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#110 – Prisoner of the Bellagio, Part VII – The Ted Forrest Chipmobile
[This was written based on notes I took before falling asleep at 4 AM on Saturday, April 7.]
I got over to Roxana’s at a little after 11 PM, just before Ted. Roxana was cooking dinner. She is an excellent cook and, in the old world tradition, instinctively sensitive about you not eating her cooking. She made a chicken dish, a rice dish, a soup, a salad, and brewed tea.
“It looks delicious, Roxana, but” – I explained my gastronomic missteps from earlier in the evening – “I’m trying to pass a beak here. I might have to skip all but the tea.”
Ted soon arrived and laid waste to the delectable spread. Roxana is also very health conscious (which make her and Ted a very odd couple, though Ted will probably live longer for it), and told me her latest cause was raw organic pumpkin seeds. This was the reason why Middle Eastern men didn’t have prostate problems, and she gave me a bag and passed a bag to Ted.
Ted Forrest will eat just about anything but he looked suspiciously at the seeds, eating a couple. Then the sly dog “accidentally” spilled the bag on the floor. I wasn’t nearly as crafty. I simply left mine behind.
Our discussion turned to an old topic, Ted’s automobile. He had that yellow Firebird with the eagle decals when I met him and I think it’s had a hard five-or-so years. I keep trying to talk him into buying a new car. (Roxana is doing the same.)
I know money means nothing to Ted but with that $1.1 million, couldn’t he take a little chunk and finally get a new car?
Surprisingly, he was receptive to it. My secret agenda, to go car shopping with Ted Forrest, was on the brink of being realized.
“How about it we go when I come back in for the WPT Championship?”
He started to balk, and I could see his mind working. Shouldn’t I buy it AFTER the Championship?
That kind of thinking – Ted doesn’t care about cars, either – is exactly why he’s driving a five year-old yellow Firebird with eagle decals. If he just won $1.1 million, why does he need to “accomplish something” to buy a car?
He headed him off at the pass. “Think of it Ted. Buy the car to reward yourself BEFORE you play.”
That apparently struck a chord and he was in agreement. “What kind of a car do you want?”
“One with good air conditioning. I think the air conditioner is about shot on this one.”
I explained that Mercedes makes good air conditioners, and they have a dealership just a mile from his house. In fact, with their nationwide roadside assistance and loaner-car program, he can just drop his car off or have them pick it up (even on his weekly business trips to L.A.) and lose no time to get it fixed or serviced.
Roxana: “Ted, do you think you’re ready to give up Old Yeller?”
Ted: “Sure. I don’t have any attachment to that car.”
Roxana (to me, in a low voice): “Make sure you have it detailed and you watch them. The car has chips.”
I thought she meant “paint chips” from door dings and the like, so I acted like she meant “potato chips” because I’ve seen the inside of that car and it sometimes looks like it doubles as a mobile dining room. Ted quickly set me straight.
Ted: “They say the best bet in poker is if Ted Forrest is selling a $2,000 car, you should buy it for $6,000.”
Roxana: “That’s why you have to be on the lookout for chips.”
Mike: “Ohhh, THOSE chips.”
Ted: “Once, I found $75,000 in chips under the seat.”
Mike: “Alright, that’s definitely going in the blog.”
Roxana: “Nooo, don’t write that, Michael. It sounds terrible.”
Ted: “No, go ahead and write it. Maybe it’ll drive the price up and I can get some poker player to buy it for $45-50,000. I could take sealed bids in the poker room.”
The upshot of it all is that I’m going car shopping with Ted Forrest, which promises to be an adventure. My only pay for the service is the ability to write and tell you about it, and maybe if I find some poker chips under a seat I’ll ask for some kind of finder’s fee.
But probably not. That led us to, oddly, a discussion about Andy Beal. I had mentioned to Ted that I’d been in touch with Andy and thought there was a chance I’d see him next week. I mentioned to Forrest that I probably made less money off Andy Beal than anyone else on earth in my position, and while I was happy about it, it flew in the face of my usual negotiating tactics.
“My idea of a negotiation, Ted, is either to ask for a ridiculously large amount for my contribution, or nothing at all.” I explained to him that the deal with Mike Matusow to collaborate on his autobiography fell apart because his management thought I was asking too much. And while my role is miniscule in comparison, my deal with Gus Hansen on helping him develop and sell his book proposal is – and I insisted on this – that I get nothing.
