The Magician, the Unabomber and the Guy Who Never Wins

I’ve come down to Vegas from San Francisco to pay a four-day visit to my pals Antonio Esfandiari and Phil ‘Unabomber’ Laak. I used to hang out with both of them last year, back when they were both still poker mortals, back when our $10- $20 twice weekly No Limit Hold’em game in San Francisco felt like the Big Game. Less than two years ago, I loaned Antonio a few thousand so that he could buy into his first ever WPT event, the ‘Gold Rush’. After his spectacular TV performance, his first ever, where he tortured Phil Hellmuth, well… things just got better and better for Kid 44 (Antonio’s nickname, the ‘44’ comes from the fact that he won $44K for his third place Gold Rush finish). Since then, he has won first place at the Commerce WPT event last year, and a WSOP bracelet for Pot Limit Hold’em, netting over $1.5 million in prize money.

It’s 1:30pm on a Saturday afternoon in Las Vegas.

Antonio is sitting on the couch in the living room of his new house, courtesy of the World Poker Tour. He is wearing only his boxers; in one hand is a bottle of apple juice, in the other, a computer mouse. Antonio has been awake for less than 15 minutes and he’s already playing high stakes online poker. Looking up from the laptop precariously perched on his knee, his hungover eyes light up to greet me as he flashes me his patented ‘good to see you’ smile.

“Doctor Philips, how can I be so lucky to have you visit me!” Antonio has been intentionally mispronouncing my name ever since we met a few years ago. But as annoying as it is to constantly be referred to by the wrong last name, I just can’t help but feel welcome.

One part Aladdin, one part Bugs Bunny, Antonio is a likeable, but somewhat annoying, tall, dark, and handsome Persian wise-guy. He has a natural ability to make anybody and everybody feel like his best friend in the world. Even though you know he’s feeding you a crock of B.S., you just don’t care. That’s how charming he is. He’s slick, somewhat cocky, yet at the same time, undeniably likable.

Antonio’s warm greeting is quickly interrupted by the on-screen action. His head jerks back to the laptop... studying intently… both eyes focused on the screen. He calls out to the other two guys in the room, both of whom are deeply immersed in their own online poker games.

“Hey guys… what should I do with this? Gawd, Please let me felt SPIRIT ROCK today... just one time!’

I look over Antonio’s shoulder. Sure enough, ‘KID44’ is playing in a three-handed $25-$50 game with ‘SPIRIT ROCK’, who is arguably the best online No Limit poker player in the world. Seconds earlier, Antonio had called Spirit’s $150 button raise from the middle blind, holding 6? 5? . He checked the flop consisting of 2-4-Q with two spades, and is contemplating what to do about Spirit’s $350 bet. Phil and Dave, put down their laptops and join me to gather around Antonio’s laptop, immediately discussing whether Antonio should go all in for $3,125, his entire stack, or just call SPIRIT ROCK’s $350 flop bet.

“Call!” suggests Dave, a seasoned online pro, and the more conservative of the bunch. “If you miss, you could always pick up the pot anyway. Spirit probably doesn’t have anything - he usually doesn’t.”

Phil Laak stares at the screen, stuffing the remains of a half eaten jelly donut into his mouth that had been sitting on the coffee table for two days. Phil comes across as a total goofball upon first meeting him: the stained sweatshirt, the nerdy glasses, the unmatched socks. Phil has the ‘screw is loose’ act down to a fine art. But unlike Antonio, who is very much a ‘what you see is what you get’ kinda guy, Phil has three different levels going on at the same time. On the surface is the wacky goofball he wants you to think that he is: unorganized, dishevelled; if Gilligan played poker, he’d be Phil. But even after a short while you get the sense that there really is a method to his meticulously crafted madness, that underneath the unwashed hair lies a brain which is constantly in high gear, maybe even some sort of genius. But then if you get to know Phil even better, well, what you realize is that, actually, at his deepest level, Phil is basically just a goofball after all.

As fragments of jelly donut spew from his mouth, The Unabomber offers his analysis, disagreeing loudly with Dave’s prudent suggestion.

“DUDE! How can you flat CALL? Your draw is too BIG! Put his butt ALL IN and punish him. What could he have anyway? How can he call? And if he does call… well… then just get there. You’re almost even money against an over-pair.”

Antonio’s mind is racing furiously, trying to decide what to do with his big draw, but still he can’t help wasting five of his remaining ten seconds to fling a backhanded insult to Phil.

“Look Phil, I’m not the luck-box that you are. I don’t just get there on demand like you.”

