Big=Game Hunting at the World Series

Andy Beal has a way of imposing himself on the World Series of Poker. In both 2003 and 2004, he made a pair of visits during the Series, winning and losing millions and throwing the high-stakes pros into chaos. In 2004, I was part of the World Series for the first time. I hadn’t yet met Beal and barely knew the pros who opposed him, but I slunk around Benny’s Bullpen in darkness and obscurity, researching The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King.

In 2005, there was no place to hide and no reason. Warner Books published my book and I used the Series as a sevenweek publicity tour. If part of the price was being unable to answer everyone’s favorite question – Is Andy Beal going to play some more poker? – I gladly paid it to fuel my book’s appeal.

At last year’s Series, five months after Beal’s titanic matches at the Wynn, the questions were unending. Even the pros cornered me to ask about Andy.

For the 2007 World Series, I will pretend I’ve moved on. I have a book to promote, the Series to cover, and I’m going to play a bunch of events this year. Despite all my other commitments, however, I want to answer the people asking about Beal, and I want answers for myself.

Andy Beal has been a wonderful presence in my life, both personally and professionally. It had been months since I had heard from him, and I hadn’t seen him since February 2006, so I started scheming to get him to meet with me in Dallas.

Unable to confirm even that he would be at his office, I planned a flight on the last day before the deadline for this issue, a Friday. An assistant of Beal’s told me he was out of the town but would be returning on Thursday night. I wouldn’t know until then, at the earliest, if he would see me.

I won’t deny it; I want Andy Beal to play poker. But I don’t hide my ambition, and my reasons have nothing to do with money. Other than my writing fees for Beal’s post-Suicide King activities, I’ve probably made the least money possible from my association with him. (I have been well paid by Bluff; arguably, they are suffering for my lack of greed or ingenuity in otherwise cashing in.)

I think I could have held up the pros for a small piece, for “delivering” Andy. At least one pro got that deal a long time ago, dangling his relationship with Beal before the group. He knows I’m friends with several pros, but part of the strength of our relationship is that, despite being a suspicious person by nature, he trusts me. I value that trust more than money, and I’d lose it if I were friends with both sides but paid by one.

Likewise, I blew a lucrative opportunity to make money from the Wynn. Casinos pay people to get the action of ultra highrollers. After one of Beal’s matches against Ted Forrest last year, I talked the two of them into shooting some dice with me.

I’ve been sworn to secrecy on the specifics, but Steve Wynn’s brother-in-law led the contingent of casino executives and floormen at our table, and they gave Forrest a big line of credit on the spot.

Not only did I neglect to seek compensation for “steering” the premium action Wynn’s way, but I lost $3,000 betting the table minimum.

I place a priority on getting the almighty dollar for my efforts, but that’s not why I pursue Andy Beal.

My role in encouraging Andy Beal to play poker started in Spring 2005. Beal and the pros had already aired their public challenge, to no result. Meanwhile, Suicide King continued its serpentine journey toward publication, and the marketing folks at Time Warner were excited about pre-orders from book stores but were hoping for some publicity boost from Andy Beal.

It was an intriguing thought. I had enjoyed getting to know Andy during the sprint to complete the research and writing of Suicide King but, with the book completed, what reason would I have for calling or dropping by Dallas? Eric Drache, involved in the production of the NBC Heads-Up Championship, had recently asked if I would contact Beal on his and NBC’s behalf.

Drache’s errand put us back in contact, though Beal, predictably, had no interest in appearing on TV, especially playing No Limit Hold’em. But with the subject thus broached, we spent a few weeks tossing out hypothetical opponents and reasons why they might play Andy. We got no closer to an actual poker game being played, but we were talking as if it were going to happen. “So much for my ‘I don’t want to play any more,’” Andy wrote. “I think stopping playing poker is like deciding you’re going to stop looking at beautiful women.”

He soon reached the inevitable conclusion: To get a game big enough to fuel his interest and commitment, he would need to play a coalition of top pros. But he didn’t want to play in Las Vegas, where he didn’t sleep well, had to absent himself from work and family, and had nothing to do but play poker, all leading inevitably to too many hours and too many days.

The result of this process was the Shreveport Game. Because Andy now had some questions about the legality of the Dallas game he has previously proposed, he offered to play at the nearest casino, which was in Shreveport, Louisiana. He would charter a plane daily to fly to and from the game.

That led to a messy, botched series of negotiations over stakes, player rosters, hours of play, Louisiana taxes and regulations, fees sought by third party “negotiators,” and TV rights. The Shreveport Game died on April 6, 2005, left lots of people mad at each other, and further distanced Andy Beal from poker. Everyone involved was stained by the experience.

I was pleased to have nothing to do with that miasma, but my own ability to facilitate a game was impaired by a dispute with Beal involving the final galleys of Suicide King. He had numerous complaints, but his most serious problems were with one paragraph and with the substance of one quote from one of the pros. I defended what I had written and wouldn’t change it, so he made it clear he would not support the release of the book.

