I went to Vegas and All I Got was this Lousy Bracelet
Are you guys playing in the WSOP this year?” asks David Wells. “Because if you are, you really need to go down to the Rio and buy your tickets. They’re limiting the number of entrants to 5,000 this year, and I hear they’re almost filled up.”
Ever since my Dad turned on the computer and amped up the Binion’s World Series of Poker game, I was hooked. In the beginning, I enjoyed roaming the casino, going up to the steakhouse, and out the back door, where I would pass a virtual pawnshop, and empty out my pockets to see if I had something to pawn. Sometimes I would end up at the lake where I would walk off the pier into the water, whereupon the topless sunbathing girls would sit up and laugh at me.
But eventually I discovered the joys of pure poker.
I loved sitting at the table where players with bad
Texas accents would say colorful things like “Not
all trappers wear fur hats,” and You’re
gonna go home with nothin’ but a story.”
Sometimes I’d answer them back. “You got
that right,” I’d mutter grimly, counting
my winnings.
When I managed to parlay my 5,000 into 10,000 through super aggressive Stud poker playing, I would run over to the World Series of Poker desk to see if I could play. More often than not the bored girl working the desk would say, “Sorry the tournament has already started,” whereupon I would dejectedly slink away to lose my money at roulette.
But once in a while she would say the magic words: “Are you ready to begin the tournament?”
Am I ready? Hell yes! And I would be instantly transported to a thrilling world of green felt, to the accompaniment of my favorite words, “Shuffle Up and Deal.” It took me years before I figured out you could bypass the bored girl and simply scroll up to the top of the computer, tap on WSOP, and enter it that way.
Then I became a true poker degenerate. After a few weeks of non-stop playing, a cartoon man appeared on screen. “Welcome to the second day!” He announced. The second day? I didn’t even know there was a second day. After that, it was short matter of time until I’d cracked the third day, and then the final table, where I would be greeted by a cartoon replica of either Johnny Moss or Doyle Brunson. “Hello,” they’d say, amused that I’d made it that far.
The first time I won, I sat there for almost an hour, admiring the table full of money, with my two winning cards on top and the beautiful WSOP gold bracelet on the bottom. Now seven million dollars, and seven virtual gold bracelets later, I’m bored. I’m ready to move onto the real thing.
Besides, Phil says my computer poker prowess proves nothing. It just shows that I’ve neuro-netted the machine. And that is true, kind of. I’ve discovered little tricks like if you bet big on the flop, and the computer calls you, if you bet even bigger on the turn, it will usually fold. Also Phil says the other players are idiots, doing things like calling all-in bets with hands they shouldn’t even be playing.
I don’t want to play with computer chips any more, I want to play with real people, people who steam when you beat them, who have read Sklansky’s The Theory of Poker, who don’t say the same corny five phrases over and over again. I want a million dollars I can spend; I want a gold bracelet I can wear.
“Baby,” I say, “Let’s go buy our tickets.”
Now it is July. We are landing in Las Vegas. The plane skids and bounces on the runway just like the cartoon plane in the video game. After the initial screams, everyone cheers. It seems like a good omen.
As we are waiting for our luggage, Phil gets out his cell phone to book a room at the Bellagio. He is perturbed to find out there are no rooms available. “This has never happened before,” he says, puzzled.
“Tell them it’s me!” I mouth.
“What?” says Phil.
”Tell them it’s me.”
“Oh, right,” says Phil. He is still not used to playing the celebrity card.
The answer comes back in the negatory. Not even for Jennifer Tilly do they have a room.
“I bet you would have a room for President Bush,” says Phil argumentatively. “Oh come on, if President Bush called and wanted a room you would have one. He hangs up. “They say even if President Bush wanted a room they couldn’t accommodate him.”
“Well that’s ridiculous!” I say crankily. “They would just make someone move. They would be like…oh I’m so sorry Mr. High Roller, apparently the computer has lost your reservation for the presidential suite. Can we put you up at the Mirage instead?”
We end up at the Rio where the tournament is being held. The Rio is a jolly, family friendly, place where all the employees seem like extras from Fame. At a moment’s notice, cocktail waitresses leap on top of the slot machines to belt out a lively rendition of You Can Leave Your Hat On to the accompaniment of ringing bells and all of the bartenders juggle, a la Tom Cruise in Cocktail.