At this point, Phil is wiping grape jelly off of his mouth with his hands and smearing them onto his boxers, trying to ignore Antonio’s insult to his poker prowess.

Five seconds left to decide. Call or raise? Tick… tick… tick…

Since I’m the Guy Who Never Wins, my advice is neither offered, nor solicited. Six months prior, I was the guy who could terrorize any No Limit Hold’em game I sat down in. But that was then, and now is now. Fifteen consecutive ‘all-in’ bad beats and a long string of unflopped sets later, I’m now the Guy Who Never Wins. Frankly, I’m asking (1) Why in the world Antonio is going up against Spirit Rock in the first place; I mean, surely there are ‘softer spots’ available. (2) Why did he call a button raise out of position holding a six high?

With a soft sigh, Antonio slides the BET bar to the far right, and clicks the BET button, betting every last dollar of his $3,125 stack. Now it’s Spirit Rock’s turn to think. The seconds tick by like hours. Nobody utters a sound, the four of us transfixed on the screen. Antonio breaks the silence by asking nobody in particular, “Will I ever win again?” Three seconds later, Spirit folds and the pot is unceremoniously shoved towards Antonio’s online chair. Phil and Dave return to their own games, back to business as usual.

I do a quick scan of Antonio’s new house: wall-to-wall white carpets flank bare white walls; not a plant or picture in sight. The oversized flat screen television dominates the living room, along with a few dozen DVDs – a classic male film collection, consisting of the better crime, action adventure, and obviously, poker related films. Bellagio chips, ranging from $10 to $1,000, lie scattered over the coffee table, serving as drink coasters. A rubber-banded two-inch thick wad of $100 bills sitting on one of the cushions of the sofa looks as if somebody just tossed it there a few days ago and forgot about it. I’m in poker dreamland.

I walk into the kitchen, brushing past the two half-empty boxes of leftover Chinese food sitting on the kitchen countertop, along with the remains of last night’s outdoor barbecue. Every plate and piece of silverware in the house is piled up in the sink, waiting to be washed. A high-end liquor collection sits on the counter facing outwards toward the pool and hot tub, many of the bottles half empty (or half full, depending on how you happen to be running that day). Obviously, in this house the fun never ends.

Afew hours later, I’m ready to go play poker. I’m going to start out small; perhaps the $3-$5 No Limit game at the Sands. Dave is still playing online poker. Antonio is returning phone calls to assorted friends, his agent, and various poker publicists. As much fun as it is to hang out with Antonio, I sometimes get the feeling that I’m being squeezed in between telephone conversations.

I’m planning to drop Phil off at the Bellagio, where he left his car a few nights ago. His ‘68 Cadillac Coupe DeVille (customized convertible, roof cut off) had its last run and died in the hands of Bellagio valet parking attendant. He has no immediate plans to fix the car, or tow it; obviously, at some point, he’ll deal with it.

As we are putting on our shoes, Phil notices an opened package inside the door. It’s a complimentary overnight bag bearing the logo of Light, the nightclub at the Bellagio. Antonio and his ‘Rocks n’ Rings’ posse are regulars at this exclusive venue. Whenever they show up, however long the line, they receive VIP treatment, breezing past the hordes waiting to ascend the escalator, and escorted to a velvet roped ‘reserved’ table. Phil can’t help but take advantage of the opportunity to tease Antonio about the bag.

“Hey Rob, check it OUT. If you spend $100,000 at Light, they give you this cool bag!”

Later the following evening, the four of us head out to the Mandalay Bay for dinner. The conversation starts off with the requisite poker war stories, consisting of bad beats and busted bankrolls. Three bottles of wine later, after a spirited disagreement about which strip club in Las Vegas is hands down the best one, we move on to complexities of the human heart. We gossip about another friend of ours, a successful player, who recently started seeing a female dealer and is now moving in. It’s common for poker players to sprinkle poker jargon into such conversations. Awoman who is pressuring for a commitment is bluffing. If somebody is not seeing anybody at the time they are currently on the rail, the term for sitting out of the poker action.

The tradition in this group is to always gamble for the check. Typically, Antonio pulls out some cards from his pocket, which he shuffles under the table, and we each pick one. Whoever draws the lowest card picks up the tab. Having lost this gamble the last few times I was lured into playing, I refuse to participate. But they won’t hear of it; the $100 bill that I toss onto the table representing my share of the dinner tab is stuffed back into my shirt pocket. They insist that I gamble for the check.

“Okay. If I can be the guy shuffling the cards, I’ll play,” I say.

