Poker Player Of The Year, JC Tran

The pros have voted, and Tran is the man for ’07
BY ERIC RASKIN

THREE MONTHS DOES NOT A FULL YEAR MAKE. But if it did, J.C. Tran would have won the Player of the Year Award in the biggest landslide since Reagan vs. Mondale.

The way the Sacramento-based poker pro began his year was nothing short of jaw-dropping. On January 20, he celebrated his 30th birthday by qualifying for the final table of the WPT World Poker Open in Tunica, Mississippi. Though he was bounced in sixth place the next day, he bounced right back by reaching another WPT final table a month later, finishing second in February’s L.A. Poker Classic. And one month after that, Tran found himself at yet another final table at the World Poker Challenge in Reno, Nevada, and this time there was no settling for second or sixth. Tran won the whole thing.
Between January 21 and March 25, Tran made three WPT final tables (many top pros go their whole careers without reaching three WPT final tables), won one title, and pocketed $1.95-million. Add in another first-place finish, at a $3,000 buy-in event at Bellagio on April 10, and Tran wasn’t just the leading candidate for Player of the Year; he was practically a shoo-in to win with almost nine months of action remaining on the calendar.

So how did it turn out that the 2007 ALL IN Player of the Year voting was the tightest in the three-year history of the award, with Tran winning by a margin of less than one first-place vote? It probably had a little something to do with the extraordinary year enjoyed by runner-up Bill Edler, who won both a World Series bracelet and a WPT title. But it also had something to do with a summer slump that hit Tran. Though he cashed in the WSOP Main Event (493rd place, good for $25,101), he reached no final tables at the Series and, in fact, didn’t score a single six-figure cash between April 11 and December 9.

Heading into the final $5,000 buy-in event at the Five Diamond World Poker Classic at Bellagio on December 10, Tran had lost control of the Player of the Year race. His amazing start to the year had been almost forgotten. He needed to make something dramatic happen.

And that’s just what he did, winning that $5K tournament, adding $523,075 to his bankroll, and validating the argument that he was the top poker player of 2007. “Even in my own mind, if I was to vote and I was allowed to vote for myself, if I hadn’t won that event at Five Diamond, I wouldn’t have voted for myself,” Tran told ALL IN. “If I didn’t finish the year strong, I wouldn’t deserve it. But winning that event—not just coming close, but actually winning it—that tells everyone, ‘Hey guys, I’m still here.’ Finishing the year strong matters.

“Of course, a good start is always important too. I had such a good start, everyone thought I was going to win Player of the Year in every publication, automatically. But I told everyone, ‘You guys are wrong. It’s not even close to being over. There’s a lot of poker left to be played, and there are a lot of great players out there that can just make a run anytime.’”

Different players made different runs at different times; obviously, Edler’s was the strongest, but names like David Pham, Scott Clements, Jonathan Little, and Annette Obrestad injected themselves into the mix at various points throughout the year. Ultimately, though, the voters liked the guy who started strongest (by far) and then finished with an exclamation mark.

And for Tran, receiving those votes from his peers—this year’s panel included everyone from Phil Gordon to Gavin Smith to Greg Raymer to Vanessa Rousso to Joe Sebok—is tremendously satisfying and meaningful to him.

“Within the eyes of the pros, to get voted for by the people that we play with day in and day out, that’s an honor because it shows that I’m getting respect from these guys,” Tran said. “I mean, everyone has their own point system, and I don’t know if one is the correct point system. But I feel like getting voted for by my peers is important.”

Tran’s year essentially broke down into three segments: the incredible early run, the struggles at and after the World Series, and the December push that revived his POY hopes. As you might expect, it’s the January-to-April streak that Tran remembers most fondly.

“That was the best stretch of poker I’ve ever played—and it was the best run I’ve ever had,” he humbly acknowledged. “You play better poker when you get better cards. When you go through the struggle of not getting cards, it’s frustrating, you make more mistakes, you lose your patience. But when you’re playing well, you’re making correct decisions, your timing’s good, and cards are coming in, all that adds up. It builds your confidence, you’re in a groove, and it’s pretty hard to stop you.”

On the flipside, there was Tran’s WSOP experience. Despite managing his third Main Event cash in the last four years, the whole six weeks at the Rio were a major letdown.

“My World Series was a huge disappointment. It’s not because of what a great start I had in ’07; it’s because it’s the World Series, and I always have high expectations because the fields are softer, and this is where you need to win. It’s like the playoffs. You have to bring your ‘A’ game. I came in there and I played plenty of events, but honestly, I think I struggled because I was burnt out. There were a couple of tournaments where I got down to two tables and I was either second in chips or the chip leader, and I didn’t even make the final table. I can’t blame it on cards, I can’t blame it on bad beats. I blame it on myself. I wasn’t prepared mentally, physically, and I forced a lot of things.”

Judging by his track record, though, Tran doesn’t screw up like that very often. Maybe he didn’t play as well for a few months in the middle of the year as he’d have liked, but these numbers tell you everything you need to know about J.C. Tran: In ’04, he earned $769,051 in tournaments; in ’05, he made $811,109; in ’06, the number was $1,167,313; and in ’07, he cashed out $2,914,502. Yes, that’s right—his financial figures have gone up in each of the last four years. In a game as volatile as poker, there are not a lot of players who can make that claim.

Of course, it sets the bar quite high for 2008, but the confident Tran nevertheless has established hitting the $3-million mark as one of his goals for the year ahead. He’s also aiming to have a much better WSOP than he did in ’07, and he’s locked in on winning the L.A. Poker Classic this year, after his heartbreaking second-place finish a year ago.

Ironically, though, he’ll be looking to achieve these goals playing less tournaments than he did in ’07.
“I won’t be playing as many prelims this year as I was the last few years,” he said. “I want to take more time off, not force myself to go from casino to casino to casino without even making a stop at home. This year, I want to have a week or two break in between events.

“I play too much, and I really want to try to focus on switching over to cash games. I played some cash games this past year, and I enjoyed it every time I played it. And I can’t say that for tournaments. You can only really enjoy tournaments when you do well. I still love tournament poker, but I don’t love it enough to want to play every day. “Plus,” he added, “I like to have a life outside of poker.”

Fair enough, J.C. Even the Poker Player of the Year has a right to be more than just a poker player.

The Player of the Year Voting
We asked our 19 panelists to cast votes for their top five choices for Poker Player of the Year, in order, and we weighted the votes as follows: Ten points for a first-place vote, five for second, three for third, two for fourth, and one for fifth. Panelists were asked to consider cash-game results but to put an emphasis on tournaments, and to consider all varieties of poker but to put an emphasis on Hold ’Em. It was an extraordinarily close race, with both J.C. Tran and Bill Edler receiving five first-place votes, and with both men being named on 16 of the 19 ballots. Ultimately, Tran’s greater number of second-place votes proved the difference. Here were the final tallies (with the number of first-place votes in parentheses):

1. J.C. Tran 88 (5)
2. Bill Edler 82 (5)
3. David Pham 66 (3)
4. Jonathan Little 38 (1)
5. Phil Ivey 20 (2)
6. Freddy Deeb 19 (1)
7. Scott Clements 18
8. Annette Obrestad 14
9. (tie) Phil Hellmuth 10 (1)
9. (tie) Alex Kravchenko 10 (1)
Also receiving votes: Chip Reese, Roy Winston, Tom Schneider, David Singer, John Hennigan, Allen Cunningham, Ted Lawson, Lee Markholt, Jerry Yang, Andrew Black, Bruno Fitoussi, Gavin Griffin, Kirk Morrison, Lee Nelson, Erik Seidel, Kenny Tran

High Stakes Jokers

Sammy Farha and Jamie Gold make TV poker history with the longest, and perhaps most entertaining, hand we’ve ever seen
BY ERIC RASKIN

IF YOU TUNED IN FOR GSN’s High Stakes Poker on November 19, say, 15 minutes late, you probably thought you’d missed five or six hands already. Incredibly, though, at 9:15 Eastern time, the first hand of the broadcast was still in progress. It finally ended at 9:16, after 12 televised minutes of action, one mid-hand commercial break, and some of the wildest “strategy” and table talk ever seen on TV.

