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Ellix Powers used to be that crazy-looking hobo you
might have seen holding up signs on the freeway if you
happened to live in the Los Angeles area in the eighties
and nineties. You remember him, right? And you suspected
he wasn’t quite ‘playing with the full deck.’
And I guess you must have been surprised to see him
check-raising the likes of TJ Cloutier at a World Series
final table in 2004 ...
Bleary eyed and reeking of booze, Powers created anarchy
at that table. He tilted the unflappable TJ Cloutier
out of the game; he took unscheduled smoke breaks; he
took calls on his cellphone; he raised and re-raised
in the dark; he bemused, confused and mocked his opponents
– and, of course, engineered a memorable encounter
with James McManus that had poker fans everywhere running
around screaming, “He called me with jack high!”
Ellix busted out seventh, earning himself $40,040 –
and they called it the most extraordinary story in poker.
“Had I not been drunk,” reflects Ellix
today, “I would’ve won that tournament.”
A year on Bluff just had to catch up with this king
of disorder and pandemonium to find out the next chapter
of the Ellix Powers story.
Ellix has gone from down-and-out to commercially backed
professional poker player. He now has endorsements and
sponsorship deals through www.pantherpoker.com and he
teaches at a poker school, www.poker-academy. net. And
now he’s also – wait for it – a film
star. Yes, that’s right. Ellix Powers is soon
to be coming to a cinema near you. All In: A Poker Story,
providing post-production goes according to plan, is
due to debut at the Sundance Festival in January.
“It’s a documentary about the heart of
poker – not about the rich guys – about
the guys who really struggle,” explains Ellix.
“Poker is a way to hit the lottery – the
American Dream, man. But, anybody who’s trying
to get rich in the game, but hasn’t got a lot
of luck… it’s a hard way to go. There are
many people sleeping outside, trying to sleep inside
the casinos, getting thrown out…”
“I’m probably going to be a star soon,”
he muses philosophically. It looks like the most extraordinary
story in poker may have only just begun.
There’s still much of the hobo about this disarming
motor mouth. And like all good hobos, he’s launched
into a rambling account of his life story before I’ve
even asked him a question. Fortunately, that’s
exactly what we want to know about.
“I grew up in a country town, man. I was born
in Texas; my father was a military officer. I had some
great aunts and uncles – really down to earth
– they used to beat my butt. I used to be so bad.
They used to take switches right off the trees. They
made you peel the bark off so it’s green and sweet.
They could whip you real fast with that. That’s
the only reason I’m alive today – because
of them. I was a bad kid. I was bad, man.”
“I used to live in Massachusetts where the snow
was six feet high. I was bored, man. So my mother and
I started playing gin for my allowance. I wanted to
gamble. She said, “Look, if you gamble, I’m
not giving you your money back.” She used to beat
me all the time, I remember one day I got the deck out
and I started looking at the cards and really thinking
about the game. To this day she still owes me money.”
In his late teens, Ellix’s passion for cards
soon found its way into the local cardrooms: “They
had what you call “social rooms” where Lowball
was legal because they said it was a game of skill.
That’s where I really began to play and understand
poker.”
Then came what Ellix refers to as an “unfortunate
incident” – on which he’s reluctant
to elaborate, other than it resulted in his incarceration
for a year. “That’s where I got my edge.
I was playing 16 hours a day for a year. When I came
out, I decided I wanted to be a gambler. And I started
making a good living, but I realized I didn’t
know everything, so I gradually polished up my skills.”
The next few years of Ellix’s life were a blur
of Reno card clubs, cocktail waitresses, and short-lived
dealing jobs in one-table dives, with names like Lou’s
and Carl’s. Here, among the hustlers and lowlifes,
he perfected the tools of his trade. “There’s
all kind of hustlers in the poker world, man. They don’t
even play the cards; they just know what to say and
what to do.”
Sound familiar?
