Poker From The Rail

Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail

Amir Vahedi’s last interview
By Johnny Kampis

I always thought of Amir Vahedi as a bit of a larger than life figure. Sure, there have been plenty of better poker players and others who were more intimidating at the table, but I never played with those guys during my early poker development.

You see, I made my first trip to the World Series of Poker in 2004 – the last year the entire tournament series was held at Binion’s Horseshoe. After the hoopla surrounding the 2003 WSOP when Chris Moneymaker won my friend Brian and I decided it was time to check it out.

I bit the bullet and plunked down $1,000 to play one NLHE event. I happened to sit across from Vahedi, who famously made the final table of the main event the year before. As a relative novice, I found the cigar-chomping Iranian rather intimidating, but I did tangle with him in one pot that nearly made me go broke early.

I held Q-T in late position and Vahedi, another player and I saw a flop of A-T-4. He and the other player checked, I bet 200 (I told you I was a novice) and only Vahedi called. A second ace came on the turn and he checked again. I gathered my remaining 800 in chips in my fist, preparing to go all-in and push the pro out of the pot, but at the last moment I changed my mind. “Check,” I said. The river card was a king. Again, Vahedi checked and I checked behind him. He showed A-8 for trips. “I thought you would bet when the king hit,” he said with his thick Iranian accent. I made a motion as if pulling in a fish. “You nearly reeled me in,” I replied. For more on my first WSOP event read my blog here: http://pokernation.blogspot.com/2004_10_01_archive.html

I would not encounter Vahedi again until four years later when I introduced myself at a meet-and-greet with some poker pros at the Palms during the 2008 WSOP. I recalled my first WSOP event and Vahedi laughed. Of course, he did not remember me, but he was amused by my take on the events. I was also amused to learn that Vahedi was more teddy bear than bully – at least off the table. I got his phone number for a future interview for Rounder magazine (a publication for which I write) and we parted ways.

We kept playing text and phone tag when I finally caught up with him in the latter part of 2009 while he was at Hollywood Park casino. The issue of Rounder in which the profile was supposed to publish was never printed and sadly Vahedi died in a Golden Nugget hotel room of complications from diabetes the next month at the age of 46. As a tribute to the gregarious poker pro here is (perhaps) the last interview he gave before his death:

How did you first get into poker?

I had a big bankroll. I was a big blackjack player, casino player and I thought I was invincible. I used to play poker here [Hollywood Park], but that was just fooling around.  When I put my name on the board there were 50 people lining up for that game because they knew I am jumping from big blackjack action to poker just to cool off. They figured I would just play crazy and go home. For me that was just saving money after gambling big money. After I sold my business I continued to play blackjack and poker in the casino and I went down to zero. I was standing in Hollywood Park with not a dollar to my name.  I made one promise to myself that I would quit this completely – not set foot in a casino any more – or I’m going to make it out of here. I’m not going to walk out there and get a paycheck and bring it back here [to gamble]. It was 10 a.m. because I had been up all night losing my butt. They had this $10 tournament. This was 1996 so the biggest tournament in L.A. was $100. I convinced a guy to put up the buy in and we would chop up the profit. I won the tournament right out. It was like $900 for first place. That’s how it started. The next day I was back at 10 a.m. playing again. In fact, that week I broke a record because I won five tournaments in two days. After two days I had like $4,000 in my hand from the tournaments. In tournament poker I was getting the same rush I was getting from the blackjack tables.

The first two World Series I went to I didn’t even get to play the big one, and the third year I was the No-Limit player of the year in Card Player, which was six years in a row I was top 20. Erik Seidel and some other people helped me get into the first main event I got in – 2002, I believe. In 2001, I got screwed out of it because someone was supposed to put me in, but they backed out.  So my first year was 2002 and I didn’t cash. I only played two events during the entire World Series. The next year I had a decent backer and I went to World Series and I was sick the first 10 days because I had had surgery. I sat up in my room broke and the next year I had $500,000 in my pocket. At the end of the year [2003] I was ahead for the Card Player player of the year and there was a small $200 tournament in California. Men [Nguyen] played in it and cashed and beat me by 50 points.

What kind of business did you have at the time you first started playing?

I had a trucking business downtown. It was a good-sized trucking business. We had about 19 trucks. I got a good offer so I sold it. Before I would gamble with the money that was coming in, but after I sold it I continued my bad habits and went down to zero. That was the day I decided to stick with poker.

How did it feel to win that bracelet in the $1,500 NLHE event in 2003 and finish sixth in the main event?

It was legitimacy for what I do for a living. I had tears in my eyes. No one knew how big this was for me. I had my son and folks flown to Vegas. He was like 14 or 15 years old, and my mom came later. All the attention – the cameras, the magazines – was focused on me. That was the best feeling for a father so that finally I got to tell my kids this is what I do for a living. Before, even my own mother was ashamed to tell friends what I did for a living. They didn’t know what to say. They would ask, what is poker? Oh, it’s gambling. That year was the best thing that ever happened to me. It was way more than money.