And when the hand finally ended, the discussion—amongst everyone from pros to message-boarders—wasjust beginning.

The hand involved Sammy Farha, Jamie Gold, a pair of aces, and a pair of kings. For Farha, being part of a rockets-vs.-cowboys confrontation on HSP was nothing new; in the most memorable hand from the show’s first season, Farha and Barry Greenstein got it all in pre-flop with the two best starting hands in Hold ’Em, and Farha hit a lucky king to suck out. But that hand was played somewhat by the book. This hand, from the $500,000 buy-in table on HSP’s fourth season, was played in anything but a conventional manner.

Under the gun at an eight-handed table with three blinds of $300, $600, and $1,200, Gold limped in with pocket kings. The action folded around to Farha on the button, who looked down at aces and raised to $4,200. David Benyamine folded his blind, Patrik Antonius did likewise, and after thinking for a moment with 9-2 suited, Guy Laliberte pitched his cards into to the muck rather than call the extra $3,000. That’s when the fun began.

The only way to do this No-Limit insanity justice is with a nearly complete (some lines couldn’t be heard over the commentary) transcript of the table talk:

Jamie Gold: Should we get it over with now, or after?
Sammy Farha: Depends on your hand.
Gold: Should we get it all in now or later?
Farha: It’s too much for all in.
Antonio Esfandiari: Come on, boys, let’s see some gambling here, let’s see a big one.
Farha: It’s too much money for all in.
Esfandiari: Let’s see a dark bet and a dark raise, let’s see something like that.
Gold: I call, I call.
Gold calls the extra $3,000.
Farha: I’ll bet it in the dark if he checks.
Gold slaps the table twice, Farha throws $10,000 into an $11,300 pot in the dark.
Esfandiari: $10,000, I love you guys, do you know that?
Gold: Wait, wait, wait, maybe I’ll bet dark too. [To the dealer] Hold on! Hold on.
Barry Greenstein: No, you already checked in the dark.
Gold: But I can—
Farha: He’s not brave enough to do it, he’s not brave enough.
Gold: Wait, wait, but how would the action go then? Then we’d have to see the turn … If I just call, we see the turn.
Farha: We gotta see the flop before the turn.
Gold: No, we see the turn! If I just call, we see the turn.
Farha: Yeah.
Doyle Brunson: What has poker come to?
Esfandiari: God, I really like this country. I really do.
Gold: And if I raise now, then you get to see the flop, or maybe you’ll re-raise before the flop.
Farha: That’d be tough. I probably would do it! I probably would raise you.
Gold raises to $30,000.
Farha: And there’s no flop yet?
Gold: No flop, re-raise me! Re-raise me! Re-raise me!
Farha: Oh my God, this is something. Wait, I gotta go to the bathroom, I’ll be back. Hold the deck. Stop the camera. That is so sick!
Esfandiari: Is this game here every day? Why can’t it be here every single day, morning and night?
Gold: This is good TV.
Farha: It’s great TV, buddy.
Esfandiari: Sick vs. sicker.
Farha: What I don’t understand—
Gold: And you know what? I’m going to tip the dealer in advance.
Gold tosses a chip the dealer’s way.
Brunson: Or dumb and dumber.
Farha: I don’t understand, why didn’t you raise me before the flop?
Gold: You think, what do you think, I have the hand?
Farha: Now if I call, that means the flop is there, and burn and turn.
Gold: We just see the turn, yeah.
Brunson: Or else you can move all in right now.
Gold: [Repeating Doyle] Or you can move all in now.
Farha: [Pensive] You’re a sick man.
Gold: If Sammy Farha calls me a sick man …
Farha: I’m trying to … It’s not the read, it’s funny, there’s something wrong with this hand, you understand?
Gold cackles maniacally.
Farha: And the problem with this hand is I raised before the flop, he just called, and he’s doing this show right now, and I know he’s weak.
Gold: But how weak?
Esfandiari: But he might hit the flop.
Gold: I could have—
Farha: You got a problem with your hand, buddy. Because you didn’t raise me. But you made a statement. Let me think about what you said. Computer is working.
Farha points at his brain.
Guy Laliberte: It’s the slowest computer I’ve seen on TV.
Farha: The way he played the hand, I’m trying to …
David Benyamine: There is no computer in Texas.
Farha: Not in my house.
Gold: Sammy, you can fold, too.
Farha: Buddy, no, I don’t think you have a hand, I don’t think you have a hand.
Gold: I have, I have something. Sammy, I have something, I have something, I have something. I don’t have aces, but, you know, I’ve got something.
Farha: There’s no flop, you can’t have something.
Gold: You know what I mean, I’m saying I have a hand, I have potential.
Farha: [Fingering chips] I bet 10, you bet 20 more …
Gold: This is for TV.
Farha: Okay, I’m going to raise it.
Farha throws in the chips to call.
Gold: You’re raising?
Farha: Yeah!
Gold: You got the aces!
Farha: Yeah. What do you have?
Gold: Sammy!
Farha: Well, it’s not that—
Gold: Really?
Farha: It’s that you don’t have a hand. I’m betting against you.
Gold: Wait, wait, wait, you’re doing all this with aces to me?
Farha: Well, I have a hand. You told me you have a hand, I have a hand.
Gold: Sammy, do you have the aces?
Farha: I have a hand.
Gold: ’Cause I’m in deep, I’m in deep, I’m in deep, if you have aces, I’m in deep [bleep].
Farha: Sixty more.
Farha raises to $90,000.
Gold: I’m in so much trouble if you have aces.
Farha: Well, throw your hand away! I’m happy with it.
Gold: Sammy! Well, I can’t go away now. Now, what happens, we just see the turn, if I just call?
Farha: Well, we’re playing the flop, right? So he puts the flop—
Gold throws in the cash to call, bringing the pot to $191,300.
Gold: Sammy, you were playing me with the aces the whole time.
Farha: Let’s make a deal.
Gold: You want to make a deal?
Farha: No, we gotta see the flop and the turn right?
Gold: You were playing me with the aces the whole time.
The flop comes 10-9-6 rainbow.
Farha: [Unable to see over the bricks of cash] I can’t see the flop, that’s hard.
Dealer moves the cash out of the way.
Farha: Okay, go ahead. Now we’re going to see the turn, right?
Gold: Yeah, we have to!
The turn is the four of clubs, putting two clubs on board.
Gold: You’re doing all this to me with aces?
Farha: I’m not doing to you, you did it to yourself! I mean, I bet $10,000, you raised me $20,000, Jamie. I didn’t do nothing to you. You blaming me, and now you going to hate me.
Gold: [Sighs] I check.
Farha smiles, and then laughs.
Farha: You’re a sick man.
Gold: I may have a set, so don’t be upset.
Farha: I’m not upset. I’m upset at the whole hand. I should have went all in before the flop. But now I’m sick of it. Believe me, I am. [Counting his money] $220, $250 …
Gold: Do you want to just check it down?
Farha: Wait! I got a lot of money, I probably might have to do that. I didn’t know I had that much, I swear.
Gold: Do you want to just check it down?
Farha: Wait, let me count my money.
Brunson: If my daddy knew I was losing in this poker game, he’d come out of the grave and beat the heck out of me.
Greenstein: That’s what I was thinking.
GSN goes to commercial break, then the action resumes.
Farha: That is sick, Jamie, I can’t put you on a hand, you’re such a sick player.
Gold: I’m putting you on aces.
Farha: Okay, are they the best hand if I have them?
Gold: Maybe not.
Farha: I believe you, that’s the funny part. The funny part, I believe you.
Gold: I like you, you know I like you.
Farha: I like you too, but I’m losing so much.
Brunson: We’re playing poker, my God …
Farha: [To Doyle] Go on, go home, get Daniel [Negreanu] here instead.
Gold: If he’s taking anyone’s seat, he’s taking my seat.
Farha: Who wants to play with Doyle? [Laughs] He’s too good for us. Buddy, I’m losing! And the guy [points to Gold] is crazy!
Gold: Just check, Sammy … or bet $10,000.
Farha: No, that’s … I want to protect my hand. I want to bet 100.
Farha throws in $100,000.
Gold: [Stands up] I have to, I have to call you.
Farha: Why?
Gold: I told you, I have a monster hand, I’m sorry.
Farha: Jamie, I’m trying to win it, you don’t have to call, buddy.
Gold: Sammy, I do too, I’m sorry.
Gold puts in the call.
Gold: I can’t … I’m sorry … I called you already. I was telling you that I have a monster, I’m trying to …
Farha: Hold it, let’s see what we have here.
Gold: Do you want to check it down?
Farha: Let me think, I mean—
Gold: I’m not calling you with nothing. What do you think I’m calling you with? Do we want to hurt each other, or no?
Farha: Well, it’s not that. The river is not going to make any difference, it just, either you make your hand, or I’m going to win.
Gold: Okay, so do you want to check it? Sammy, do you want to get all the money in, or do you want to check it?
Farha: No, I don’t want to get it in now, maybe at the end I want to bluff you out.
Gold: [Aggravated] Fine, let’s go. Let’s go. Play.
Farha: Wait.
Gold: What are we waiting for? You can’t bet any more, I called!
Farha: Ahhhh.
Gold: You gotta flip the card, let’s go.
The river comes another ten.
Farha: You have a ten, you got me.
Gold: I got you anyway. I check.
Farha: I don’t think you got me.
Gold: I do, Sammy! I’m calling, whatever you do, I’m calling, I’m calling, go, call. I can’t, I’m not laying, you think I’m laying down my hand after putting in $200,000? You think I’m laying down my hand?
Farha: Jamie, I got you beat! I want you to know I have you beat.
Gold: So then check-check!
Farha: I have you beat, why would I check if I have you beat?
Gold: Then bet, I call. I call. Let’s go, I call. I call.
Farha: I know you’re not calling.
Gold: I call! Sammy, you don’t have enough to get me off the hand. I put in too much, I can’t fold.
Farha: I understand. I’m losing, muck your hand.
Gold: You bet, I call. I already said I call! I call, I call, I call, I call, I call, I call.
Farha: I understand! I want to count my money and put it in. Can I do that?
Gold: There’s no chance I’m folding. You think I’m folding after all this?
Farha: Of course not!
Gold: Right, so bet me, you want more money, take it.
Farha: It’s not that, it’s I have to bet my hand, I’m losing too much. I like you, muck your hand.
Gold: I like you too, I can’t muck my hand. It’s too late.
Farha: You have to muck your hand.
Gold: I have the best hand.
Farha: You don’t.
Gold: Okay … I gave you an opportunity, I’m sorry. Don’t forget I was nice the whole way, Sammy, I was trying to check it down with you—
Esfandiari: This might be the sickest moment in my career.
Gold: I tried.
Esfandiari: You guys are sick.
Farha: I don’t want you to hate me, what do you want me to do? I like you. If it was somebody else, I would bet him.
Gold: I like you too, I thought we should just check it, ’cause it’s enough already.
Farha: What do you want me to do, check?
Gold: I told you, we should check it from the turn! We shouldn’t put any more money in there.
Farha: I’ve got you beat, buddy. All right, I check, I’ve got you beat.
Gold turns over his cards.
Farha: Kings?
Gold: Kings.
Farha turns over his cards.
Farha: Here, buddy.
Gold: I know you have aces! Enough!
Farha: I saved you this, okay [points to his remaining money], because I like you. You understand, because I like you.
Gold: I know, but I can’t get off of it! What am I going to do?
Farha: I understand, but somebody else, I’ll bet it, look at this. And I know you’re calling.
Gold: Of course I’m calling!
Farha: Yeah, but I want you to call, you understand?
Gold: Of course! Queens, I’m folding. I can’t fold the kings.
Greenstein: [To Gold] You saved $185,000, you played well.
Farha: [To Gold] You owe me, just remember what you owe me.
Greenstein: Everybody else would have lost another $185,000 there … He only called before the flop!