My request to take on the role of card shuffler is met with stunned silence by my dinner companions because, even though Antonio is a semi-professional magician and expert card ‘mechanic’, for some reason, he is always the designated shuffler of the cards.

“But Rob, Antonio always shuffles the cards.”

“I don’t care. If you want me to play, those are my conditions!”

With a shrug, Antonio picks out three aces and the deuce of clubs, and hands them to me. I put the four cards under the table, mixing them around in a face down packet, and bring them up in a little face down fan. Dave picks first, then Phil, then Antonio, leaving me with a solitary card in my hand. I turn my card face up right away; sure enough, it’s the deuce of clubs, the low card. Dinner is on me again.

As accustomed as I am becoming to being the guy who never ever wins, I must admit, it’s getting a little bit old at this point.

Next day, Antonio has been invited to participate in an invitationonly televised poker tournament. The Game Show Network is sponsoring a ‘Men vs. Women’ tournament, where six featured male players will play as a team against six well known women players. Upon showing up at the Union Plaza, where Antonio had put my name in at the security desk, I am surprised to find that there is no studio audience. Apparently, I’m the only name on the guest list. I’m led to a curtained-off section of the room where the taped game is going on. Inside are a trio of monitors showing the ‘live feed’, a few technical people, an onscreen ‘hostess’, somebody who looks like the producer of the show, and a small table where two guys are sitting riffling through a pack of playing cards.

Feeling a bit out of place, I sit down at the small table and join the two other guys. They both look up at me and offer me the briefest of acknowledgements before continuing their intense conversation. I recognize them both instantly – here I am sitting with not one, but two WSOP world champions, Greg Raymer, and Chris Moneymaker. I can’t help but eavesdrop on their conversation, all the while pretending to be interested in the onscreen poker action being shown on the three monitors.

To my absolute delight, Greg and Chris are exchanging bad beat stories. Given that these are not your everyday poker guys, their bad beat stories are very different from my own common tales of miracle river cards and runner-runners. Champion level ‘bad beat’ stories revolve around how you are no longer as lucky as you once were.

Chris laments about how, just the other day, he had all his chips in with one to come and missed a big flush draw. Greg nods his head in consolation, indicating that he understands what it means to be abandoned by the Poker Goddess. Greg tops Chris by telling the story about how, in the same week, he lost not one, but two key coin flips. Chris shakes his head solemnly. I’m tempted to interject: “What’s the world coming to when a coin flip is no longer the ‘sure thing’ that it used to be?”

We are shortly joined by a dejected Antonio, who just got busted from his televised game. “I’m not The Guy,” he tells nobody in particular. But watching him conduct his on camera ‘exit’ interview, where he discusses how he got knocked out of the tournament, I can’t help but be impressed. He really may be The Guy after all, because even though Antonio just bluffed off all of his chips on the turn, holding a straight draw, in attempt to get the top full house to toss her hand away, Antonio handled the onscreen interview with the confidence of a seasoned TV news anchor. He was polite, he spoke slowly with positive energy, never once stammering or blaming anybody but himself. This is not easy to do moments after one is knocked out of a poker tournament.

I’m always ready to leave Las Vegas after three or four days: too little sleep, too many Martinis, not enough exercise, too much fun, and one too many trips to the Bellagio buffet, finally take their toll. Antonio and I will be flying back to San Francisco together. We give Dave a ride to the Las Vegas airport. Dave bemoans the fact that the six hours he will be spending en route to the East Coast will not be spent playing online poker, thus costing him several thousand dollars. In consolation, Antonio offers Dave what sounds like a ‘no lose’ bet. Antonio proposes that he will be able to board the airplane without showing any kind of identification whatsoever. Dave is somewhat incredulous (as am I); there is no way he will be able to win that bet. Dave, ever the action-monkey, pounces on the wager. They agree on $200.

Thirty minutes later, I am sitting in my seat aboard a Southwest Airlines jet shaking my head in astonishment. Sure enough, by a combination of his persuasive charm, self-confidence, and a little deft maneuvering, Antonio actually managed to board the aircraft without showing any kind of identification. I congratulate him on pulling one over on Dave and making a quick $200.

Antonio stops shuffling his ever-present deck of Bicycles with one hand, lifts a waxed eyebrow as he flashes me a sly ‘Aladdin meets Bugs Bunny’ smile, asking: “Seriously, Dr. Philips, would I make a bet like that if I thought I could lose? Would you bet against me?”

And, as much as it pained me to admit it, I had to concede that I would not.

You can play against Antonio at UltimateBet.com