#561 - London 2008 #68 - WSOP-E - Night of the Living, Part IV - The Last Time

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Howard Lederer, elegantly collecting his cards in Razz, flips them face down, and slides them, as one, to the dealer. There’s a certain look on his face - tired, resigned. Not disgusted or discouraged, but like he’s communicating, “I’ve got nothing … again,” as if that’s been the case thousands of times. And it has.

The last time I saw Howard Lederer play was just a week ago. After Phil Hellmuth stormed off the table, away from the stage, and out from the Hellenic Centre, Howard bought into the Million Dollar Cash Game for $100,000 and played in Phil’s seat for the last hour or so of the broadcast.

It was not an easy situation. David Benyamine, Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonious, and Tom “durrrr” Dwan play each other every day online and had most of two days to acquaint or re-acquaint themselves with their opponents’ live playing styles. If Lederer hadn’t gotten in during the early days of TV poker, tournament poker, and poker politics, instead of spending the last four years as a businessman and spokesman for the game, he’d have played thousands of hands with those players. But now, with a hundred grand and maybe twenty hands, he was brand new to the game and relatively new to these players.

Knowing that Lederer is on his way back to the game - more tournaments, more cash games - I used the legends of Boston sports to rib him about coming into this difficult situation, the superstar whose days are all but over, trying to make the magic happen just one more time. He picked up $29,000 for an hour of work and pretended to be annoyed that my “vote of confidence” consisted of saying that Howard had a chance because, after all, Ted Williams hit a home run in his last at bat.

“I’d hardly say this is ‘my last at bat.’”

Of course it wasn’t, and his appearance at this final table a week later emphasizes that.

How about the last time I saw Howard Lederer play Razz?

Now that’s a good one. That was on television, at the final table of the Razz in 2004 on ESPN. (I actually watched it on ESPN at Howard’s house, because he mistakenly triple- or quadruple-booked himself: pro chat on Full Tilt [then in its infancy], playing session on Full Tilt, get-together with his friend Erik Seidel [who I got to meet that night], interview with me for THE PROFESSOR, THE BANKER, AND THE SUICIDE KING. I made the mistake, in Lederer’s crowded study, of petting the pug that parked next to me on the floor, and soon both his dogs were begging for attention and would not be denied. Seidel, of course, was quite the opposite, though I developed an equal fondness for him.)

This was the year ESPN was awash in good fortune from the surprise bonanza of Chris Moneymaker’s world championship of 2003. The cable network had expanded its coverage of the Main Event and, for 2004, would provide even more coverage, inculding for the first time, coverage of some of the preliminary events. (Brief history lession: the 2003 Main Event (Moneymaker) was six or eight hours of coverage. The 2002 (Varkonyi) was two hours. The coverage before that was, maximum, one hour and covered by ESPN only a few times. It appeared on “The Sunshune Cable Network” one year and in some years, the Binions PAID to have it broadcast or paid to tape it themselves in case someone wanted to broadcast it later. Supposedly, there is no filmed account of Huckleberry Seed’s 1996 championship.)

I believe 2004 will live on as a high-water mark in ESPN’s World Series coverage. The broadcasts included the following:

*A final table in a NLHE event (the first WSOP NLHE rebuy event, in which Daniel Negraneau spent 28 dimes, had to make the final table to break even, and finished third) featuring Negraneau, Matusow, Juanda, and Paul Phillips, yet won by a man named Grenobl, who stopped in at the Series while driving his mobile home, his wife, and his dogs across country.

*Chau Giang outlasting Robert Williamson III in an epic PLO battle in which both men fascinated the TV audience.

*A limit hold ‘em final table featuring John Hennigan (who won) and David Chiu but highjacked in the coverage by former street-person Ellix Powers, foul-mouthed Patti Gallagher, and indignant author James McManus.

The Razz event was also televised and was a confection for the connoisseur, with venerable TJ Cloutier defeating Dutch Boyd (then part of “the Crew” which was visibly and vocally taking over the World Series of Poker) after they dispatched an all-star lineup including Howard Lederer and John Juanda.

Despite the fascinating match-ups, the experience guaranteed that ESPN would never again broadcast a Razz event. Even as part of the $50,000 HORSE, the televised final table in Year One was restricted to NLHE only.

Why did this great show put the kibosh on TV Razz? In my opinion, it was too gritty and too much about the failures and frustrations of poker. In other words, it was too REAL for ESPN and probably for most viewers, too.

Howard finished third, looking fierce and haggard. He repeatedly had good starting hands turn to crap. Once, a huge hand on fourth street (it may have been four to a wheel) was folded, in a massive pot, to a single bet on the river as he made a pair on fifth street, two-pair on sixth street, and three-pair on seventh.

Another time, in a hand with TJ, he had the lead and pressed Cloutier with repeated raises, only to have TJ catch perfect on sixth and seventh to end with the same hand and a split-pot. As TJ re-arranged his cards and joked to Howard about the order of the cards and his good luck, Lederer impatiently said, “I know, I know TJ. I know what you had.”

Even the winner complained. TJ repeatedly said during the broadcast, “Ah hate Razz.”