This was not a textbook example of how to play a premium pair. It was not an example of having the discipline to get away from a hand you believe is beat, or of maximizing your profits by betting the best hand on the river. It was not an example of poker at its finest.
But it was an example of TV poker at its finest. From an entertainment perspective, it just doesn’t get much better than this.

The Duke Doctrine

A complete transcript of the key Congressional testimony on behalf of the Poker Players Alliance
BY ANNIE DUKE

[Editor’s Note: The following is taken from a November 14, 2007, hearing before the House Committee on the Judiciary. World Series of Poker bracelet winner Annie Duke spoke so eloquently in addressing Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Michigan) and members of the Committee and created such a positive stir in the poker community, that we felt it vitally important to publish her words for the benefit of poker players and fans everywhere—and so that those people who support the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act could gain a thorough understanding of the opposing viewpoints.]

CHAIRMAN CONYERS AND MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to testify before your committee. I am doing so as an American citizen who is concerned about personal freedom and personal responsibility. I am also here to express the views of the nearly 800,000 Americans who belong to the Poker Players Alliance.
As a mother of four who supports her family as a professional poker player, I have a personal interest in the outcome of these hearings. I have excelled at my chosen profession, not only supporting my family for 13 years from poker earnings but also becoming the highest female money winner in tournament poker history over those 13 years. Having the right to continue to pursue my profession, wherever I might choose to pursue it, is very important to me from not only a financial standpoint, but also from the broader perspective of freedom, personal responsibility, and civil liberties.

At its most basic level, the issue before this committee is personal freedom—the right of individual Americans to do what they want in the privacy of their homes without the intrusion of the government. From the writings of John Locke and John Stuart Mill, through their application by Jefferson and Madison, this country was among the first to embrace the idea that there should be distinct limits on the ability of the government to control or direct the private affairs of its citizens.

More than any other value, America is supposed to be about freedom. Except where one’s actions directly and necessarily harm another person’s life, liberty, or property, government in America is supposed to leave the citizenry alone. Examples of Congress straying from this principle are legion, but few are as egregious as The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.

To be sure, there are many who believe that gaming is immoral or unproductive. I don’t share these beliefs, but I do respect them. What is harder to respect is the idea that just because someone disapproves of a particular activity, they would seek to have the government prevent others from engaging in it.

Of course, opponents of gaming will cite the incidence of compulsive gambling and the possible exposure of minors as reasons to prohibit it. With respect to compulsive gambling, this committee has received expert testimony confirming what most academic studies on compulsive gambling have found: that the incidence of problem gambling in the population of adults who engage in gambling activity is less than one percent.

From a similar study in the United Kingdom, we know that the availability of betting over the Internet does not increase it over time. Furthermore, even if one’s primary concern were the very small incidence of compulsive gambling, then licensing and regulation offer more effective and less intrusive means to combat it.

Frankly, if the government is going to ban every activity that can lead to harmful compulsion, the government is going to have to ban nearly every activity. Shopping, day trading, sex, chocolate, even drinking water—these and myriad other activities, most of which are a part of everyday life, have been linked to harmful compulsions.