Ellix was once fired from a job as a cardroom prop
for winning too much: “Ellix, I gotta let you
go, man. Everybody complaining ‘bout you winning
and you only a prop!” He had a string of dealing
jobs, but found it difficult to stay on the right side
of the management in an environment in which dealer
abuse was frequent and racist: “One time a player
threw coffee over me. Another time, when a player called
me a n****r – I’d figured out that names
ain’t worth nothing when you’re making good
money. You just call security and let them throw him
out – but on this occasion, I reacted. I grabbed
him.”
Ellix moved to LA where he discovered drugs, and so
began his descent towards Skid Row: “My biggest
problem in life was that I’d never lived in a
black community. When I moved to California, all of
a sudden there were all these black people around me
and I wanted to identify. Unfortunately for me, with
my record of making bad choices… I love my people,
but they have their own environment, and I had to adjust.
That environment was full of crime and dope and prostitution
– everybody in the ghetto is trying to survive
– somewhere along the line, I got involved with
cocaine, which is probably Satan’s most powerful
potion.”
For the next two decades Ellix drifted, in his words,
“through the wilderness”, sleeping under
bridges or in abandoned cars when the casinos kicked
him out, haggling and hustling himself a stake at the
tables, blowing his winnings on coke. He wasn’t
always destitute; there were schemes and plans and negotiations,
Ellix is a born hustler after all, but none of them
came to much. And then it was back to his life of dereliction.
He spent more time in prison, although, again, he
won’t be drawn to exactly why: “Doing drugs,
making bad choices, being “hard-headed,”
is the closest we get.
“Dope is hard,” he adds, “It’s
been tough. Sometimes it puts me in tears.
“The funny thing about prison is you always
hear about people getting stabbed and killed and I never
even got a scar. And I was a hardcore person. I’m
like, “Don’t touch that TV. I’m watching
it!” I had to fight guys twice as big as me. I
was crazy because I would never quit. That’s one
of my great personal qualities – I never accept
second best.”
Then, one day, Ellix found Jesus: “I read a
book called Only a Carpenter, by a guy who set out to
prove there was no Jesus, but ended up convincing himself
that there was. That’s probably the day I was
saved.”
Ellix experienced an epiphany, but this was no road
to Damascus; this was the Ventura Freeway. “I
was sitting there holding up a sign at the time,”
he explains.
Gradually, through his faith, Ellix was able to get
his head straight. And his signs began to take on an
increasingly spiritual tone: “You ain’t
gotta like a guy – but you got to love him,”
was one of his favorites.
“Somehow I prayed enough and devoted myself
to God and everything turned out okay. Out of all the
millions of people playing poker, I’m one who
has the opportunity to die in 20 years a successful
person. And that’s a miracle; because I’ve
done everything I can in life to try to destroy that.
The Jews were in the desert for forty years, right?
I was lucky, I only got about 25 years. Heh, heh, heh!”
And there’s that infectious laugh that makes
you want to jump around gleefully shouting: “He
called me with jack-high!”
Ellix’s speech is peppered with biblical references
and he often departs into long, meandering sermons with
the zeal of a crazy, ramshackle prophet. But it wasn’t
just God that saved Ellix’s butt. Ellix is a born
fast-talker and, once he was straight, he talked his
way off the streets.
“I’m probably one of the greatest negotiators
in the world. There’s no doubt about that.”
In fact, during our conversation, this accomplished
huckster not only plugs pantherpoker.com, his poker
school, poker-academy.net, and his film, but also his
friend’s commercial packaging company (“IPG
Printing – they make the boxes for the Cheerios,”
says Ellix). He also asks whether we can send him $50
because we phoned him on his cellphone from abroad (I’ve
passed his request on to the accounts department, but
I’m not holding out much hope) – this guy
could negotiate his way out of Guantanamo Bay!
