Poker news from http://www.ajc.com/
By STEVE HUMMER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/05/06
These are the dreams that ride the turn of a card.
"I'd just like to sit down with Phil Hellmuth one time, me be next to him, so we get in small blind, big blind," said Kennesaw's Sam Guinn, gunning for one of poker's bad boys. "He really knocks people. I just don't let that happen, I'm going to knock back. You're not going to intimidate me."
"Last year Jennifer Tilly won about $158,000," said Stone Mountain's Melissa Ledbetter, speaking of the actress-turned-card-shark and the women's event she won at the World Series of Poker. "I hope she's at my table, I think I can take her. I've seen her play."
Those are the dreams that continue to feed the culture of no-limit Texas hold-em poker, where reprobates and pasty numbers savants have become giants on any number of programming-starved networks. And where every teenager with a laptop and every working stiff who knows a nut flush from a toilet seat wants a piece of them.
It all looks so reachable. Just stare through the sunglasses and into the black hole of a soul of that professional across the table, go all-in, and return him to whatever back alley he came from. And don't forget your wheelbarrow to haul away all those bricks of large denomination bills.
Now is when those visions are at their fevered crest, with the beginning of another World Series of Poker at the Rio in Las Vegas. Over the next month and a half there will be 45 events of various games and stakes levels, leading up to the Main Event (from which last year's winner, Joseph Hachem, took away $7.5 million). What happens at the end of this month through Aug. 10 will be boiled down and replayed on a certain sports network nearly as much as an ESPY promo.
Atlantans primed
More than 5,600 players took part in the Main Event last year. "I think it will be between 7,500 and 8,000 this year," said Joe Connor, the Roswell player who won $304,000 last year. The pay-off for first could approach $10 million.
There will be a sizable Georgia contingent in Vegas. It's as close as anyone from Atlanta is likely to get to any kind of World Series this year.
There is a zeal to their journey that defies easy reckoning. Says Ledbetter, a 25-year-old supervisor at Best Buy, "I do things other than poker — I just can't think of any right now."
"I won't stop this until I'm on ESPN one day, whether it's the $10,000 buy-in championship or a smaller one," says a grinning Guinn, 52, who owns a tire and auto shop in Marietta.
Married 12 years ago in a chapel on the Las Vegas strip, Guinn remains dazzled by those surroundings. "The way I see it," he said, "my odds of going out there and winning a tournament are better than playing the lottery. If I ever win one of the big tournaments, if I ever come in 10th, I told my wife we'd probably move out there."
Ledbetter and Guinn are playing in one of the smaller World Series buy-in games, with the brazen idea of winning enough to put up the $10,000 to get into the Main Event beginning July 28. What is this all for, if not to blow up one's fantasies to IMAX proportions?
It is a big step up to poker's summit. Ledbetter is a star at Atlanta's Madison Grill, where she is the current leader in the bar's running free-poker tournament. "I drink and eat for free," she said. "I've been coming here for three years and haven't paid for anything in 2 1/2." That is nothing like the environment Sunday when she sits down in the two-day, $1,000 buy-in Ladies no-limit hold-em tournament.
"I'm just keeping my fingers crossed," she said. "For one, I think I have a better chance against women because I primarily play against men, and I feel women are a lot easier to read. I'm an aggressive player at the table, and most women are very passive at the table. I think that will work out to my advantage."
Addictive pastime
Guinn played in a $1,500 tournament in last year's World Series and went out at the end of the first of three days. He's returning this time to play in a three-day no-limit hold-em $1,000 buy-in beginning Monday, and perhaps a few less pricey satellite tournaments.
Like a lot players, he became hooked by watching poker on TV, and he has done all the required reading and on-line reps to get in shape for his World Series. "I'll get up in a [on-line] tournament and I'm doing good in it, and it drags on and drags on. Next thing you know it's 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. Then I have to go to work," he said.
They would both covet Connor's position. He's one of the really big-game hunters in the mix, having left last week to begin an intensive 45 days of poker-palooza. Finishing 23rd in last year's big tournament, Connor has bought into 10 events this time, including the Main Event.
"This is where I make the hay. This is the Mecca of poker. It doesn't get any bigger than this. There is so much live action, side games, satellites," he said.
Mentally taxing
Here we pause for a moment of perspective. For being so deep into a chancy profession, Connor, 52, seems to be a remarkably well-grounded sort. When he sold his business interests — "I sold everything except my girlfriend and my dog" — he set up a $100,000 bankroll to give professional poker a try. Cashing in big last year gave him a little more cushion. Down, he says, about $24,000 this year entering the World Series, Connor doesn't plan to grind like this forever. He'll need another challenge soon, he figures.
He has some advice for anyone with big ideas.
"I think it's one of the toughest things out there to make a living at. You only see success. For every success story, there are probably a million people who don't make it," Connor said. "It's a lottery, and it's a game of skill. It's an easy game to learn that takes a lifetime to master."
The former junior college basketball player has put on 30 pounds since he became a sedentary poker player. And television, he says, doesn't do justice to the mental grind of poker's World Series. Between the big showdowns and gutsy bluffs, there are long stretches of waiting on a hand to play.
"It's like flying," he said. "People think flying is very exciting. But the exciting part is take-off and landing. Otherwise, flying is boring.
"Cards are like that. You might play 2, 3, 5 hands an hour. Those are exciting times. But the rest of the time, it's very mundane. You're gathering information the whole time. You can't let your guard down — that's where the mental drain comes in. You're watching a player trying to pick up tells, seeing his betting pattern. The game itself is very mundane."
At the end of last year's World Series, Connor spent some time in California's Napa Valley, trying to decompress. For three days afterward, still wired, he barely slept. This is a dream for the wide awake.
After a 100 or so hours of playing full-contact poker, he would love to be wrung out all over again, this time when the last card is dealt in August.
|
|
World Casino Directory 
Gambling Forums 