Are we going to move inexorably toward a world where we prohibit online shopping because some people compulsively spend themselves into bankruptcy? Worse, are we going to ask banking institutions to monitor and regulate our citizens’ online shopping behavior to determine when a purchase can or cannot be approved? Gambling, like shopping, is the subject of compulsion in a very small percentage of the population—less than one-tenth the number of people who have trouble with alcohol.

In terms of the damage to society, problem gambling is orders of magnitude smaller than tobacco, alcohol, fatty foods, sugary soft drinks, and a great many other things that the government does not seek to prohibit. And, let us again remember that compulsive gambling occurs in less than one percent of the population, and that the availability of Internet gaming does not increase that percentage.

Of course, prohibitionists point to the possibility of children betting online as the other justification for prohibiting it. In fact, most people who seek to restrict individual freedom invoke protection of children as their motivation. I suspect they find that that argument has more resonance than what is often their real motivation—to treat adults like children, and manage their choices for them.

The reality is it is very hard for a child to lose money gambling online—one needs to either have a credit card or a checking account to do so; cash cannot be used. The concern many point to is a child using their parent’s credit card to sneak online and gamble. First of all, in that scenario, the parent will nearly always decline the charge—and successfully. For that reason, Internet gaming sites have a large incentive to ensure that their players are who they say they are, and that they are of age, in order to avoid expensive charge-backs.

Furthermore, presumably the first time the parent sees an Internet gambling charge on their statements, one would hope that at minimum a very serious chat would ensue with the child. As a mother of four, however, I feel the need to make this point: If a child is stealing a parent’s credit card and gambling online, that family probably has much more serious issues than Internet gambling. I monitor my children’s online activity, and, frankly, that is my job, not my government’s. Of all the things I and other parents worry about happening to our children online, gambling is pretty far down on the list.

Still, if one’s primary concern is preventing minors from betting online, as opposed to preventing adults from doing so, then licensing and regulation again provides a more effective and less intrusive solution than prohibition. We will hear other expert testimony demonstrating that there are highly effective identity and majority verification technologies available.

Again, though, I have to express my skepticism that concerns about children are really what is driving this debate. By that, I mean that I doubt that there is anyone who is opposed to Internet gaming because of children who wouldn’t still be opposed to Internet gaming for adults, even if it could be proven to them that children can be protected. However, if there are such people on this Committee, or in Congress, I would urge them to look at the regulatory systems being set up in the U.K. and other European nations, as they are highly effective. To reiterate: If your concern in this matter is about children, there are solutions available. If, instead your interest is in treating adults like children, then there are not.

What is remarkable to me about the UIGEA is that while it allows games of pure luck, like the lottery, it prohibits a game of skill like poker. For nearly 200 years, U.S. presidents, generals, members of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, and average citizens have enjoyed the challenge and the fun that is poker. I have no doubt that tonight, somewhere not too far from the U.S. Capitol, groups of friends and family will open a deck of cards and play some poker.

This scenario will be replicated in almost every city across the U.S. That is because poker is an American pastime; it is woven into the very fabric of American history. Poker typifies Americana just like baseball or jazz and has become a positive ambassador of American culture throughout the world.

Surveys have shown that more than 70 million Americans play poker at least once in a while. And, within the past several years, an estimated 23 million Americans have begun playing with people from all over the world via the Internet. Remarkably, though, some in Congress have insisted that when you put the word “Internet” in front of poker, this American tradition and the people who play it become suspect. I don’t believe that the government should be preventing consenting adults from enjoying poker just because it has moved from the kitchen table to the computer table.

Poker is a great egalitarian game. Anyone who is willing to learn, regardless of race, creed, color, or gender, can succeed at poker. And playing on the Internet gives millions of Americans the freedom to enjoy the game in the comfort of their homes, when it would be otherwise impossible to get to a casino or gather others to play in person. As a mother of four young children, I don’t have the liberty of being away from home every day or at night when my children return home from school. The ability to play on the Internet allows me more time with my family.

But my situation only represents a small section of the online poker playing community. Each day, the Poker Players Alliance receives e-mails from its members detailing why Internet poker is important to them. Many of these e-mails detail a person’s physical disability and why they are unable to get to a casino, and in some cases suffer from muscular diseases that do not allow them to hold cards or poker chips and the virtual game is the only way for them to play.

Other e-mails describe how they are caring for sick loved ones who are homebound or bed ridden and the few hours they get to play poker in the comfort of their home is their escape from the monotony of their day. There are countless stories, of everyday law-abiding Americans who play Internet poker, and for whom the proposed ban on poker would have tragic unintended consequences.

The vast majority of Internet poker players are doing so for recreation and entertainment. On average, a person spends $10 a week playing online poker. Ten dollars! You can’t even get a movie ticket for that price where I live! But with poker, not only do you get the satisfaction of engaging in a skillful endeavor, you actually walk away with something more than a ticket stub! You walk away with keener mathematical and negotiation skills.

I don’t believe that poker and the people who play it should be lumped into the category of gambling or be called gamblers. For me, and for other professionals, this is a job, and some of us are better than others. Whether a professional is playing with someone for whom poker is an avocation does not change the question of whether the game itself is one of skill. Yes, for the majority of Americans, playing poker is hobby. This is how these people choose to spend their hard-earned dollars and they should have the right to choose how to spend their discretionary income, whether it is on poker or anything else.

There is a critical distinction between poker and other forms of “gambling,” which is the skill level involved to succeed at the game. I cannot stress this point enough: In poker, it is better to be skillful than lucky. I ask anyone in this hearing room to name for me the top five professional roulette players in the world or the number-one lottery picker in America. It is just not possible (my apologies to one obvious candidate, Congressman Sensenbrenner). We can, however, have a real discussion about the top five professional poker players, just like we can have a discussion about the top five professional golfers.

Few can debate the skill elements involved to be successful at poker. From mathematics and probability to psychology and money management, numerous authors and academics have drawn analogies between poker and other endeavors that involve strategic thinking. John Von Neumann, regarded as the greatest mind of the first part of the 20th century, used analysis of the game of poker in his seminal book on game theory, Theory Of Games And Economic Behavior, as a method of modeling decision-making under incomplete information.When asked why he did not use chess, he deferred to the skill elements of poker that encompass all aspects of human intellect, calling chess not a game but merely an exercise in calculation.

Everyone agrees that the betting elements and hand selection involved in poker are skill elements. But I hear people say all the time that poker is only a game of skill for good players and the vast majority of recreational players are playing a game of luck.

This is as absurd as asserting that bad golfers are playing a game of luck while only the pro golfers are playing a game of skill. If we all agree that putting and driving and other elements of golf are skill components, then whether someone is a good putter or a bad putter doesn’t change whether putting is a skill or not. It is the same in poker. If someone is poor at betting or good at betting has no bearing on whether the betting component of the game itself is a skill component.

Go into any bookstore in America and you will likely find a display table covered in books about how to play poker and poker theory. The fact that one can learn poker and get better over time is clear evidence that skill is a dominant factor in the game.

I will concede that chance does play a role in poker. But it is true that chance plays a role in every human activity. Chance plays a role in getting through a traffic light safely. We know that is true because people who exactly follow the rules of the road get in accidents every day across America because of chance. And yet no one is claiming that driving is a game of chance and not a skill! Poker is a game of skill with an element of chance. But to call poker pure chance is just pure ignorance.

To further explain this point, let me try to illustrate it in two ways. If I could program a robot with the rules of poker, when to decide to check, raise, fold, etc.—but gave it no “skill,” so that it made these decisions randomly, that robot would lose nearly 100 percent of the hands in which it participated.

