#087 - Professor Backwards is IN

I returned from Maui at 5 AM Saturday. (Coming soon: The Poker Player’s Guide to Maui!) Rolling out of bed just before 3 PM, I checked to see how the Bay 101 WPT event finished. I was thrilled to see that Ted Forrest won it.

I immediately thought about calling his girlfriend Roxanna to congratulate him. (Only a fool would call Ted on his own cell phone. “Ol’ Ironsides,” my nickname for the cell phone that has confounded all Ted’s attempts to lose or destroy it, is never out of commission but rarely in its owner’s possession.) When I found my phone among the detritus of the red-eye flight and my various pieces of pocket waste, there was a message from Roxanne.

Ted is very modest about his accomplishments and Roxanna tends not to define herself by her boyfriend’s tournament success. Still, her excitement and satisfaction were obvious. “Ted is the only one,” she told me via voicemail, “to win five bracelets, a PPT championship, a heads-up championship, and a WPT championship. And have such good manners through it all.”

This last point bears emphasis. Everything in poker, it seems, flows down from the most successful players. Usually, it’s the bad things (or, more often, they lose their meaning by the time the masses pick up on a particular idea): in-your-face acting (which I distinguish from in-your-face reality, which is still a mixed bag for poker, but at least it’s real), massages at the table, badugi, mumbling your action instead of just taking your action, pretending to labor over an obvious move, asking for opponents’ chip counts … just because (I saw someone do that in the first hand of a tournament).

Beneath the surface, Ted Forrest could be a maniac. He nonchalantly does things beyond the comprehension of most people, even experienced gamblers. His travels put him into contact regularly with some of the most exhausting, exasperating, obnoxious people on earth. Sometimes, there can be tremendous joy in vanquishing someone like that – or misery in losing to such people. And Forrest has been part of the some of the biggest wins – and losses – ever to occur at a poker table.

Yet he is ALWAYS a gentleman.

I’ll finish typing up my Andy Beal/Ted Forrest notes, and probably repost the entire 88 pages some day soon. I could tell that day that Ted wasn’t in a great mood, stuck on a short stack, getting bossed around by Andy early, and then losing the $7 million he won from Beal. But he was always a gentleman.

As rootless as the life of a high-stakes pro can be, and as adamant as poker pros can be that they don’t follow the “regular” rules of society, I can tell you one thing for sure about Ted Forrest: his parents did a good job raising him.

Unless the WPT messes it up, this will eventually be a broadcast for the ages. It had a great combination of surprising local players and hot pros. In addition to Ted, the final table included Bill Edler, who’s been tearing up big poker tournaments lately, but falling just short, James Van Alstyle, who is apparently now first in Card Player’s Player of the Year standings, and J.J. Liu, who battled Forrest heads-up in the WPT’s longest final table in history.

What an effort by Liu, huh? Four months pregnant and obviously uncomfortable, she battles for four days, then kicks butt all day long at the final table and is heads-up with Ted “I have all the time in the world” Forrest. Ted gives her that beatific smile like he’s ready to go another 40 or so hours, so after all that, she has to think, “Geez, you mean I’m just getting started?”

Ted has called his style “winning ugly.” He plays in what appears to be a completely random fashion – calling a lot, making small raises, checking a lot. Sometimes he has a big hand, sometimes a draw, sometimes nothing. He keeps everything small and keeps looking for a chance to induce an opponent to make a mistake. It’s no accident that his matches in the first two rounds of the Heads-Up Championship were each the longest of their flight, and the same was true when he won in 2006.

So often, we see a heads-up confrontation at the end of a long tournament fizzle. The players are tired, used up, anxious for it to be over. I wasn’t there and haven’t even read detailed accounts of the final table, but this had to a nightmare come to life for J.J. Liu, yet she hung in and fought to the end.

I am an unabashed fan of Ted Forrest. I have been watching him from various close vantage points for almost three years and my admiration for him continues to grow. Because I wasn’t there, all I have are numbers to go by. Roxanna reminded me of some of this: (1) Could anyone have a wider assortment of modern titles? Five bracelets, a PPT championship, a WPT championship, a heads-up championship. (2) Ted has made four final tables in WPT events. Here are his finishes, in order: 5th, 4th, 2nd, 1st. (3) Ted has achieved a form of consistency in the very inconsistent business of tournament poker. In 2004, he won two bracelets at the World Series. In 2005, he made two WPT final tables and won a PPT event. In 2006, he won the Heads-Up Championship. Now, in 2007, he has won a WPT event.

I keep thinking that Ted is going to win the Main Event some day and nothing has dissuaded me from that belief. Thanks to this latest triumph, I have license to keep harping on it.