King for a day

Editor’s note: Freelance writer Kent J. Landry (center) shares what it’s like to pony up $500 of his own scratch to compete in America’s hottest game.

The poker room at Harrah’s Casino in New Orleans is odorless.

The air really has no smell. And it seems fresh, like oxygen is being pumped in to keep the players alert.

But there’s plenty of sound. It’s the din of more than 500 voices, along with the incessant clacking of chips, like a hoard of locusts readying for an attack.

It’s music to my ears.

I’m sitting at one of about two dozen gaudy, felt tables in Harrah’s theater, usually reserved for stand-up comics and concerts. Huge posters of poker legends hang on the striped walls, and it feels as though Doyle Brunson and Phil Hellmuth are staring down at me.

I’m anxious, but I’m calm.

I’ve watched all the poker stars on TV, and I play a monthly home game where I’m a decent player. I’m here because I want to taste big-time competition.

It cost $500 to sit down at this table. My 529 opponents range from rank amateurs to seasoned semi-pros, and will dwindle gradually until one person wins every last chip.

This is the first No Limit Hold ’Em circuit event of the third-annual World Series of Poker at Harrah’s Casino in New Orleans. The winner will walk away with a cool $74,000, and of course, bragging rights.

Shuffle up and deal

The allure of No Limit Hold ’Em is you can bet your entire stack of chips at any time—it’s called going all in. Bluffing can be either incredibly lucrative or painfully expensive. Success requires judgment and moxie, and it helps to be dealt good cards at the right time.

The sport truly is unique because if you possess the will, courage and cash, you can compete your way to the top and sit elbow-to-elbow with the game’s kings, the guys you see on endless cable TV reruns. What other sport allows an average Joe to tee it up with Tiger Woods, or guard Lebron James, or try and tackle Reggie Bush?

Even at this fairly low-profile tournament, I’m what pros call dead money. A fish. Or my favorite, Mr. ATM. A mix of nerves, adrenaline and expectation courses through my body, stronger than any drink I could buy down in the nearby French Quarter.

The rest of my table shows up, we sing the Star Spangled Banner, then the tournament director barks, “Shuffle up and deal!”

Hold ’Em is a fairly simple poker game: the objective is to make the best five-card hand. Each player is dealt two hole cards (face down), but we share a community “flop” of cards dealt face up. Betting follows after the third, fourth and fifth cards are dealt. To entice play, two players on every hand have to put up money even if they fold, and the amounts climb steadily.

They say if you can’t spot the sucker at the table—well … The last thing my poker buddy told me before I left for New Orleans was that scared money is dead money, so I shouldn’t wait around for that big hand that might never come. I intend to play conservatively, but also to try and win some pots with lesser cards, and maybe—just maybe—I’ll get lucky.

Most of my opponents are casually dressed men, a mean age of around 45. There all types: ex-jocks, old-timers who probably grew up playing stud and draw poker in home games and in the back of bars, young hotshots with shades and hats pulled down low and wannabes dressed like their favorite poker idols.

Back in black

The room looks pretty relaxed. I guess you don’t get many newbies with a $500 buy-in. That, or they all can affect Cool Hand Luke way better than me. Still, I scan my table and try to single out the sucker. Keep looking … keep looking … who could it be?!

I’m juiced and I feel confident in my basic black Johnny Cash attire. A pair of shades rests atop my hat so I can quickly pull them down to hide my eyes from the perilous gaze of an opponent. My great-grandfather’s silver money clip is my talisman, serving as my good-luck charm and pseudo card protector. I’m good to go.

I win my first pot holding pocket sixes after a six hits on the flop. I check, and Aunt Bee, the only woman at my table, bets into me for $250. I raise her another $250, feeling like a pro. She calls.

After the fourth card is dealt (the river card, in poker parlance), we both check. She removes her card protector to reveal a pair of jacks. I can’t help but crack a slight smile when I show her my set of sixes (three of a kind), and rake in my chips. Thank you, ma’am. Time to go back to Mayberry!

Short-lived glory

The hand would prove to be my finest moment, although I wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.

No one likes bad-beat stories—that’s when you’re holding good cards, and you make the correct decisions, yet an opponent defies the odds and beats your hand. I’ll spare you the gory details, but as the tournament progresses I see my pocket jacks cracked by a set of deuces, a pair of queens beaten by a straight on the river (the fifth and final community card), and an ace-jack is edged out by an ace-king.