For those not content with the example of the robot, let me try another approach. One defining characteristic of games of skill is this: A player or team can intentionally lose. If I suggested that you should play slots, roulette, baccarat, or the lottery and seek to lose, you could no more make yourself lose than you could make yourself win, as long as you continued playing. However, at golf, tennis, baseball, or other games of skill, it is entirely possible to lose on purpose. Losing on purpose is playing in defiance of the concept of skill, and thus proves the existence of the skill element in the game.

Several analogies can be made between playing poker and crafting public policy. But millions of poker-playing Americans were stunned last year when politicians decided that playing Texas Hold ’Em over the Internet was so pernicious that the government must deputize financial institutions to prohibit personal financial transactions to certain forms of online gaming.

As we all know, in the closing hours of the last Congress, behind closed doors, Senator Bill Frist managed to slip the UIGEA into the Port Security bill. That law seeks to deputize financial institutions, and have them function as the Internet morality police. Ironically, however, that law did nothing to clarify what actually constitutes an unlawful Internet wager. It exempted certain favored forms of gambling from that bill’s enforcement mechanism, but it clarified nothing as legal or illegal.

Instead, Internet gaming is the subject of a hodgepodge of antiquated laws that were intended to govern brick-and-mortar operations. The governing federal statute, The Wire Act of 1961, has been found to only apply to sports betting. Beyond that, we have a morass of state laws that, for the most part, did not contemplate the Internet. Nevada, North Dakota, and the Virgin Islands have all taken steps to license non-sports betting, only to be told by the DOJ that even intra-state Internet wagers are illegal.

In the proposed rule issued by the Department of the Treasury and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, the regulators come right out and say that they cannot and will not tell the regulated community what constitutes an unlawful Internet wager.

Let me emphasize—the posture of the Federal government is, “We are going to create a new federal crime, but we will not tell you what it is.” In the proposed rule, the regulators explain their refusal to resolve this by saying that to do so would require them to examine the laws of the Federal government and all 50 states with respect to every gaming modality, and that this would be unduly burdensome. Yet that is exactly what they are requiring the general counsel of every bank in the country to do.

The committee has received testimony from the association representing providers of pure skill games, such as chess and Tetris, complaining that unless the UIGEA regulations clarify what they are supposed to cover, they will be unable to hold chess tournaments where people can win money, because, in the absence of clarity, banks will simply block any transaction where people pay a fee to compete and win money.
Poker players believe that the UIGEA regulations should not apply to games where players compete against each other and not against “the house” and where success is predominantly a function of skill. Such games include poker, bridge, mahjong, and backgammon, among others. However, because neither the UIGEA itself nor the regulations seek to address the issue, we cannot make that case.

Instead, the PPA supports certain other legislative initiatives that we believe are more rational. We support H.R. 2046, Representative Frank’s bill to license, regulate, and tax Internet gambling, but which allows states to opt out of the federal licensing system with respect to any and all forms of gaming. We support H.R. 2610, Representative Wexler’s bill to clarify that poker and other games predominantly determined by skill are outside the ambit of the federal gambling statutes, provided that they incorporate adequate protection against compulsive play, minor play, and money laundering.

We also support H.R. 2140, Representative Berkeley’s bill to commission a National Academy of Sciences study on how to deal with Internet gaming, because we believe any rational examination will verify that licensing and regulation makes more sense than prohibition. However, we believe that the experience of the U.K and other countries can provide the same evidence.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to close with the point I started with: This issue is about personal liberty and personal responsibility—the freedom to do what you want in the privacy of your own home. I suspect that some on this Committee support freedom, except where individuals would use that freedom to make what they believe to be bad choices. “Freedom to make good choices” is an Orwellian term for tyranny—the governments of China, Cuba, and Iran all support the freedom of their citizens to make choices that their governments perceive as good.

For those whose religious or moral beliefs hold gaming as abhorrent, I fully support their right to live by those beliefs. I support their right to choose to not gamble. What I do not support, and what this Committee and this Congress should not tolerate, is an effort by those people or anyone else to prevent me and the millions of people like me from playing a game we find stimulating, challenging, and entertaining. However you might feel about gambling on the Internet, I would suggest that gambling with freedom is far more risky.

Stu Ungar vs Phil Ivey

A Cross-Generational Comparison Of Poker’s Greatest Prodigies
BY KATIE LINDSAY

WHAT’S YOUR GOAL WHEN YOU ENTER a poker tournament? For some people, it’s just to have fun, no matter how long they last. For others, it’s to make it into the money. For others, it’s to reach the final table. But for the world’s best, it’s nothing short of winning it all. And for some, it goes beyond that. For a special few, the goal each tournament is to take another step toward being remembered as a legend.

It’s a lofty goal, and in the nearly 40 years that tournament poker has been a significant part of the game’s fabric, only a handful have achieved living-legend status. And fewer still have achieved it while in their youth.

In the early-’80s, Stu Ungar became a living legend, and the defining poker prodigy of his era, by winning back-to-back World Series of Poker Main Events while still in his twenties. Today, Phil Ivey, who won five World Series bracelets before turning 30 and now, at 31, ranks in the top 10 on the all-time tournament money list, is well on his way to becoming a living legend and the defining poker prodigy of his era.

Both Ungar and Ivey were blessed with extraordinary poker minds. There are many, many differences between them, but there are also quite a few similarities that may not be obvious on first glance. To further examine how the great prodigies of their times compare and contrast, ALL IN spoke with three of the poker players most qualified to assess them, veterans Mike Sexton, Erik Seidel, and Chip Reese (this is believed to have been the final interview with Reese, as he passed away just a week after speaking with us).

All three played against both Ungar and Ivey, and all three agree: It’s a shame Stuey died before Ivey hit the scene (Ungar died on November 22, 1998; Ivey’s first recorded tournament cash came in December ’98), because it would have been fascinating to watch them battle each other at the table.

Addicted To Action

The rush you get from winning a huge pot, the feeling of knowing you made a million dollars in a single day, understanding the true meaning of the word “action”—this is something both Ungar and Ivey have proven able to relate to throughout their lives and careers

“I think you can say that about many of the top players, they are action junkies,” Seidel explained. “Ultimately, it can be destructive if you can’t put the brakes on it. I think that Ivey is more successful at putting the brakes on when he needs to. Ivey loves action, but I think Stuey loved it more. I think Stuey was more addicted to the action.”

Sexton agreed with Seidel that Ungar had more passion for the action. “I would say ‘addicted to action’ is a very good description of both of them. I’m not sure Phil Ivey is as addicted as Stu Ungar was, but I don’t think anyone was. Certainly, Phil is an action guy; doing anything, he’s action-oriented. Whether he’s betting on a prize fight, whether he’s playing golf, whether he’s playing in the pit, whether he’s playing poker, it doesn’t matter, he definitely likes action, and big-time action.

“Both were very high stakes gamblers,” Sexton continued. “It doesn’t matter what it is, they have that natural desire to play high stakes at anything. They aren’t afraid to put it all on the line anytime they are doing anything. They are betting the limit at it, whatever the limit might be.”

Reese, considered by some the world’s top cash-game player prior to his untimely passing, agreed that both Ungar and Ivey have shown themselves to be action addicts. “If anything,” Reese said, “that is probably Phil’s biggest challenge going forward. He is very talented, he has a great work ethic, but he is an action addict as well.”

Card Sense & Sensibility
It takes countless different qualities to make a great poker player, including confidence, patience, and instinct, just to name a few. There is something more that both Ungar and Ivey developed, though. There is something more that really pushed them to the next level. And that something could be called “card sense.”
“I don’t think anybody has a better card sense in terms of picking up a new game faster than Stu Ungar,” said Sexton, a good friend of Ungar’s.

