Inside the World Series of Poker
"When you're talking poker, you're talking Texas," bragged one contestant; but the big winner was a man from Tennessee.
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It's moving along into the night and the game is starting to quicken. Lanier is first man out. The second man out is…what's this…Amarillo Slim, when Jack Straus draws down on a heart flush. Croons Slim, "Oh, them cold, cold hearts," looking, if not sounding, every bit like Hank Williams.
An underpaid journalist, who's trying to make it in Vegas with 60 cents in his pocket and feels a little, well, unnerved around all that cash, chances on an old friend: Jack Straus' secretary, Carol. They chat for a while about how she came to know Straus ("The first time I met him, he came over to the house with two bottles of champagne and said we had to watch the football game. He said he had a lot of money on it and if he won we were 'going to New Orleans tonight.' Well, he lost it, and then he was just super depressed and I thought that was pretty rude and I wouldn't speak with him for a long time.…") and then talk about what's doin' in Vegas. B. B. King, as it happens, is at the Hilton and Dean Scott, a dynamite Houston band in which both have friends, is at the Flamingo.…
Down Fremont Street the line at the Las Vegas Western Union office looks like the soup lines on old Depression photographs. In more ways than one.
Across the street from Binion's, in the Golden Nugget Saloon, a cluster of ten-gallon hats are playing Hold'Em in the card room. The sign says "No Limit" but pots are ranging between $300 and $500. Small potatoes.
Next to the card room, a man is taking baseball scores off a tickertape and chalking them onto a blackboard. He's including complete box scores like you can't even find in the papers any more.
The same tickertape clatters out quotations from the New York Stock Exchange. Only in Las Vegas would men bet, actually bet, on the stock market (odds today are six to five on Armco splitting three for two, ten to one against U.S. Steel closing up, the line on the Dow-Jones is.…) thus fixing with precision the relationship between Las Vegas' and the rest of America's economy. Jimmy the Greek used to give odds on plane losses in Indochina. The Justice Department says illicit gambling is the number one industry in the nation.
Puggy-Wuggy Pearson, who doesn't look at all like a captain of industry, is out front as the second day of the World Series of Poker nears its end. It's down to him, Straus, Moss and Bobby Brazil. When high-stakes poker is played this short-handed, its played fast and mean; it's psychology now, like one of the dealers says: "These men don't playoff of the cards so much as off each other." Pug is wearing his straw Panama boater today, adding to the psyche a little bit, and Johnny Moss' face is transparently blank, the practiced result of 50 years of self- induced rigor mortis.
Bobby Brazil goes out when Pug has three Jacks to his two, and the stakes are raised again and they're playing now with $500 chips. (Says Slim: "Woweee! Now that's real poker. It ain't even a oilman's game no mo', you gotta be a South American dictator to play them kinda stakes.") It's Straus, Moss and Pug, the three recognized greatest poker players in the world, head-to-head.
The vibe is tense. At midnight break Pug is way ahead with 90 grand to 22 for Straus and 18 for Moss. Jimmy the Greek, wearing blue suede shoes with solid gold buckles, is looking tired. Jack Binion, balding, wearing dull plaid suits that look like custom-tailored imitations of Robert Hall's, is getting edgy.
There's a 4 of Clubs and 8, Jack of Hearts showing and Johnny Moss pushes in $5000. Jack Straus raises another $10,000. Moss raises again and Straus taps in, moving the pot past $75,000. Straus is boxed; if he was going to tap in he would have wanted to pick his own time to do it, but Moss forced him; he stands up and reaches for his coat, Moss shows his hole cards: two 8's, for three. Straus has two Hearts in the hole, for four, The next card up is a Diamond. Straus needs another Heart to win. Johnny Moss says he wants to buy insurance out of his pocket to cover his possible losses; he wants two to one but Jack Binion only offers three to two. Crandall Addington covers at two-to-one, bystanders are laying down money furiously, The last card is turned up, a Club. Straus misses the 9 of Hearts by one card. One too many. It's the second year in a row that Moss has knocked Straus out of the finals and it's down to him and Pug. A year ago this time, it was Pug and Slim.