When Suicide King came out during the 2005 World Series, there had been no reconciliation. If I were ever going to talk to Andy Beal again, much less get him to play more poker, it would take something a lot more appealing than my nagging presence to lure him. A chance meeting with Clonie Gowen at the 2005 Series reopened the discussion.

I met Clonie for the first time watching the final table of the Full Tilt Invitational, which ran near the end of the Main Event. In subsequent emails with Gowen and Beal, I mentioned how they were both in Dallas and I’d soon be in Dallas on business with Clonie/Andy and Andy/Clonie suggested maybe we should get together and play a friendly game of poker.

For a couple months, Andy responded to my irregular correspondence by telling me he was sure he was done with poker. He had taken a driving course with his son and was hooked. To let him know that I wasn’t giving up, I wrote back: “Racecars, huh? A friend of mine knows Danica Patrick’s fiancé pretty well. Maybe I can convince her to come to Dallas for a couple days for a $10 million challenge race.”

He enjoyed the joke, but it had been at least a month since we communicated when he asked me on October 20, 2005, to set up a social game with me, him, Clonie, and his friend Craig Singer. On November 1 at 10am, we gathered at Craig’s suburban Dallas home. Robert Williamson III, also from Dallas and a friend of Clonie’s, joined us, as did Amy Calistri, a friend of mine who writes about poker from Austin.

Despite the early starting time, it was a party from the start. Andy told us in advance that he was bringing beer and Craig brought out a pitcher of bloody marys.

We played $1-$2 Pot Limit Omaha, in deference to the non-pro/non-billionaire contingent. Clonie made it clear that she did not want to get into a high-stakes game with Andy Beal. Robert, on the other hand, kept agitating to increase the stakes.

But fun was the order of the day. Robert was pouring Tabasco into his beer and Clonie asked, halfway into her second bloody mary, “Did I forget to say I wanted a virgin mary?”

Beal cleaned up in the game, making a straight flush and four of a kind against full houses before lunch time. That’s just like Andy. A few years ago, he went on a cruise and won so much at blackjack that he literally broke the bank at the ship’s casino.

The most interesting part of the day was when we twice switched from PLO to Hold’em. To give Andy a chance at “his” game but at stakes that kept it friendly, Clonie asked to play him heads-up at Limit Hold’em, $100-$200. Craig, Amy, and I demurred, and Robert had already left for business in San Antonio.

Even though we had drained the bloody marys and evaporated pitcher after pitcher of margaritas, Andy Beal was instantly locked in when he and Clonie started playing heads up. He was all business from the first hand.

And then we went back to Omaha, the margaritas returned, and the silliness continued. Clonie had all the best lines. While Clonie was deciding whether to call her remaining chips in a pot against Craig Singer, Craig coffeehoused extensively. Gowen finally threw in the hand. “I can call the hand, but I can’t call the chat.” Pondering another difficult decision, she asked aloud, “What would Jesus do? Jesus Ferguson.”

During another Singer- Gowen confrontation, Craig asked the same thing, hoping if he went for a beer in the kitchen that Chris Ferguson might be hunched in his refrigerator. Clonie offered to dial up Ferguson (which should have told him all he needed to know about the strength of her hand). Chris reprised his role from the Milwaukee’s Best ads, albeit from long distance. (And Singer lost the hand, with Clonie calling out her signature line: “Ship it to Shorty.”)

Much, much later, after we had been playing fifteen hours, Clonie wanted to take another shot at heads up with Andy. They played $100-$200 and then $200-$400; and again, despite the thousand or so drinks we had all imbibed, Andy’s moves were crisp, his play flawless. He didn’t say a word, except to remark periodi-cally, “Is there anything better than heads-up Hold’em? This is the best feeling in the world.”

So I asked him the Ultimate Question: If you enjoy it so much, why don’t you play some more?

He proceeded to explain that the pros were ducking him. “Whenever I talk to Doyle, he always has a million excuses. They’re out of town. They’re tired. They have to play a tournament. Their money is tied up someplace else.”

In late December, after Andy and I played some more of the Fantasy Opponent game – at various times we had him playing Daniel Negreanu, Phil Gordon, Phil Hellmuth, Donald Trump, and Jerry Buss – I asked Doyle Brunson if the pros wanted to play Beal and, if so, what was really the impediment? Doyle told me Beal could get a $50,000-$100,000 game in Las Vegas if he weren’t so demanding on the other items, which sidetracked prior attempts to arrange a game. Doyle referred to the items and the posturing as “hoopla.” For instance, Andy said during the late 2004 and 2005 negotiations that he wanted the game dealt from a shoe, with multiple dealers. I think he wanted the game to move faster, but acceding to this demand would have created speculation that he didn’t trust the honesty of the game. There were also supposedly regulatory issues. The other complicating factor was time. The group needed a week of notice.

Andy wrote me on January 9. “Mike, if that’s all true, then you’re in business because there will be a game… If they will play 50/100 or more, let’s get it on – no hoopla – just play.”

Then he changed his mind. After explaining to him the problems with the shoe, he conceded the point “but let’s not pursue a game any time soon. I don’t plan to be in Vegas for awhile – unless they want to come to Dallas?”