The staff is super friendly. The cheery girl behind the counter books us in for a month, and puts us on a waiting list for the Ipanema Tower, which is a little closer than the Masquerade Tower, where we stay the first night.
When the call comes the next day to move us, I can’t say we are sorry. Our non-smoking room smells like someone removed the ashtrays five minutes before we arrived. Our new room is much more spacious, and the layout is better. The bathroom is sequestered from the bedroom, which means one person can sleep undisturbed by the person putting on makeup (That would be me).
There is a dance convention going on at the same time as the WSOP. We are constantly running into spangly overly cosmeticed tykes in the elevator nonchalantly swinging oversize trophies. This necessitates us saying things like, “Did you win that? Wow, you must be talented!” Unlike WSOP bracelets, in the kiddie dance world there are enough trophies for everyone.
In the month leading up to the Main Event, there is a tournament almost every day. Phil has decided to play all the ones that are televised. His goal is to make a final table. Much as I like to copy Phil, most of these games I’ve never heard of, like Razz and Omaha. I decide to set my own goal, which is not to play like a donkey.
In the first two tournaments I don’t do too well.
Let’s leave it at that. Phil, on the other hand,
makes it into the money twice. At night we play until
five in the morning. Phil is cleaning up in he
cash games, and I’ve discovered something I’m
good at: satellites. The money I’m making in the
satellites is somewhat offsetting the cost of the buy-ins.
The night before the Ladies tournament, I am up until 5:00 am, finishing a satellite. I take first place, and this time I have so many chips that nobody ventures to suggest a split. (This has happened many times, and I’m usually too polite to say no) We have drawn a little crowd of spectators. A man named Tommy keeps pointing at me yelling, “My money is on you! You are going to win the event tomorrow!! I want 20 percent of you!” Even though it would make me feel like a pro to have a backer, I now have more than enough money to cover the buy-in, so I decline the offer and go to bed.
Phil is already asleep. I want to wake him up, and say, “Guess what? I won thirty-one hundred dollars, and didn’t split!” but he has a big day tomorrow, so I don’t bother him. Phil is one of the last twenty remaining in a no limit tournament. He hadn’t been planning to play in this one because he thought it wasn’t televised, but then Antonio told him it was. Phil had been up all night amusing himself with a fish, when Antonio showed up, fought his way through the watching crowd, and told him the tournament was about to start. So Phil bought a ticket, played until 3am, and now, 39 hours later, he gets to sleep. My minor victory can wait.
I wake up the next morning groggy and exhausted. I had been planning to play in the Ladies’ No Limit but now I’m not so sure. Ever since I met Phil I wanted him to make a final table so I could stand in the audience like Glenn Close in The Natural and cheer him on. Now that it looks like it might finally happen, I would hate to be stuck in another tournament dribbling away my chips.
But Phil tells me I have to enter the Ladies’. He thinks it would be good for me to play with other women. I decide to do it. I have been curious about the Ladies’ Event, which is a WSOP tradition. It started out being a Mother’s Day affair, and sort of grew from there. Every year there is talk of dismantling it on the basis of discrimination. Annie Duke refuses to participate. “You’ll have an edge,” Phil says.
Unlike the other tournaments, the Ladies’ starts at 11:00. Because some of the women have planes to catch, it is structured as a one-day event. There is a record attendance this year: 601; three times the size of last year’s competition.
I find my table in a sea of perfume, brightly colored outfits, and glittery hats. Everybody has given a great deal of thought to their accessories. The chattering is deafening. When the tournament director announces the start of the day, there are cheers and applause. It’s like a baby shower without the gifts.
There is only one person at my table I recognize – CeCe Mortensen, Carlos Mortensen’s wife. I usually know her as a happy chirpy girl, dressed in pink, tripping around in high heels, carrying a tiny fluffy dog, but today she is grim and wearing sunglasses. This Cecelia means business.
After a few hours players are dropping like flies and I have a sizable chip stack. One thing I’ve noticed about playing with women: a lot of them don’t have that killer instinct. If they check and you raise, they usually fold, like “oh I didn’t mean to get in your way.” There is also a lot of apologizing going on. “You should have won, you had the best hand…I just got lucky.” Or “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to raise your big blind…I had good cards…honest!”
Just before dinner, however, I suffer a terrible beat. My pocket aces vs. pocket jacks. Jack on the river. Wham! Phil defines ‘shortstack’ as having less than ten times the big blind. Well now I have less than four times the big blind. I am discouraged, to say the least. I go to dinner with Phil and Rob Fulop, and they spout soothing clichés, like “Don’t worry, just wait for your moment and go all in.”