Slim's press agent—or, more accurately, Slim's publisher's press agent (" Ah ain't responsible fer that feller," cautions Slim. "He belongs to mah publisher.")—is being thoroughly obnoxious, bouncing off the walls to tell everyone how important Slim's press conference is going to be. Slim is issuing a challenge this afternoon to Bobby Riggs, the ex-tennis pro and All-Star Vegas Hustler who beat Margaret Court in challenge tennis and now fancies himself the scourge of Women's Lib. Slim is teaching a woman how to play poker and wants to put her up against Riggs. The notion sounds intriguing but Slim's agent is such a nuisance that nobody wants to hear about it. ("Thet feller's almost enuff to make ya stop writing books," moans Slim.)
Pug has moved into High Psyche and is winning pot after pot, steadily nibbling away at Johnny Moss' stash of chips. It's, well, brutal. Moss is doing a Boris Spassky, so thoroughly zonkered that he's making amateur mistakes, letting Pug take four hands out of every five without even calling, raising only when the cards are all out and it's obvious what he's doing. Pug's grinding him steadily down.
There's a King showing in the middle of the table and Pug calls over to Slim: "This reminds me of last year when you beat me with two pair, Kings and sixes." Another card comes up and Moss bets tamely, Pug raises. Another card up, Moss holding tight. He shows his cards, two Queens. Pug shows his: two pair, Kings and sixes. "Called thet one, didn't ya, Puggy," howls Slim. The psyche is now Total and it's only a matter of time.
The last hand is anti-climactic. With three cards up the betting goes until Moss taps in and both players show their hole cards. Neither has anything but they still have two cards coming to fill their hands. Pug is drawing to a Spade flush, Moss to the inside of a nine-to-King straight. Neither one makes it and Pug wins on the strength of a high hole card, an Ace. The crowd cheers and the reporters rush up and Jack Binion comes running in with a giant silver trophy filled with thirteen $100 bills.
Upstairs, Jack Straus is taking a shower, "gettin' ready to play some poker." Amarillo Slim and Crandall Addington are at the cashier's, buying tall stacks of black checks. Johnny Moss is talking to one of his backers. The real high-stakes poker is just getting started.
Hold'Em: The Big Money Game
"HOLD'EM IS A TEXAS GAME," says Jack Straus, "we wrote the book on it and anyone who knows how to play it learned it from us."
High stakes poker is a subtle combination of wits, psychology and card sense, with Lady Luck (riverboat folklore to the contrary) being only a marginal ingredient. Hold'Em is designed to catalyze that card-shark chemistry, to make it a game of players rather than cards.
Since it is, essentially, a game for professionals (or almost-professionals) it is nearly always played with a house dealer. A red chip is passed around the table to simulate the position of the dealer, thus requiring each player in turn to open the betting in successive hands. In addition, a set number of players (depending on the number in the game) to the left of the red check "dealer" are required to ante double what the other players ante. Called a "force," it's intended, like the other little quirks in Hold'Em, to prevent the "tight" non-bluffing brand of poker that all the textbooks advise as the best way to play. A player who plays close to the belt, or "safe," betting only when he holds good cards, will be gradually worn down (and out) by the simple momentum of the game.
After the ante, each player is dealt two cards, face down, and a round of betting ensues. Next, a card is "burned," or discarded a precaution against cheating and three cards are dealt simultaneously face up in the middle of the table, the community cards.
Then comes what is, in high-stakes poker, the crucial round of betting. With two cards stilI to come, the player wilI figure the odds on filIing his best five-card hand based on what he can see at the time (the three community cards and his two hole cards) and bet accordingly. A lot of players fold at this point, figuring the odds to be too long; a decision to stay is generally a commitment to wager some pretty big money whether the cards come or not.
After the betting, another card is burned and another community card dealt face up in the middle. Then another round of betting. At this point, the gambler has a pretty solid notion of what kind of hand he'll wind up with. More important, the real gambler has a pretty good idea what the other players might have. It's at this stage that the chips start to move and the stakes climb past five digits; it's also, for those with the nerve for it, the time when big-money bluffs are made.
Next another card is burned and the last card is dealt, face up in the middle, and the last round of betting takes place. By this time, the professional usually knows, or thinks he knows, what most everyone's got, and the bets get pretty stiff. If you've stayed in to this point on the chance of drawing a card (say, to fill a flush or a full house) and haven't drawn in, you're in trouble. You're already in for a lot of money but it's going to cost you still more to stay in. Professional poker players never show their cards unless they're called, and you'll never know when you've been stone bluffed.
Best five card hand wins.
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