I had no stake in that game taking place, other than the fun of helping put it together. But I was beginning to feel like Hercules battling the Hydra. Every time an issue got resolved, two others popped up in its place.

On January 11, he changed his mind back. “It’s hard for me to believe, based on my past conversations with them, but maybe you can facilitate a game that I can’t. They probably don’t want an author like you to think they won’t play. Why don’t you confirm that they’ll play 50/100 and ask them how much notice they’ll need.”

Doyle Brunson is a no-nonsense guy. He said exactly what I thought he would say: yes, and a week.

On January 16, Andy picked February 1, 2006, at Wynn Las Vegas.

Then it got complicated at Brunson’s end. Over the next five weeks, he had a WPT event in the Bay Area, the Heads-Up Championship, and trips to New York and the Philippines. He promised to see if someone else would coordinate, but several candidates were playing in Australia at the time.

Imagine how that went over with Andy Beal. He accused me of “pissing away everyone’s time because you haven’t discussed the stakes.” I responded by sending him all the emails among me, him, and Doyle, every single one of which he had already seen and all of which mentioned stakes of $50,000- $100,000.

Andy was contrite, especially after I added the following postscript: “I gotta tell you, Andy, that if I were being paid for this, I’d be expecting a raise around now.”

On January 17, Doyle told me that Jennifer Harman stepped up to the plate to organize the group. Within two days, everything had been confirmed between Beal and Harman, and the game was on.

Andy was effusive in his praise. On January 19, he wrote, “You are welcome to watch the game as my guest, and if you want to bring someone along, go for it.” On January 23, he told me, “You are totally responsible for getting this done as I am sure they would not be playing these stakes but for your involvement.”

I didn’t necessarily agree with all that, but I was grateful for the opportunity to watch. And who was I to argue if he thought my involvement was necessary to the game?

On January 24, he blindsided me. His email began: “Mike, by the way, you just got sucked in by the pros.” He explained that all he got was the stakes and they got every other concession: he had to come to Las Vegas to play, they were not restricted as to who they could bring in to face him, etc. “Hard for me to see how I got everything I wanted,” he sardonically concluded.

Something more important than my ego was at stake here. Andy was having second thoughts. Hard bargaining and skepticism were so much a part of his professional nature that he couldn’t just sit down and play. If he spent any longer grumbling about all those other issues, I knew he would convince himself to introduce new demands, or simply skip the game.

So I tried to nip it in the bud with the direct approach. I told him the stakes were, by an enormous margin, the most important issue at the start of the game. In the past, he always had to start at smaller stakes than he wanted and lose money to get a $50,000- $100,000 game. From my letter of January 24:

“You’ve played 50/100 on three different visits to Las Vegas. (A) Fall 2003 – you started at 30/60 and had to negotiate for a week or so to get the stakes up to 50/100. I think you had to get behind several million dollars – 5 – to get the stakes up; (B) Your last trip in May 2004 – after you won $12 million at 100/200, they wouldn’t start higher than 30/60 and you had to get behind several million dollars – 5 – before they would go up to 50/100; (C) Your big winning trip – after a bunch of hassles and you threatening to walk, they let you start at 50/100 and you had to get behind several million dollars – 5 – to get them to go up to 100/200, which was originally what you wanted. There’s more to it than this, obviously, but I could argue that you should pay me $5 million for getting you the 50/100 game because that’s been what they’ve ‘charged’ you to get the stakes you want!”

I concluded the letter with a bold gesture. “I’ll put my money where my mouth is, Andy. This has to be top, top secret… but I’ll take a piece of you for the first 2-3 days. That piece would be insignificant compared with the size of the game, but I can demonstrate that it would be significant to my net worth. But you can’t ever mention it to the pros.”

My email did what it was supposed to. Andy started his response by saying “I’m flattered that you’d take a piece of me,” and that was the last anyone heard about reopening negotiations or scotching the game because of issues like game location and player selection. On February 1, Andy and the pros began their thirteen days of historic matches in the back corner of the poker room at Wynn Las Vegas.

Just a few hours before I was supposed to leave for the airport, Andy called. I hadn’t heard his voice in a year. He was in great spirits.

“By all means come out. We’ll have a blast. Bring Clonie and Robert and we’ll play some poker and race cars.”

I explained that Clonie was at that moment one of the final fifteen in a major tournament. “Well, as soon as they can make it, you’re welcome to come out and we’ll arrange it.”

So I didn’t go to Dallas that day. And I’m not any closer to knowing whether Andy Beal will ever play high-stakes poker again. But the promise is there, and my bag waits in the corner, ready to go on a moment’s notice.

Andy Beal tends toward paranoid. He probably thinks everyone in poker is ganging up to keep him on the hook. I believe the true state of affairs is much more complex.

When Andy is part of the poker world, poker is nicer, more fun, and more exciting. Though the top pros definitely want to take his money, this is one show where all the puppet masters are themselves puppets, controlling each other while they themselves dance to the movements of others.

I can speak only for myself, but I will take any action to tap into that excitement, within the bounds of my own code of behavior. And notwithstanding that I’ll hold up Bluff Magazine for every dime I can, my reasons have nothing to do with money.