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Posted: Friday, July 08, 2005
By Michael Kaplan
ENTRY NO. 2
JULY 8, 2005
Bombers, Bust-outs and Botch-ups
Because an estimated 6,000 people are playing in this year's World Series of Poker, the first day of the tournament has been turned into three days, with 2,000 or so contenders competing per day. By Saturday there will be 2,000 people left in the Series -- and then things will really begin to happen. While you can't exactly cover every big play -- the task would be akin to reporting on a riot as if it were a prize fight -- it is definitely amusing to go inside the rail and check out various innovations for hiding tells: one woman puts a gauzy white surgical mask over her face; a young man at Erik Seidel's table wears enormous reflective sunglasses and pulls his T-shirt up to his nose -- Bazooka Joe-style -- every time he gets dealt a playable hand; some desperately secretive soul is wearing an Elmo mask; and, of course, Phil "Unabomber" Laak has his nickname-earning sweatshirt with a hood that dips to the tops of his dark glasses.
Sitting across the table from the bleach-blond, Luden's-popping Laak is his polar opposite: old-school gambler Crandall Addington, turned out in an elegant gray suit and cream-colored cowboy hat. When I stroll by in the late afternoon and notice Laak's seat vacant, I ask Addington if the voluble young pro has busted out. "Phil did," says Texas-accented Addington, who's so old school that he played in the forerunning tournament to the poker World Series, held at Reno's Holiday Casino in 1969. "I like how he did it, though. Phil tried to take a pot and bluffed it off. But that's awwwlright. At least he didn't melt away." The Bomber is in good company. Other notable first-day bust-outs include Johnny Chan, Jennifer Harman (whose full-house got cracked by a straight flush), and Thomas "Thunder" Keller. And, unlike those off-the-felt pros, Laak will have his girlfriend Jennifer Tilly (the actress snagged a bracelet at this year's women's tournament) to console him. Comedian and poker fanatic Norm Macdonald has dubbed her the Unabombshell.
Yesterday's greatest T-shirt is emblazoned with this warning across its back: Don't mess with the douche bag. No doubt, dude.
With countless poker sites, poker shows and poker magazines representing themselves at this year's Series, everyone is trying to come up with a unique angle in order to stand out from an increasingly dense crowd. The folks behind Players Network, a broadband Web site, came up with an inspired idea: a losers tournament in which the first seven people knocked out of the World Series free-roll into a three-card-poker freeze-out, competing for a seat in an upcoming three-card-poker tournament with a first prize of $1 million. Unfortunately, Players Network failed to anticipate the chaotic fury with which their losers would pile up. "A hundred fifty players went out in the first hour and they were all pissed off," says president of programming Michael Burk. "We couldn't wrangle them." Burk settled for seven random people, culled from the crush of spectators, and a potentially great publicity stunt bit the dust. "I'm not even sure who won the seat," he admits.
A welcome augmentation to most major poker tournaments is the presence of masseuses patrolling between tables and soothing players' sore muscles as they contemplate their cards. The queen of poker's neck rubbers is a pretty Asian woman who goes by the single moniker of Sookhee. Dressed in cutoffs, pumps and T-shirt, she charges $1.50 per minute and is the tension reliever of choice for pros like Miami John Cernuto, Erik Seidel and Phil Ivey. Though her biggest tip came from a gambler at the Aviation Club in Paris -- "He was playing in a cash game," remembers Sookhee, "and gave me $100 every time he won a pot; I wound up with $900 before the massage was over" -- Sookhee's most memorable (and profitable) session came at a tournament earlier this year, under the employ of Ivey. "Over three days of poker, I massaged Phil for 18 hours," says the L.A.-based masseuse. "I kept asking him if he was OK; he kept telling me not to stop. I massaged him till just before he made the final table."
Go to Entry One, Entry Three, Entry Four, Entry Five, Entry Six, Entry Seven, Entry Eight.
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