FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#242 – London Journal #9 – Exiled from the World Series of Poker

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On Monday, Thomas Bihl was the first player eliminated from the Main Event. The first WSOP-E bracelet winner, on one of the opening hands, received two queens. The first represented Jennifer Harman, the last and most troublesome of the 104 players vanquished on the way to his HORSE title. What he didn’t realize until too late was that while Harman was busy carving up a nearby table, the other queen was flesh and blood in the form of the woman across from him with a pair of sixes, who made a set on the flop and quads on the turn, after which Thomas put in the last of his chips.

When I mentioned this to Tony Holden that evening, he told me he met Bihl at Howard and Annie’s poker fantasy camp in Germany, and had predicted greater success in the future for him in BIGGER DEAL. Holden was right on the money, but success in poker is fleeting.

Though I am not £10,000 lighter, I understand a bit how Bihl felt when he was all-in and drawing dead – awkward, dispossessed, suddenly having no business where he conspicuously stood. He met his end at The Empire early Monday afternoon, and I was booted from the floor of The Fifty on Tuesday.

Starting on Wednesday, the Championship plays out entirely at its main venue, The Empire. But what about the two other casinos hosting the opening sessions at the Main Event, The Fifty and The Sportsman?

I’ve written some about The Empire, and expect to write a lot more, and about London casinos in general. My job isn’t done, however, until I tell you about The Sportsman and The Fifty.

I will first describe The Sportsman, which is located by Marble Arch. I have actually had two prior experiences with this casino, both without actually crossing its threshold. On Wednesday the 6th, during my whirlwind tour of the city under the guidance of Holden (another post as yet unwritten), he pointed it out to me. My only thought was: where? The second experience was searching for it in vain with Ted Forrest and his friend Tibor on Friday the 8th, an account I have, for a change, actually committed to this blog. See Nos. 240-241.

This time, in the capable company of Uncle Tilty himself, I found it. The Sportsman is tucked into a courtyard named Old Quebec in a bustling neighborhood.

The tournament, all seven tables of it, was downstairs in a restaurant. Restaurant tables were replaced with poker tables and the clatter of dishes was replaced with the clack of chips.

There were few familiar faces – Barny Boatman and Jeff Madsen, at the same table, and Max Pescatori, who I’ve only now introduced myself to. It looked like Max was biding his time and slowly chipping up. He confided to me and Uncle Tilty, “I’m at a great table. I’m afraid it will be the first to break, which would be terrible.” (Unfortunately, Max busted before the end of Day 1-B.)

Before going upstairs to examine the casino, I paused to see how Boatman and Madsen were doing.

Madsen and his chips were gone! Only three Tilters in the room and one is eliminated under my nose and I missed it? The ignominy!

Uncle Tilty halted by breast-beating – Can you tell I’ve been to the opera? Another adventure, soon to be posted – by pointing out that Jeff had merely been moved to balance the tables. I spotted him across the room under a white baseball cap, head down, already back to work.

I quickly made the rounds of the casino proper on the main floor. It was like a big living room, barely larger than the elongated main room in the Fairway Villa at the Wynn that Andy Beal occupied for the last of his three go-rounds with the pros in February 2006. (Commemorating those matches and my memories of them, I nicked a nice pen, trademark chocolate and bearing the Wynn logo, from Beal’s room.)

There were about twenty gaming tables and an equal number of slot machines. The sports theme was played out with framed photos of great athletes on the walls.

In the corner, along one wall, was a single craps table. The dicing grounds that proved so elusive last week lay open and unguarded before me. If not for the dull pain in my left foot, I might have stuck around and rolled the bones.

But I had other work. I ventured to The Fifty on St. James Street. From the outside, the place looked like a very exclusive, seldom-used club. (In fact, that’s exactly what it is.) There is a small brass placard set into a wall with barely discernible letters announcing the name. The practically invisible Sportsman, by contrast, screams out its presence.

I wonder what members, who pay £750 for the privilege of “belonging” to this casino, think of the sign at the Rio, which you might be able to see from the space shuttle. On second thought, I don’t care.

After signing in, I ascended a long double staircase – white marble, dark wood, burgundy carpet – to the second floor and the gaming tables. The gaming tables were spread over three remarkably elegant rooms, fifteen tables in all. Baccarat wasn’t called baccarat but Punto Banco, a rare instance in which French has been declared insufficiently snooty and a Cuban expression was substituted. It was early in the day and the tables were fully staffed, but there was not a single player at any of the tables.

I learned the tournament was being held on the fourth floor, in the restaurant. I took the lift, which had a capacity of four.

The inside of the building had been utterly silent until the elevator door opened. Finally, a sound as familiar as the rattle of slot machines: the riffle of chips. But there was almost no talking. Imagine two small poker rooms. At one of them, Tony G, Mark Vos, and Andy Black are playing. And that’s the SILENT one.

Mark Vos noted my Full Tilt patch and asked if I had another. In a battlefield-worthy move that would have impressed Uncle Tilty – who I learned was, at that moment, being denied entry to the casino – I tore the emblem from my chest and offered it Mark. As he took it, I said, “So I’m in for 5%, right?”

“Yeah, if you pay twenty five hundred.”

I don’t know if he meant dollars or pounds but neither seemed like a good deal. Phil Ivey gave me 10% in exchange for a headphone-battery I supplied in a similar pinch, though Ivey didn’t cash on that occasion so I was out the battery. Unfortunately, Mark was eliminated by the end of Day 1-B.

I wasn’t a total jinx. As I scribbled notes at an abandoned banquette behind the tables, Jesse Jones (who finished among the leaders at The Fifty this day) started up a conversation. He complimented me on the Phil Hellmuth profile, encouraged me to join and write about the WPA, and inquired about my availability to work with him on a book. I gave him my standard explanation: based on the corner I painted myself into in poker book-writing, I can work on poker books for free or £100,000, but no amount in between. He chose the former and went back to playing.

Before I could explain myself further, a floorman told me to leave. “The tournament floor is only for players and media partners of the World Series of Poker.”

So I’m banned? The shame of it. (I’d use the word ignominy but there is a once-per-blog limit on that term, or should be.) How would I be able to describe this cold, austere, joyless environment without being on the floor? How would I be able to report on the silent, non-existent camaraderie promoted by such surroundings?

I pondered that as I made the slow, mournful march behind the ropes, then in the elevator, then past the casino floor, then down the winding staircase to the entrance. I paused only to watch Allen Cunningham arrive for the tournament, knowing it was the last I would see of him that day, and to steal a lacquered wooden pen from an alcove on the second floor.

Morose and unwanted, I stared out the front door at adjacent Jermyn Street. Where could an exiled wretch like me go? I trudged the fifty yards to Davidoff, where I was consoled by Edward, the proprietor, and a Romeo y Julieta Belicoso. I was able, at least, to write these words, so the healing process has begun.

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