“If you had a game, regardless of whether it was a card game or not, that you had been playing a long time, and you talked to him about it for five to 10 minutes, he would understand the game better than you. Phil Ivey has a mentality more for cards than other games, but there is no doubt that he catches on very quickly. Phil focuses at poker as well as anybody in the game. I think he has the best eyes in poker and he doesn’t miss a trick whether it’s on his left or his right.

Certainly, focus is a key to learning in poker, and Phil does it by not talking at the table. He focuses on the game, and certainly that is a big plus for him. I think he focuses a little more than Stuey, but I think Stuey catches on quicker than Phil. Phil has to think more about his plays at the table, but invariably 99 percent of the time he is making the right play.”

“I think Stuey had an amazing ability to sense weakness,” Reese explained. “He played a lot of hands and he intimidated a lot of players and he had a table presence about him where he got good players to play bad hands against him. He got good players to play out of their game and out of their element. He had an amazing ability to sense weakness in his opponent when he could take the pot away from them. I think Phil and Stuey have some similar styles.

They’re both aggressive players, they both play a lot of hands; they play more than the average amount of hands. Both of them aren’t afraid to bluff. I think Stuey had displayed talents in No-Limit Hold ’Em that I really haven’t seen anyone display before. What Stuey had was a lot of pure talent, maybe more than anybody. Stuey was very good at doing creative, bizarre things in bizarre situations.”

“Stuey was very good at reading people and he had incredible card sense, obviously, because he was the best gin player ever,” Seidel contributed. “I think Ivey is very similar. I think he is very good at analyzing the psychology, he thinks extremely well at the table, but I think he has a very different presence than Stuey did at the table. I think that Ivey’s presence is a very stable and focused presence, where Stuey had the focus but

I don’t think had the same table stability that Ivey has. I think that with Stuey, when he’s on, he is going to put you to the test repeatedly. Ivey will do the same, but I think Stuey is going to be playing more hands. I think that Ivey is very capable of slowing down when the conditions are right for that—he can play very fast and he can play very slow.

“I think Stuey was really an active player,” Seidel continued, “but I don’t know if he had as many gears as Ivey. I think that Stuey had a very restless personality. I think Stuey needed the stimulation more than Ivey does. He needed the constant stimulation of being in hands and making decisions, where I think that Ivey has more patience.”

Name Your Game
As Seidel noted in the previous section, Ungar was as good at gin as he was at poker, if not better. For Ivey, his non-poker game of choice is golf, a skill competition in which he’s improved dramatically in a short period of time. One thing is for sure: Whatever the game, Ungar and Ivey have both shown themselves to be competitive to the end.

“Stuey was an idiot savant,” said Reese. “When it comes to picking up a game and getting quick insights into games, Stuey was really good at that. With Phil, it’s about his work ethic, he’s a winner. Phil likes to be good at things and he likes to win, and that has to do with his character. If he is going to do something, he wants to do it well. It’s one thing to want to do something well, it’s another thing to have the ability to do something well, and it’s a third thing to be able to commit and put the work ethic in to doing something well. Phil does all three things.”

“I think their success in different games says a lot about the focus that the two of them have when they want to do something,” Seidel concurred. “I think they get very devoted to it. Stuey had a great, great mind and came naturally to gin, but also worked really hard on it. He had done it from an early age. He had a very, very special gift. I don’t know if we are going to see another one like him again. I think a lot of it has to do with their focus and their will. They are both very, very competitive people and they will both sit there and play and play and play until they learn. Ivey is so dedicated to golf and he has really gotten so much better than many people thought he could. He started off really bad, but he’s out there playing every day.”

Competitiveness is key in Sexton’s opinion.

“They are both very, very competitive. Both of them becoming great at their games, it says a lot about their desire, fortitude, and competitiveness more than anything. When Phil Ivey couldn’t shoot 100 on the golf course, which wasn’t that long ago, he bet $100,000 that he was going to shoot even par from the back tees at TPC Summerlin, where they play the pro golf tour in Las Vegas. He said he was going to do it in 10 years’ time, and that’s incredible for a guy that can’t shoot 100 on a golf course to make a bet like that. Honestly, I want to bet with Phil because I think he is going to do it. He has a talent for the game because he works at it so hard and he’s going to become very, very good at golf. He caught on quickly on what it took to win money at golf.”

Who’s Driving?
Everyone has their own motivations for being successful. Some people are driven to win poker tournaments because of the glory, others because of the money. What was it though that really drove Stu Ungar and Phil Ivey to win? What pushed them past everyone else and made them dominating forces?

“I think Stuey was a very competitive person. I think it was what he loved to do and he loved the action. He took to it like a fish to water,” Seidel said. “He was just a great gin player and saw that people were making money playing poker, so he started playing poker. Right out of the box, he won the world championship not very long after he just learned the game. It wasn’t like he had a bunch of experience before that. Then he came back and won it the second year. He was special in a way that I would really be surprised if we see someone else like him.

The gift that he had really was incredible. As far as Ivey, I think he is a super-competitive person as well. I think he likes to compete and I think that he likes the personal challenge. Plus, he is really, really brilliant. I don’t know that people recognize how smart he is. He’s great at every poker game, and he just can’t be as good at all those different games without having a really amazing mind, which he does.”

“I think Phil is about as competitive of a guy that you are going to see,” Sexton agreed. “On the golf course, on the poker table, he is all business, he is dedicated to his craft. Certainly, when it comes to playing all games, like Seven-Card Stud for example, you have to put Phil Ivey at the top of the list in the world as being one of the greatest players in that game. In No-Limit Hold ’Em, certainly he’s one of the greatest players.

The great thing about him is that he is extremely successful at both tournament play and cash play, and there are very few players in the world that you can say that about—and that includes Stu Ungar. Stu succeeded far more in the tournaments because he knew that if he lost that bankroll and lost that money that was in front of him, he was out of action. Stuey was an action guy. Just being in action was all he cared about, really.”

Reese echoed Sexton’s sentiments. “Stuey just loved the action. No-Limit Hold ’Em, it was just a game that he had a knack for that when things went right for him and he got a lot of chips, he was just a real tough player. I think Phil likes the action, but Phil has a desire to succeed. Stuey didn’t really have that ambition to succeed or to be the best. He was very talented and he wanted to be the best, but he wasn’t willing to work to be the best. Phil is willing to work hard for something that he wants.”

Different … But The Same?

It takes a lot to be considered a legend. In Sexton’s opinion, it takes standing the test of time and being successful at the highest levels for over a decade. Reese said, “You have to be in there doing battle for a long period of time.” By those standards, Ivey may not qualify yet.

But it’s interesting to ask anyway, is Phil Ivey this generation’s Stu Ungar?

“I would say Phil Ivey is about as close to Stuey that you are going to find in terms of playing cards,” said Sexton. “Certainly, he has the gambling instincts that Stuey had, he likes to gamble high. Hopefully, a guy like Phil will be smart enough not to make the same mistakes that Stu Ungar made and follow the path of so many of the other guys that had money and ended up broke. Phil has a good head on his shoulders and I am sure he is going to be fine.”

“I think that people will talk about Phil as one of the greatest,” Seidel said. “This is a time where the fields in poker are wide open, anyone in the world can play, there are millions and millions of people all over the world, and of all those millions of people, it is thought that Phil could very well be the best, and I personally believe he is. I think that if you ask all of the top players, he would be the consensus choice at this point. He will be recognized that way forever. There are a lot of people that try to create the image of being a great player or one of the great players and many of them successfully do that, but he is so much better than all of them. I think that when you look at the players in the Big Game, he is the guy that consistently has made money over a long period of time. I don’t think you will find too many people disputing how well he plays.”

Seidel paused for a moment. He thought about how to put the talent of Ungar and Ivey in perspective and concluded, “If you are around either one of them or playing with either one of them, you can’t help but be struck by their specialness and their uniqueness. These are two very special minds, but also two unique and different people.