I survive to the first break, but I’m down to my last $900 worth of chips.

The blinds (mandatory bets) are growing more expensive, making it harder and harder to wait for strong cards. It’s Butch Cassidy and the Sunshine Kid-time: I can jump off the cliff, or face fire from all sides. I have to make a stand and quickly.

I look down and a pair of 10s stares up at me. Sink or swim time.

“All in,” I say. The adrenaline is pumping through my body as I push my chips into the middle of the table.

Understand, 10-10 is a pretty good hand. But it is only a slight favorite against any two, unpaired, higher cards. If I lose this hand I’m gone. I feel like King Louis XVI approaching the guillotine, and the of clacking chips that had been music to me now sounds like a choir shouting “off with his head.”

Everyone folds except the guy with the big stack of chips three seats down. If there’s one person at my table who looks like a pro, it’s him. Then again, maybe he’s simply watched a lot of World Poker Tour on Wednesday nights, I tell myself.

He’s sitting on a strong chip stack and his stare tells me he’s close to calling me. It seems like forever, but it’s realistically only a few seconds. Finally he looks up and says, “It’s too early. I’ll let you slide this time.”

Nice manners, dude. Whew! Now give me those chips.

Am I a dead man?

Excited, I make a couple of bonehead calls, only to fold when players put in a big raise. Sooner than I hoped, I’m back down in all-in territory. My chances to make a move are disappearing as the blinds climb.

Finally, the dealer in the bright yellow shirt and bow tie artfully throws two cards in my direction. Ace-8 of spades. My favorite hand. “All in!”

Ace-8 of spades is known as dead-man’s hand because those are the cards western gunslinger Wild Bill Hickok held when he was shot in the back at a casino in Deadwood, S.D. Poker players are a superstitious lot, and many would fold this hand simply on principle. Personally, I think Wild Bill Hickok was cool, and I can’t wait forever to make my move, so this one seems as good as any. (Yeah, I know, what a gunslinger!)

Everyone folds except a guy I’ll call Big Talk, who’s sitting across from me.

He hasn’t given his vocal chords a break in over two hours. It’s not so much what he says, it’s that he never stops saying it. He chats incessantly about everything from the last hand to the comped buffet we receive for entering the tournament.

I’ve noticed that whenever he’s faced with a big raise, Big Talk has this tedious ritual: he looks down at his chips, then agonizingly slowly peeks at his hole cards, then back at his chips, and back at his hand, before finally throwing his chips in the pot and blurting, “I hope I win!”

I think it’s hilarious. He’s loose and aggressive and I can’t read him at all. He’d be fun to have a drink with, I think to myself.

Again, he’s taking his sweet time. I know he doesn’t have an ace because he would have called by now, but he might have a small pair, or something like king-queen. Finally, he blurts out, “Well, I know I’m behind, but you have to gamble sometime, right?” and flips over a king and jack of different suits.

I’m a slight favorite with my ace, and when the flop comes down queen-8-9, I have a pair of 9s with an ace kicker, so I’m ahead in the hand.

But the risk is Big Talk can make a straight with a 10, which would beat my pair. The dealer taps the table, discards the first card, and turns over—you guessed it—a 10. Big Talk completes his straight, and I’m done.

I shake hands with the players to my right and left. Big Talk gives me one of those “sorry, fella” head tilts, and I walk away feeling like I just got dropped-kicked in the gut by the Junk Yard Dog.

I consider sticking around to see who wins, but a tournament official tells me it will continue until the next day, quite possibly ending in the early morning hours. I decide to drown my sorrows in the free buffet. Maybe I’ll try and eat $500 worth of king crab legs.

As I eat crabmeat and sip my iced tea, I wonder what it is about poker that attracts so many followers and players, some 60 million at last count.

Poker stokes our competitive fires and lets us compete long after our bodies allow us to play sports. It lets us feel—accurately or not—smarter, more cunning or more courageous than the other guy.

Or does it simply feed our primal instinct to survive?

I didn’t make the final table, and I didn’t win any money. But I got to taste what it might be like to be king for a day. And nothing beats kings, baby.

Except maybe aces.