blue skies and thought I should start the day with a long bike ride, but didn't make it out of bed. I have a pile of books I'd like to read, but am too scatty and easily distracted. I started Patrick Hamilton's Slaves of Solitude but put it down in favour of railing the Omaha games on FTP. Yet there is so much I ought to do… … But I don't seem able to spend a single minute productively. I'm stuck in this lethargic and unfulfilling trance of compulsive and pointless Internet surfing.”

Hmmm, I think Jim has just described the normal everyday life of yer average poker player. And to think that Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web to better our existence….

Hugo 'Chimney Sweep' Martin

Check out Poker Verdict's Blog Directory here