UNGAR vs. IVEY: BY THE NUMBERS —— Stu Ungar/Phil Ivey
Length (in years) of tournament career —- 17/9
World Series of Poker bracelets ———–5/5
Main Event bracelets ——————-3/0
Total tournament earnings ————-$3,318,796 / $7,889,408
Total tournament wins —————–11/15
Total WSOP cashes ——————- 13/26

Dont Get Cute, by Josh Arieh

Why the slow-play isn’t anywhere near as sneaky—or as effective—as you may think it is
BY JOSH ARIEH / TWO-TIME WORLD SERIES OF POKER BRACELET WINNER

ONCE A POKER PLAYER GETS PAST the initial stage of playing the cards they are dealt, they move onto the stage of poker development where they begin to branch out and try new things. The first thing that every poker player becomes familiar with is a play called the “check-raise.”
Check-raising, or sandbagging, is another term for slow-playing. It means to either check or bet weakly when you have a strong hand. This much, most of you already know. What you might not know, however, is that this fancy play could cost you money, and now, with the modern-day poker player becoming more knowledgeable of standard plays like this one, you have to be a player that chooses to either adapt to the changes in the game, or get left behind.

Let’s look at an example of what I am talking about:
You’re in an online tournament, and in the early levels of play, the blinds are $50/$100. Let’s say you are in the small blind with pocket threes and $2,000 in chips. The under the gun (UTG) player (also with $2,000 in chips) raises to $300, and you are the only caller. The flop comes 2-3-7. Now there is $700 in the pot. If you check, assume the UTG with A-K bets about half the pot ($300) as part of a standard continuation bet. You decide to check-raise all-in, since a raise of three or four times his raise will have you pot-committed anyway. Your opponent now folds easily, and you win $700 in chips.

That’s good, but there’s a way to potentially gain significantly more value in this hand.
If you lead out at the pot for the same $300 here on the flop, UTG may likely call your bet. At this point, you are still winning $700 in chips and giving UTG a chance to catch up on the turn while drawing extremely thin. If you lead $300 and UTG raises, his raise is going to commit his stack to the pot, and now you have your opponent risking his whole stack against you with little hope of winning the hand. This scenario has you winning $2,100 chips, which is a much better value for your hand than the previous method of winning only $700.

This situation won’t always pan out perfectly, but with today’s more aggressive player and your bet now looking more like a steal out of position, your opponent will be forced to heavily consider making a play back at you.

Now, let’s look at this situation from another angle:
Say it’s the same hand for you and the same flop, but this time, your opponent has pocket tens or jacks. Now, say you check-raise the flop, or, to make things even more interesting, your opponent decides he wants to get sneaky and he checks behind you. Either way, you and your opponent will see the turn card. The turn comes a king. Now, the extra value you were hoping to get with your check-raise, or attempted check-raise, is going to go down, since that turn card is a scare card for your opponent. Your opponent will not like that card at all, and the chances of you getting your opponent’s whole stack, unless he is a complete donkey, have disappeared.

However, if you decided to lead out on the flop in that same situation, fast-playing your set, it disguises your hand as weak, and you will get your opponent’s whole stack in there for sure. Now, it is too late for him when the king drops, because his money is already committed, and you are already stacking his chips.

Check-raises are good for maximizing value versus bluffs, but often it is much more important to maximize value versus worse, made hands. So, if you pick off a bluff with A-K, or air on the flop, you win money, but you do not break your opponent. But if you fast-play your made hand and convince your opponent that you are just making a play at him, you get his chips and an image at the table that you have more than one trick up your sleeve.

It’s when you start getting cute that you start getting hurt. You should be the one dealing out the pain. Start adjusting your play to the modern style of players, and I’ll see you at the final table.

This article brought to you by Bodog nation. Play with pros Josh Arieh, David Williams, and Evelyn Ng at BodogLife.com.

Chip Reese Special Tribute

“He Was Just That Much Smarter Than The Rest Of The World”
Remembering and paying tribute to the late, great Chip Reese

BY STORMS REBACK

DAVID “CHIP” REESE, WHO DIED IN HIS SLEEP December 4 at the age of 56, was more than a great poker player. He was a legend.
Reese’s mythic existence began even before his birth when his parents gave him the nickname that most would later assume was a reference to the game he’d mastered. While the poker chip would indeed become the currency of his life, “Chip” actually sprang from an encounter his parents had on their honeymoon with a former football player at Ohio State who bore that name.

Born in Centerville, Ohio, the heart of Buckeye Territory, Reese might have played for Woody Hayes himself if he hadn’t contracted rheumatic fever at the age of six. Forced to miss his first year of elementary school, he gained an entirely different sort of education at home while playing cards with his mother. Upon recovering, he used his newly acquired skills to win nearly every baseball card in the neighborhood, even from kids just about twice his age.

Reese went on to attend Dartmouth College, where he gained a reputation for beating professors at bridge, gin rummy, and poker. When he deigned to play his peers, he so dominated play that his fraternity brothers at Beta Theta Pi ended up naming the card room after him.

He graduated in 1974 and was on his way to Stanford Law School when he made a brief pit stop in Las Vegas. He arrived with only $400 in his pocket, but quickly built up his bankroll playing Seven-Card Stud, a game he was so proficient at that Doyle Brunson later asked him to write about it in Super/System. Before that summer had ended, Reese won a $500 poker tournament at the Sahara Hotel, good for a $60,000 payday, enough to convince him to skip law school and play poker full-time.

Naturally, he was asked about this decision many times during the course of his life, and he gave two oft-quoted responses. One was, “Law doesn’t have the same monetary incentive as poker.” The other: “I decided to choose the more honorable of the two professions.”

The Object Of The Game

Reese would go on to win a World Series of Poker bracelet in the $1,000 Seven-Card Stud Hi-Lo event in 1978 and another in the $5,000 Seven-Card Stud event in 1982, but he quickly lost interest in tournaments because the stakes were too low. “Unless it was the biggest game in the world, Chip Reese wasn’t going to go play,” explained World Series of Poker Media Director Nolan Dalla. “It just wasn’t worth his time.”
From the very outset of his career, his focus was playing in cash games for the highest possible stakes.

During his first year in Las Vegas, he convinced Danny Robison, his partner at the time, to let him use $30,000 from their bankroll so he could play $400/$800 Stud Hi-Lo with such poker luminaries as Johnny Moss, Puggy Pearson, and Doyle Brunson. The gamble paid off. Four days later, he’d won more than $300,000.

From that moment on, he was only ever interested in playing in the so-called Big Game, which migrated around town between establishments like the Dunes Casino and Binion’s Horseshoe until it eventually found a semi-permanent home in the Bellagio. Reese would be not only a regular participant in this game but also a consistent winner until the day he died.

How was he able to thrive where others went broke? What set him apart from his peers?
Those who knew him best credit his easy-going and highly professional demeanor for much of his success. “He never chastised the dealers,” said Mike Sexton, who had known Reese ever since their days together back in Ohio. “He never criticized an opponent for the way he played a hand. He understood what it meant to treat the tourists right. All the successful business people who played with Chip over the years, even though they knew they were going to lose to him, they thoroughly enjoyed playing with him because of the way he conducted himself.”

Whereas so many of today’s young guns make the mistake of “tapping on the glass”—scaring fish away by mocking them—Reese was a master at enticing such players to play just a little longer. He understood, perhaps more than anyone in the history of the game, that being friendly and polite wasn’t just good form but good business.

“He was probably the most socially intelligent person I’ve ever met,” Daniel Negreanu wrote in a recent blog. “Fully understanding what it meant to be a professional and fully understanding his role as not only a player in the game, but as a ‘host.’”

