#560 – London 2008 #67 – WSOP-E – Night of the Living, Part III – I’ve Got Howard’s Back

My notes of the final taqble, 58 pages covering 4 3/4 hours and 144 hands of short-handed poker, are mostly useless gibberish to me now. But among the wreckage are several jarring images – like photographs that look innocuous, until you learn the context.

IMAGE 1

The expanse of Howard Lederer’s back and shoulders, covered in a gray suit-jacket. From the side, you can see his graying goatee below his distinctive nose, wihch is both delicate and broad, thanks to a ridge that bisects the center.

This image is from 10:25 PM, just after the resumption of play. Howard has the chip lead, with 407k. Sherkhan Farnood, a successful businessman from Afghanistan, is next with 311k. Ivo Donev is third with 223k, and Jeff Duvall has 151k. They are playing Hold ‘Em with blinds of 4k-8k.

Howard has been occupied the last four years – as long as I’ve known him, really – with his role as a spokesman for Full Tilt and various promotional, business, and political activities.

He always tells me that he expects to return to poker – he plays heavily at the World Series of Poker but not much else during the year, though he won a million dollars and a tournament in Australia last January – and looks forward to that time.

Increasingly, I have come to believe him. We played together at the World Series and I could see he still relished the never-ending challenge of poker’s mental combat, no matter how frequently exhausting and frustrating it could be and how fleeting its moments of success.

That Howard Lederer should ever be regarded as “returning” to poker would be a shock to anyone who knew him only during the time when he was 20 to 40 years old. During that period (roughly, the second half of the Eighties, the Nineties, and the early years of this decade), it’s possible no one was more committed to poker and the gambling life than Howard.

In that period, his life was a series of poker games – or one long poker game. It was punctuated almost entirely by activities consistent with poker. Although he read voraciously, travelled widely, and picked up interests such as wines and music, it’s hard to imagine HOW – or WHEN. His “day job” was working with a sports-betting syndicate that operated like a hedge fund. His “investments” were backing other poker players and chasing (usually to his ruin) the business schemes circulated in the dark corner of poker rooms.

In fact, if Howard Lederer ever saw daylight between the ages of 20 and 40, it was likely due to one of the following reasons: (1) He was on the golf course, playing usually for big money; (2) He was watching a sporting event, usually with big money on the line, unless it was one of his beloved Boston teams, in which case his heart was being broken; (3) He showed up early for one of the 100+ Grateful Dead concerts he attended during that period; or (4) He was STILL up from a poker game that started the night before or the night before that. (And the most likely occasion of Lederer squinting into the sunlight was likely the last reason.)

Looking at this image, there is a small gap underneath Howard’s right armpit where you can see his cards on the felt. I wonder, when he turns up their corners briefly, if it is possible to see them from this vantage point. I notice most of the final table gallery, including the people sitting directly behind me, are friends, family, or financially interested associates of the other players. I can’t see Howard’s cards but I wonder if someone at a slightly different angle or “training” could. I start looking behind me as Howard peeks at his cards and I’m eventually satisfied no one else is catching a look. (In fact, based on how Howard loses his lead and then the rest of his chips, the outcome would have been almost the same if all his cards had been face-down and all his opponents’ cards had been face-up.)

to be continued …

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