I realise that, at a time when so many are struggling and losing their jobs, a story of winning large amounts of money merely by playing a game, might seem out of tune with the times. However I enjoyed recollecting different times, times of travel and holidays and sunshine.
I enjoyed reliving these remarkable few days.
I’m going to tell you a story. It’s a true story, though it will seem to be a fantasy; it will seem to be every recreational poker player’s fantasy of the perfect trip to Vegas.
I’m going to tell you about the time I took down the big game.
That I like to play poker is no secret and I’ve mentioned it here often. I started in 2000, initially in play-money games on-line when that was relatively new, graduating to casino-based games and home games played for real money. When I lived in New Jersey I spent my Monday evenings playing with a bunch of Jersey boys in the basement of a guy who owned a restaurant. The games were lively and fun, and accompanied by beer and pizza; a great exercise in cultural integration! I’d play in Atlantic City when travelling back from my company’s site near Baltimore, or at Foxwoods half way between New Jersey and Boston. And I’d go to Vegas, not often, but enough to get to know my way around.
Playing in the US and the UK, I became a reasonable recreational player and, at Pot Limit Omaha*, my preferred game, even quite good. The mistake professionals sometimes make is to assume that I am “just” a business guy who plays for fun. I am that, but I’m not always the nit* I appear, and late in the evening, having been showing down my super-strong winning hands all night, I’ll make people fold in big pots by appearing to have yet another super-strong hand. The truth is often that I hold nothing. If you can do that two or three times, late on when the pots have become big, your evening will often be profitable.
One spring, seven or eight years ago, I left from Heathrow to San Francisco on business, a frequent trip at that time. I took a few days off and arranged to spend five nights in Vegas on the way home. Having had a run of good games in London, I took $7,000 with me, about half of my poker bankroll* at the time.
Without planning to do so, I had arrived in Vegas at the height of “March Madness” the annual college basketball tournament, when gamblers from across The States flock there to drink and place bets on the games. The sports betting area, or sports book as they call it, of the Bellagio hotel is positioned next to the poker room and, with the sports book full, the overflow would come into the poker room and play a little while watching the basketball.
So, here we have a bunch wealthy Americans (they are staying at the Bellagio so wealth is a safe assumption) sitting in relatively high stakes poker games, while concentrating more heavily on the basketball, where they have much larger sums in play.
Bellagio Sports Book and Poker Room
This really was a target rich environment.
And I won. I won steadily and consistently.
I played Limit Holdem* because that’s where most of basketball crowd were. It’s not my main game but I know the basics and can hold my own in the right circumstances.
After a day playing smaller games to acclimatise and get the feel of it, I played the 80/160 limit game. The 20/40 and 40/80 games were crowded, noisy and full of the kind of young, super-aggressive pros I usually try to avoid. They were circling round the basketball guys like shark round mackerel. The older, seasoned, Vegas Holdem regulars were in the bigger 100/200 game.
Each afternoon, sat between the bigger and smaller limits, there would be an 80/160 game, just one table and often shorthanded*. I was generally sitting there when the game started, just a businessman passing through, playing a little poker and enjoying the company, staying long onto the evening as I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
A couple of guys down from Chicago took pity on me, there, as I was, on my own, and invited me to join them for a steak and eggs brunch one day.
A game in progress
After 3 days, the safe in my hotel room held not $7,000 but $30,000 and I was somehow still best buddies with the guys from Chicago.
The logical, sensible, thing to do on my last evening in Vegas would have been to stick with my winning formula and spend it in the same game. That’s undoubtedly the choice my “business guy passing through Vegas” persona would have made, but I wanted to test my game and tick something off my bucket list.
I wanted to play in the big game.*
So early that evening, I showered and changed, checked in online for my morning flight back to UK, and locked half my stash safely back in the hotel room safe. If it all went wrong I’d have come to Vegas and doubled my money. I knew I would be able to live with that!
Then, with $15,000 in my pocket in a thick stack of $100 bills, I walked over to The Aria Hotel, carried on, as I always do, straight past the raucous, grasping slot machines and entered the poker room. The space is smaller than the Bellagio’s, but no less plush. I spoke to the host of the private Ivey Room at the back, reminding him of my earlier phone call. When he returned from the cashier, having exchanged my $15,000 into two racks of shiny, black, $100 chips, one full, one half full, I sat in the game.
I’ll tell the story of what happened next in Part 2.
I didn’t want to stop the story every paragraph to explain poker terms so have put them here.
* Pot Limit Omaha. A poker game where the player holds 4 cards in is hand and, at the end of the game there are 5 shared cards on the table. The player uses two of his hand cards and three of the shared cards to make a hand. At each stage the player can bet any amount up to the size of the pot
* Nit. Player who plays only a small number of very strong hands. Doesn’t make much money as players are wary when he enters a pot.
* Bankroll. Money a poker player will keep separate for playing poker.
* Limit Holdem. Like Omaha, but each player only has only 2 cards in his hand. Bets and raises are limited. For example in a 20/40 game the player can bet or raise $20 looking the cards he has been dealt, then $20 again when the first 3 cards, known as the flop, are laid down by the dealer. The betting then goes to $40 for the fourth card (the turn) and for the final card (the river).
* Shorthanded. Tables normally accommodate up to 9 players. A shorthanded game has empty seats.
* The Big Game. OK, so I’m using a bit of license taking about The Big Game. The Biggest game is usually in the Belagio’s equivalent of The Ivey Room, named after poker legend Bobby Baldwin. I have played in that room but not in the really big game which is usually at least $1,000/$2,000 limits, often larger. You’d need to be sitting down with at least $50,000, and preferably $100,000 to play in the game. The game I sat in was the biggest game in the Aria poker room was known as The Big Game there so I’m cool with it.