And that’s how it’s been with Andy Beal. While I was grateful for the chance to watch the 2006 games from the table, and I wrote some great stuff and was well paid for it, others in my position would have made more, and done less to get it. In the past, a few people have gotten a couple free points of the pros’ action because of their proximity to Beal or some other non-monetary contribution. I’m pretty sure if, instead of doing it for the love of the game, I had told Doyle or Jennifer or Eli last year that for delivering the game, they should give me a tiny piece, they probably would have (a) pissed and moaned, (b) not respected me, (c) hated me forever more, and (d) come across with a percent or two, especially if I acted like I could get Beal to change his mind (which I probably could have).
That would have been $100,000-$200,000, and I wouldn’t had to write anything or run around for all of February 2006 in a panic.
But that’s not for me at all. I didn’t become friends with Andy Beal, or Ted or Jennifer or anyone else in poker, to extort a piece of the action because of my information or vantage point. I’ve fallen for the people, and the opportunity to write interesting stuff.
I also probably blew a chance to hold up the Wynn for a mid-five figure amount. After Andy and Ted played one day, I said to Andy, “You want to shoot some dice?”
Beal said, “I was thinking of going to my room, but now that you mention it, that would be kind of fun.” We won’t talk about the stakes or the results, but keep this in mind: (a) Beal had more than $10 million on deposit at the cage; (b) when he signed his first marker, the casino executive he handed it to was Steve Wynn’s brother-in-law, who just materialized on the spot; and (c) I called Ted Forrest, who I knew loves a craps adventure, and he did a 180 with the Firebird on I-15, came back to the Wynn, and was given on the spot a line of credit that would pay for the Mercedes we’re going to go looking for.
Casinos PAY people to bring in guys like that. I never bothered to look into it. Not only that but I lost a couple grand myself at that table.
So I think if I find some society chips at the bottom of the Firebird, Ted’s money, for probably the first time since he moved to Las Vegas in the mid-Eighties, is safe.
We then got into a discussion of online poker, which Ted has played quite a bit recently. Naturally, his view was contrary to Doug Dalton’s. “Sure, there are going to be big swings. Probably fewer for me than most of these other guys because I don’t know enough about how to use a computer to play more than one table at a time. But I’ve seen swings of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and fast. I don’t know about these guys who go off for a million a day, but playing a lot of tables at once, it can definitely happen.”
I asked him about whether he’s leaving some of his edge behind since he can’t have the same level of that intangible skill called “feel.” I conceded the point, but not the conclusion. “I find as I’m playing more online, I’m getting a feel for how other players play. It’s not the same as playing at a live table, but I’m developing it. And how about this? If my edge is smaller online but I still have an edge and I can play more hands, maybe that smaller edge makes me more money online. Playing faster is definitely something online games have going for them.”
What about the risk that some of his opponents were communicating during the game or playing multiple accounts? “You’d be able to feel that, especially in these short-handed games. I’ve never felt anything funny going on, and I’m pretty sure I would if it was. The only time I ever felt something funny was happening was a couple years ago when I played in a $15-$30 game. But that was the only time.”
It being only about 1:30 AM, Ted said, “While we’re talking about it, why don’t we go online and see if I can win a hundred thousand for the night?” He had his choice of games, and was halfway there by 3 AM when I got ready to go.
Ted was going to skip the beginning of the Five Star to go to L.A. on Sunday to play Larry Flynt’s game. I told him that he could play the Bellagio on Saturday and leave on Sunday for Flynt.
“But it’s a two day event. How can I be in L.A. at four o’clock Sunday if they play the final table at the Bellagio at three o’clock Sunday.”
I thought, I should be that confident, and realized that I was talking to the man who just won a World Poker Tour event the month before, and $1.1 million, and a wickedly large piece of glass that Roxana had on a window sill next to that dinky Heads-Up Championship trophy.
“You win the first event, Michael, and I’ll win the last.”
I liked that. When I left, Ted told me it would be good for the sales of our book if I won a tournament before the World Series. “I don’t know, Ted. Winning a bracelet, the month the book comes out, would probably be best.”
“I guess you should win two events, then. One before the World Series and one during.”
I like the man’s thinking. I just wish I could emulate it (but so does everyone else in poker).