Sometimes being a good host meant accommodating hit-and-run artists. Sexton likes to tell the story about the time such a player challenged Reese to play $1,500/$3,000 Stud heads-up. Reese’s opponent won just about every pot during the first 25 minutes of the session, then fumbled for an excuse to leave.
“I understand,” Reese told him. “You go on ahead.”

After the man took off, Reese turned to Sexton. “Mike, that’s why I’m successful playing poker.”
Sexton was perplexed, for he had just seen Reese lose $30,000 in less than 30 minutes.
“Most players are just like that guy,” Reese explained. “They win a little bit and they get up and leave, but when they lose they go off for a whole bunch. When I play poker against a guy’s who’s stuck, I’ll stay there and play with him until he wants to quit.”

On another occasion, Sexton asked Reese if Stu Ungar was the most talented poker player of all-time. Reese’s response said as much about himself as it did Ungar. “Talent-wise, maybe so. Certainly he has the quickest mind of anyone I’ve ever met. But Stuey’s problem is that he doesn’t understand the object of the game, and he never will. The object of the game is to increase your wealth, improve your lifestyle, and provide for your family. Stuey will never get it.”

Increase Your Wealth

While Ungar snorted up or gambled away his winnings, Reese used his to build his bankroll and acquire possessions that could never be lost. At the time of his death, he owned a 13,000-square-foot home in Las Vegas, an oceanfront condo in Santa Monica, and a lakeside retreat in Montana. Because he mostly played in cash games, it’s hard to estimate exactly how much he won over the course of his lifetime. Suffice to say it was a lot.

“Chip was going to have multimillions whatever profession he went into,” said Sexton. “It didn’t matter if hewas a real-estate agent, a stockbroker, or a businessman of any kind. He was just that much smarter than the rest of the world.”

Reese earned money in nearly every venture he tried, including backgammon, chess, and sports betting. He and Doyle Brunson were said to have devised a system for betting on baseball that was extremely successful for many years. However, the two also collaborated on countless schemes that didn’t turn out so well, like funding expeditions to raise the Titanic and locate Noah’s Ark. Fortunately, their poker winnings easily made up for these losses.

Reese earned so much money playing poker he served as something of a bank for his fellow rounders. He was often the first person players approached after they went bust, and Reese rarely refused them even though far more money went out than ever came back. “He helped a lot of players when they were down and out,” said Sexton. “He loaned money he knew he would probably never get back again. It was just his way.”

Improve Your Lifestyle

As accomplished as Reese was at acquiring money, he was equally adept at spending it. Whereas so many poker players pour every dollar they earn back into the game, Reese constantly rewarded himself for his skilled play, traveling whenever and wherever he felt like.

One of his favorite pleasures was fine dining. “He ate like a king,” said Dalla. “He had a real world-class palate. Dinner with Chip was a two-hour meal. There was no such thing as fast food in his diet.”
So many excessive meals eventually added up to a big weight problem. At one point, Reese weighed close to 300 pounds. To encourage each other to diet, he and Brunson once made a $50,000 weight-loss bet. Reese promptly gained 17 pounds.

Several years ago, he took a more proactive approach by undergoing gastric bypass surgery. While the operation succeeded in getting his weight problem under control, there is some speculation that it may also have contributed to his death, as one of the risks of the surgery is an increased susceptibility to blood clots. All that is definitively known is that in the days preceding his death he had been suffering from symptoms of pneumonia.

The rigorous lifestyle a professional poker player must endure certainly couldn’t have helped. “When we play poker and we play these long hours, we really do run our bodies down,” said Barry Greenstein. “I know when I played in the smoke-filled rooms, as Chip did also, a lot of times I would say to myself, I wonder how much this is cutting out of my life? Over the last couple years, I’ve probably lost a few years. And with staying up a day or two, that has to take its toll too.”

Provide For Your Family

The third aspect of Reese’s “Object Of The Game” philosophy was the easiest for him to accomplish. He always considered the happiness of his son Casey, his daughter Taylor, and his stepdaughter Britteny first, not simply by taking care of them financially but emotionally as well.

“Usually when you think of poker players, you think of people who go on the road and don’t spend enough time with their children,” said Greenstein. “Chip was just the other way around. He always put his children first. It didn’t matter what the situation was. If there was something to see that his kids were doing, that’s where Chip was.”

Reese essentially scheduled his entire career around the lives of his children. One of the reasons he played in so few tournaments during the ’80s and ’90s is that poker tournaments demand so much time, time he preferred to spend at home with his kids.

“Family was always a priority with Chip,” said Sexton. “If his son had a baseball game, he would never miss that. It wouldn’t make a difference what he was losing in a poker game.” In fact, according to one of the many legendary stories about his life, Reese was once down $700,000 in a cash game when he left to watch one of Casey’s Little League games.

Reese resumed playing major tournaments only after his children asked him to so they could watch him on television. He did it for them and no other reason. He had very little interest in acquiring fame. “There’s a piece of you that wants having everyone running up to you and asking for your autograph,” he once said before quickly adding, “It doesn’t really mean anything at the end of the day. You know what they say about fame and everyone knowing you: It lasts for 15 minutes.”

Even though his peers continually acknowledged his greatness at the poker table, the general public didn’t hear about it until he won the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event at the 2006 World Series of Poker. Winning what many players consider the “new world championship” validated what they already believed, that he was the best all-around poker player in the world. Harrah’s recently announced that in addition to the usual gold bracelet, future winners of this event will receive a trophy named after Chip Reese.

While the first two aspects of Reese’s Object Of The Game philosophy were emphasized during his life, it was the third one that was underscored the most after his death. “I’m sure at his funeral the word ‘children’ and the word ‘kids’ are going to be said hundreds of times because he was such a devoted family man,” predicted Greenstein, and he was right.

The Top Dog

Reese’s funeral clarified what so many already knew: He was one of the happiest guys in the world. In nearly every photograph shown to the standing-room-only audience, he was smiling. “I knew him for 35 years,” Brunson said before a crowd that included Steve Wynn, Lyle Berman, Steve Lipscomb, Jeffrey Pollack, Jack Binion, Mike Sexton, Nolan Dalla, and Bobby Baldwin. “I never saw him get mad or raise his voice. He had the most even disposition of anyone I’ve ever met.”

Brunson went on to say that Reese was “unquestionably the greatest game player of all-time,” an assertion that’s hard to argue with. When he was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 1991 at the age of 40, Reese became the youngest player so honored.

Greenstein agreed with Brunson. “I think if you polled his peers, he became the greatest player in poker,” he said. “I think that’s where they’d put him. You know it’s obviously between him and Doyle. Doyle’s obviously more known and done more things in the tournament sector, but when it comes to the cash games, Chip was the top dog for over 30 years.”

Perhaps the best answer to the question of who was best came from Reese himself. In what very well might have been the last interview he ever gave, ALL IN’s Katie Lindsay asked Reese just a week prior to his death about what it takes to become a poker legend.

“I think you have to be in the arena doing battle over a long period of time,” he answered. “Doyle probably said it best when a reporter asked Doyle about who the best young players are in poker, and you know what Doyle’s answer was? He said, ‘Ask me in 20 years who the best players are.’ This is a business that you don’t really find out overnight who the best player is.”

Later in the same interview, he added, “Nobody plays perfect every day, but it’s who can consistently do the job every single day and who can manage the adversity when the adversity happens. You can take the top 50 poker players in the world, and how they do is not going to be determined by how they are doing when they are catching good cards, it is going to be determined by what they are doing when they are catching bad cards.

“That’s what poker really is about,” he continued. “It’s not about who plays the best cards, it’s about how you handle yourself and how you perform under pressure when things are going badly.”

Storms Reback is a freelance writer from Austin, Texas, and the co-author of All In: The (Almost) Entirely True History Of The World Series Of Poker.