It's Probabilistic
After both players check the flop and turn, Phil Laak bets the river after a second six hits the board. Gavin Smith smells something foul.
“You don’t have a six, Phil. What are you doing?”
Laak’s body comes to life as if each of his limbs has been plugged into a different electrical socket. He becomes a mass of tells, fake tells, and counter tells. An NBC cameraman converges.
“I could have anything. I could have a six.”
“No way,” Smith repeats, though he makes no move toward his chips.
“I could have a six. It’s probabilistic.”
“Probabilistic? That’s not even a word, Phil.”
“You’re challenging me, Gavin? Of course it’s a word.”
Laak notices, at the limits of the peripheral vision on his left, Mike Caro in the audience. Laak stands up and addresses him. “What do you think? It’s word, isn’t it?”
The audience, very close to this tiny two-player table, titters. Caro nods his assent.
Gavin, who still hasn’t acted on Laak’s river bet, turns to the audience at his right. “C’mon,” he asks, “Am I the only one who thinks probabilistic isn’t a word?”
Gavin Smith is so close I can almost touch his shoulder. I’ve met Gavin twice, just briefly, but he is exactly as he appears: so approachable and informal that if you spend a moment with him, you think of him as a friend.
I ponder the word. Why, if you were talking about the probability of something — like having a six in your hand to match the two on the board — would you say “probabilistic”? “It’s probable.” “It’s highly probable.” “It’s likely.” “It’s a certainty.” I couldn’t think of why the suffix “-ilistic” would ever serve a purpose being attached to “probable.”
Something moves me, amid the laughs, to pipe up, “Trust me, Gavin. It’s not a word.”
“You see,” Gavin tells the crowd, “This guy’s a writer and he says it’s not a word.” Then, with the attention of the crowd (including some of the players from the other seven matches) riveted to him, he delivers the wordless punch line: He folds.
Pokerheads
That was the one and only match I watched from the 2006
NBC Heads-Up Championship. Attending the event was like seeing a Grateful Dead concert. Sure, the actual show was fine, but it’s just a show. Hanging out with the “heads” beforehand was the real joy.
The tournament room was packed the evening before for the pairings party. The pairings party itself was a drag, and it took forever. Ali Nejad, the MC, would pick a player’s name from a drum. That player would come up and pick the name of his opponent. Nejad, a great MC, unfortunately had to play out the same scenario 32 times. He was also saddled with having to introduce “special guests” to assist with the arduous task of pulling that first name from the drum. If you worked for a magazine or distillery or clothing company that was helping sponsor the event, or reported the weather for an NBC affiliate, you were accorded Special Guest status.
The funny thing was that, even though the players had to pay $20,000 for the privilege of competing in the televised event, attendance was mandatory. Ted Forrest and Phil Ivey were AWOL, chasing the big bucks of Larry Flynt and friends in L.A., and the room was buzzing with the rumor they would be bounced from the competition. NBC did not disqualify Forrest and Ivey, though they probably got a stern talking-to. (I later heard that they flew back for the first round in Larry Flynt’s jet and that their combined winnings from the L.A. game weren’t much less than the total prize money for the Heads-Up Championship.)
After the party, everyone milled around to, not surprisingly, bet on the outcome. Howard Lederer and Doyle Brunson had been nominated as captains of their respective brackets to arrange a huge prop bet on which bracket would produce the winner. Approaching Annie Duke to repay me the $64 she borrowed the last time I saw her, I told her I’d take it as a piece of the action in the prop bet. If you ever hear me tell stories about my $100,000 bet with Doyle Brunson*, now you know the truth. (Howard, Annie, and the rest of their bracket — taking me along for the ride — won when Ted Forrest took the Championship.)
Amid the big names and big action, Ernie Durack and his wife looked lost. (Durack, I had heard, was a Canadian highroller who won his way into the tournament on a freeroll. His game was blackjack, not poker.) The Duracks were wandering through the post-party scene looking for someone connected to the production to answer a question: When would the tournament conclude? When they were told that the finals were scheduled for Monday (this was Friday night), Mrs. Durack muttered something about needing to get back home before the beginning of the week. I had a laugh over that since Durack was the unanimous pick for the most likely loser of Round One on Saturday.
Postscript #1 — Don’t Mess With Mrs. Durack
Ernie laughed all the way to the bank with $25,000. He beat Scotty Nguyen in the first round, Paul Phillips in the second, and lost to Ted Forrest only after he had Ted outchipped and all in with A-10 against his own A-A. (A miracle straight led to a chopped pot.)
Postscript #2 – Don’t Mess With Mike Caro
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition: (1) prob-a-bi-lism – a theory that in disputed moral questions any solid probable course may be followed even though an opposed course is or appears more probable. (2) prob-a-bi-lis-tic — of, or relating to probabilism.