And so I wait… Usually when I am low on chips I give up. I hate being poor, so I say to myself “oh well, any two cards…” and just toss it – but this time is different. I squeeze like I’ve never squeezed before, and before I know it, we are approaching the bubble. I am thrilled beyond belief. It’s always been my dream to make it to “in the money”, just like Mimi Rogers, and now it seems a distinct possibility.
The game slows to a crawl. There are about seven of us who are shortstacked, and we are all determined to let someone else go out ahead of us. When it finally happens there are cheers all around. I order a drink. I have achieved my goal of cashing like a real poker player.
Now all that remains is how best to dispose of my meager stack. Oh look! A pocket pair! I take a sip of wine with one hand and push all in with the other. Two callers. My pair miraculously flops into a set. I triple up.
Suddenly all hell breaks loose. You know sometimes how you fall into a time/space continuum that even you don’t understand? I start getting these amazing cards – pocket kings, A-Q, pocket sevens, pocket jacks – if people are foolhardy enough to call, I flop a straight or a flush, and they go down like ninepins – I am felting people left and right. My end of the table is swamped in chips. I don’t have time to stack them; I can barely reach over them to pick up my next phenomenal hand.
At one point, I look up to notice eight women staring at me open-mouthed. Sometimes, on the computer, when I rake in a big pot, my opponent drawls bitterly, “What? Are you sitting on a horseshoe?” I realize THIS is what it feels like. I want to scream, “Yes, yes!! I DO have a horseshoe up my ass!!” But instead I flip over my cards to reveal pocket aces. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I just keep getting these hands…”
And now they literally have to stop the game. I have so many chips it is causing a problem. Two casino employees come rushing over. They put my chips on little racks and carry them away to color them down. After that things settle down slightly, but the damage is done. I have become a chip leader. There are three tables left.
Phil, in the meantime, has made the final table in his tournament. It’s kind of awful, because every time I hear cheers or groans from that part of the room I think he has been eliminated. But he hangs in there, and finally late in the evening it is just down to him and Johnny Chan.
Now he has a bit of a break, and he comes over to see what’s going on with me. Carlos Mortensen is there also, proudly watching Cecelia. This causes an announcement to be made: “Some of the girls are upset because they don’t have professional poker player boyfriends. Please gentlemen, NO COACHING!”
It is an unnecessary admonition. Phil’s remarks fall into two categories: the totally incomprehensible: “Remember, you’re snowboarding down the backside of a mountain…” and the useless: “Baby, you look hot with all those chips in front of you!”
Phil’s heads up match begins and he disappears. I lose interest in my own game. I can hear laughing and cheering. I throw away my hands and stand on a chair trying to get a glimpse of the action. At one point we have a tiny break and I rush over to see what is going on. Phil is nowhere to be found. I experience a rush of fear, and then I locate him – he is rolling around on the floor.
Eventually he goes out and I can concentrate again. We are now down to the final table. It is about four in the morning. We have been playing for seventeen hours. Although the Ladies’ Tournament was supposed to be a one-day event, they didn’t expect so many entrants. ESPN is buzzing around, pleading for us to adjourn until tomorrow so they can rustle up a camera crew and film the action.
I’m all for it. I’m so exhausted I’m making stupid mistakes. At one point I take so long to call a reraise that everyone thinks I’ve lost my mind. I think I have to call two hundred and fifty thousand, which is almost my entire stack. I am counting and recounting my chips while calculating my outs under the table. Finally, I decide to go ahead and gamble. Well the flop doesn’t help and I lose. Imagine my surprise when the dealer plucks three chips off my massive stack. I was only raised two and a half thousand dollars, NOT two hundred and fifty. I realize I desperately need sleep.
Most of the other girls, however, want to keep playing. One of them has a plane to catch, and the others, for whatever reason, do not want to come back. So we play on.
One of my toughest opponents is Theresa Chang. She totally has my number. Every time I bluff, she reraises me. Sometimes I fold, sometimes I reraise her, and she folds. Finally I look down at pocket sevens. I raise, Theresa reraises. Hoping to shut her down I go all in. Unfortunately, she calls. I know the ride is over when she rolls pocket queens.
