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#312 - Moments of 2007, Part IX - Bellagio in Springtime - Madmen and Eskimos
The Bellagio Five-Star is one of the premiere events of the poker circuit. It’s spring, it’s Vegas, the World Series is just around the corner, it’s Doug Dalton and Jack McClelland, and it’s the Bellagio. It also concludes with the WPT Championship, though the significance of that event is burned into my brain by the memory of Steve Lipscomb flipping out during a talk with Chris Ferguson minutes after the 2006 event began. I made two trips to Las Vegas, once during the preliminary events (mostly to play) and once during the Championship (entirely to watch).
What interested me about my blog entries during this period were the little things. It wasn’t about final tables or confrontations but just what an interesting place Las Vegas is when you are an outsider like me, but you’re friends with professional gamblers and you’ve visited the town hundreds of times over the previous twenty years.
Like looking out my window at the Bellagio at the exact same view I saw as a ten year-old from my parents’ room at the Dunes, in 1969, the first time I ever laid eyes on Las Vegas.
Like meeting Amarillo Slim. Like meeting Eskimo Clark. Like meeting one of the old regulars from the Mayfair Club. Like running into Mike Matusow twice in one day.
Coming into the Wynn Poker room, I ran into Mike Matusow. He was picking up his money for making the final table of the main event of the Wynn Classic last month. After playing and busting out of the Wynn’s afternoon tournament, I went to the Bellagio where I ran into Mike again.
Mike is playing $25-$50 no-limit upstairs but he’s agitating the management to get a black-chip mixed game going. For some reason, they won’t start a list for a game bigger than $200-$400. They’ll start a game but not a list.
“No wonder the action here sucks.”
After the satellite, I returned to the upstairs games in the Bellagio poker room and Matusow was still at it. He was up about $6,000.
Eskimo Clark walks by.
Mike is talking nonstop at the table, not even about this game. His legs are bouncing under the table, as if he’s challenging live poker to contain him.
In the $25-$50 game, Mike calls a raise to $200 with 6d-7d. Someone behind him makes it $1,200. After that’s called, Mike also calls. The flop is T-4-2, so he checks and folds, turning to me and saying, “Gotta’ call when they’re deep. He had $20,000 behind.”
Eskimo Clark and another player are talking with Mike about getting a mixed game going. It becomes clear after just a few minutes why a lot more talking than playing goes on during these mixed games, especially BEFORE the games.
First, Mike is complaining to Eskimo. Then Eskimo brings over the other guy. They both want to play. Mike wants $400-$800. Eskimo doesn’t say but the other guy says he’ll play $300-$600. A couple minutes later, he’s saying “$200-$400 or $300-$600.” Then it looks like Eskimo, who has a handful of $20 chips, isn’t even going to play.
The third player then explains that he doesn’t want to play HORSE. He doesn’t want to play Razz. But he wants to include deuce-to-seven triple-draw and badugi. (I don’t understand how Razz is somehow unplayable but triple-draw and badugi are.) But Mike says yes to everything. Then the guy doesn’t want to play Stud-Eight-or-Better. He wants to play it high-low without the qualifier. Mike says fine.
Still, there’s no game taking place. The lull gives me a chance to introduce myself to Paul “Eskimo” Clark. He speaks softly, with a Louisiana accent that, in the cacophony of the poker room, could pass for a foreign language. I had heard he had some responsibility for the game of badugi, so I asked him. He didn’t answer in a direct fashion, but from his 15-minute maze of an explanation, I think I picked up a couple things.
Badugi, near as I can figure from Paul’s answer, came from Eskimo Clark. I also learned the following:
*Paul will turn 60 on June 2, 2007, the first day of the World Series of Poker.
*He served in the Army during the Vietnam War.
*He developed the game of Badugi, though he says the proper spelling – he wrote it in my notebook – is p-a-d-u-g-i-e. He gives Yosh Nakano some of the credit/blame for the more common spelling.
*The word means “spotted dog” or “colors” in Korean.
*The triple-draw version of the game is only the most recent. He has compiled a book about the game, which started with a seven-stud version and includes criss-cross, big-L, and little-L versions. He started explaining the nuances of the different forms, but I was lost from the start.