At the main event what you saw at the final table was real. Nobody knew what the cameras were really going to do to you. We were not playing to the cameras. It was pure. Nobody was making a joke or jumping up like a chimpanzee or whatever. Since our final table until this year’s [2009 main event] final table I haven’t seen that quality at all. There were no stupid things and there were a pretty good mix of underdogs and seasoned veterans.

I felt I was favored to win it and I thought I was going to win it, but I was done. The night before the final table when Phil Ivey got knocked out in 10^th place it was like 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning and my stitches were bleeding. When I got up from the table I felt it. I said this was it. I gave my all. We played 18 or 19 hours in a day then. It wasn’t like nine hours or five levels. No, they had to get to certain [numbers of] people. It was unbelievable how tired I was. They woke us up at 10 a.m. because of ESPN interviews and stuff like that. I didn’t want to go, but they said we had to come down there.  I begged them. I was the first person to bring this up. I said any other sport they give you at least one day off. You could see it – Sammy was sleeping on the table for God’s sake. Nobody got more than four hours sleep and they’re asking us to play for millions of dollars.

I went through the tape and I would do the things you see on the show again and again. But you don’t see most of the hands and there was one hand that wasn’t shown that I made two mistakes. That hand completely destroyed me. I don’t get mad about bad beats. I really go on tilt when I make a mistake because I am a professional. People tell me not to worry about it. If Michael Jordan gets up to the hoop and misses the hoop what are you going to say? No, I’m a professional. When I get there I am supposed to perform. If I had the experience then that I have today I would have finished that table. I had good chips. When there were 12 people I was the chip leader before Dutch Boyd gave all of his chips to Moneymaker.

How many children do you have?

I have three children. One of them is my biological child and the others I call my children because they were 1 and 3 years old when I raised them and there was no other father figure in the picture. The oldest one is Erika, 25, the middle one is Ealbaro, 22, and the youngest one is Chanel, 21.

Did you emigrate from Iran when you were a young child or were you older?

I was old enough to spend 19 months in the Iran-Iraq war. I was 18 years old. As much as I was against the government it was important to defend my country. Iraq invaded Iran. I do not regret one day I spent there. I spent three weeks on the frontlines and then I worked in the hospital. It was scary seeing all these people come back piece by piece. I took three days off to visit my mom in Tehran. My brother was leaving to go to Afghanistan and my mom pleaded for me to go with him because it was a high casualty war. I ended up going with him and we traveled through Afghanistan and Pakistan. We spent three months in jail in Pakistan for lack of documentation and then the United Nations recognized we were refugees. I lived with my sister in France for about a year and then I came to the United States in 1983. I was 22 years old when I got here.

What have you been doing lately? Have you been traveling a lot to play? Do you have any business interests?

I’ve been off the last two years. Right now there are so many tournaments if you don’t have a sponsorship or something you’re out of luck because you’re talking about $600,000 in tournament buy-ins a year. I’m going day by day. I’d like to get involved in some business where I don’t have to take care of the daily stuff. My traveling days are long gone. I think the last time I was traveling all over the place was 2007. In 2008 and 2009 I’ve been laying low. I think in the next few years I may take some European trips because I think the European tournaments are going to be better than U.S. tournaments. The people have made so much money off of poker players and they have abandoned them.  They are going to Europe and trying to build something over there. You have to focus on Europe now. After the World Series you could go over there for a couple of months and play a different tournament every week in a different city.

I remember in the beginning of 2004 the top players like Daniel Negreanu, Phil, Barry Greenstein – they agreed we needed to get together some kind of association to control the flow of this. Otherwise, this is not going to last forever. They couldn’t get together. All of a sudden you have all kinds of leagues and tournaments and now people are running out of money. The shows are getting worse and worse because they are trying to accommodate the average endorsers and at the same time they are trying to make a character out of a person who doesn’t have character. They don’t think about poker. They are just looking for fresh blood. The people who run poker now don’t have a love for poker, just money. We have nothing to rely on. Top players – you wouldn’t believe who – are broke. They made millions of dollars and won all of these titles and now they have nothing going for them.

Related Posts

1. 2009 World Series of Poker – Interview with Andy Bloch
2. WSOP Interview with a Danish Full Tilt Poker Qualifier

Tags: AlCantHang, Amir Vahedi, Bloggers on the Rail, Guest Posts, Tuscaloosa Johnny

Permalink | March 18th, 2010 Play Online Poker at Full Tilt Poker

2 Responses to “Amir Vahedi’s Last Interview”

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   March 19th, 2010 at 6:18 pm

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2. poker fan Says:
   June 18th, 2010 at 11:32 am

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