But a funny thing happens on the way to Elimination. I runner runner my way to a gutshot straight. I can’t even believe it. I am staring at that eight on the river like it’s a hallucination.But it is no hallucination. Theresa is gone, and since she was one of the chip leaders, I am now the girl with the most cake.
The next to go is Angel Word; the one who had the plane to catch. “Look Honey,” says Phil, “everyone who wanted to keep playing is out of the tournament.” Well, not everybody. Carolyn Ancheta still wants to finish up tonight, but we take a revote, and this time majority rules. Cece, Ann Le and I decide to reconvene tomorrow.
It is 3pm the next day. I didn’t sleep much. As the chip leader I am expected to win, but I know how quickly that can turn around. If any of my opponents double up more than once, it’s an almost even race. It would be my worst nightmare to go into the final televised table with a monster chip lead and then lose all my money. I know I have to be really focused.
A small crowd has gathered in the featured table area: some friends of players, some of the ladies from LIPS and curiosity seekers. I hope they’re not there to see me. I learned early on, I can either play poker or be entertaining. I can’t do both. I resolve to ignore them.
The end is swift and efficient. I lead out betting; the other girls fold. Or they bet and I fold. It’s a little like a tango. Advance, retreat, advance, retreat, culminating with someone picking up the blinds. No one says anything.
“Whew,” says Johnny Grooms, at one point, trying to inject a little drama for the audience. “You can cut the tension with a knife.” Well, not really. I’m sure it’s pretty boring to watch.
There is a brief flurry of excitement when Carolyn goes all in with pocket sevens. I call with an A-8. The board comes blank and Carolyn doubles up. I’m not happy about that. I can’t afford to let any of them get stronger.
The next confrontation is between Ann Le and Cecelia. CeCe goes all in with pocket nines. Ann flops a straight to knock her out of the tournament. I am relieved to see her go. Cecelia is another tough cookie. Now there are only three of us.
Carolyn goes all in. I look down at A-7. Normally a no-brainer to call, but just a short time earlier, I lost with a better hand. Do I really want to do that again? I push my cards around for a bit, assailed by unreasonable doubt. Then I realize I’m being ridiculous: I’m here to play poker. That’s all I can do. I can’t help how the cards fall. The flop comes ace, blank, seven. Carolyn is out of the game.
A little while later Ann goes all in with K-J. I call once again with an A-7. Even though I have the better hand I’m positive she is going to hit one of her cards and double up. Blank, blank, blank, blank and blank. Unbelievable. I am staring at the cards trying to see some pattern; some way, not immediately apparent, in which I have lost the hand. Then I hear Johnny Grooms announcing, “Jennifer Tilly has won the tournament!”
I start screaming. I am overcome with love for all the women who have made it to the final table with me. I hug Ann Le. Phil comes running over. I hug Phil. Johnny hands me the microphone, and I try to make it up to the spectators for being so boring in the game by being extra entertaining now. “This is better than an Oscar!” I shriek. (Which really, I wouldn’t know. I have never won an Oscar. But I have to imagine it is better.) The audience laughs. I think of another sound bite. “I had to win my own bracelet!” I bellow, “because Phil said if he won one he was going to give it to his MOTHER!” Phil is embarrassed. The audience laughs some more. Johnny tries to get his mike back. I wrestle it away from him. “I’m hooked on poker now,” I inform the adoring crowd, “I’m not going to stop playing until I LOSE BACK ALL THE MONEY I WON!!”
There, I’m done. I relinquish the mike. Now it’s time to pose for hundreds of pictures with the gold bracelet, and the piles of chips, and my two winning cards on the top, just like on the computer game. Except this is real, and the gold bracelet is heavy, and Phil is with me.
After all the interviews and photos, and people grabbing me, I am drained. Phil goes back to his tournament, and I walk alone through the casino towards the elevator. I pass Tommy from the night before. He points at me yelling from across the room. “I TOLD YOU YOU WERE GOING TO WIN, DIDN’T I TELL YOU? I WANTED A PIECE OF YOU!”
I feel a shiver of superstition. The world suddenly seems an unpredictable and dangerous place. If I can win a gold bracelet, something very strange is happening in the universe, and I’m not sure I want to be involved.
I go to our room where the blackout blinds make it a pool of perpetual darkness. My photo is softly blinking all over the internet and the phone is already starting to ring. I unplug the phone, go to bed, and don’t leave the room for three days.