“I’ll never burn nobody, though,”
he adds earnestly. “You can’t find anybody
who will be mad at me say I owe them any money. The
people I owe money to are good friends and they know
they’re getting it back. I always give my benefactor
the best of it, and I never overextend. I don’t
play because the money and the opportunity are there;
I play because I feel like I have a chance to win. A
lot of people play on what they call ‘make-up’,
so that they can just keep playing. I don’t do
that. And the second thing is I’m not out to con
you. I’m out to give us an opportunity to win.
Let’s say a guy puts up $300; he has a chance
to win $300,000, so even if I lose he doesn’t
feel cheated. If I were playing a tournament where the
prize pool wasn’t right and I didn’t have
a good chance of winning, then I would be abusing them.
“I’ve been a negotiator all my life. When
you don’t work you gotta learn how to do something,
right?”
Ellix does indeed have some high profile friends in
the poker world, and they were delighted when he repaid
their good faith. Two months before the 2004 World Series
he placed first in two Winnin’ O’ the Green
tournaments, Pot Limit and Limit Hold’em, enjoying
a payday of over $45,000.
And then came the notorious 2004 WSOP Limit Hold’em
tournament. What was really going on there Ellix?
“The night before that tournament, I had to
help a friend out and then, when I went to the hotel,
they were overbooked and they didn’t have a room
for me. So I ended up calling this girl to come and
get me and, of course, when you’re with a woman
– you know what happens – anything can happen
and a lot of it did, heh, heh, heh!
“Basically, when I got to the tournament, I’d
had no sleep and I’d been drinking. When we got
down to the final nine, they gave us a two hour break
– well, that’s when the alcohol’s
gonna work on you – either you stay up or you
go all the way down. So when we resumed I knew I wasn’t
going to win, because by then I was drunk. So I had
to work on a plan to get as far as possible, despite
being drunk. When I got to the final table, the first
thing I saw was TJ Cloutier. Now, he’s absolutely
the best tournament player in the world. So I said to
him, “You know what, sir? I got a lot of respect
for you. You got more last tables than anyone else and
you won more money; but, you know what? You’re
a choker.” He went ballistic:
‘What do mean I’m a choker?’
‘Well, you’ve made so many final tables
– you can’t win one.’
“He was the first one out. I provoked that one
on purpose, but [James] McManus provoked himself. Telling
me I can’t raise in the dark. It’s not illegal
to raise in the dark. But you learn lessons, right?
I got him and then he got me – that’s the
way it goes.”
The whole “disrespecting the game” debate
that followed his performance is, to Ellix, frankly
irrelevant. He doesn’t see poker as a particularly
noble game in the first place. He dismisses those who
admonish him for his lack of poker etiquette; in fact,
he sees it as hypocrisy. And that’s because he’s
lived the harsher side of poker amongst the cheats and
the bums and the hustlers; he’s been broke too
many times, and sees the heartlessness behind the smiles.
“Every player you meet at the table, they pretend
to be your friend. The reality is that they’re
there to take your money. Maybe afterwards, if they
like you, they might buy you a cup of coffee and some
gasoline to get home, but most of the time they’ll
just laugh at you. The next time they see you, they’re
all smiles again because they want some more of your
money. That’s poker.
“So I do everything I can to take your money
at the table – no questions asked. I’m an
asshole. And you can quote me on that. Write it across
the page in big, bold letters: “Ellix is an asshole!”
I like you off the table – no problem. We can
talk, have a drink – I’m the type of guy
to give you gasoline. But at the table, I’m a
complete asshole. I don’t care if you don’t
like it, I don’t care if you object. I’m
here not to give you no refunds.”
Away from the table, however, Ellix Powers is undeniably
likeable – he may be an asshole, but he’s
actually one of the craziest, funniest, most genuine
assholes I’ve ever met. “People can approach
me,” he says. “If you see me, don’t
be afraid to walk up to me – because I like people.
Don’t hit me in the jaw because I was at a table
with you and I got smart. Off the table, I’m very
approachable. I love people. I ain’t no better
than anybody else. I just hope that everybody has a
good life; makes the right choices, because God will
bless you.
“Don’t throw stones,” he suddenly
adds enigmatically, “unless you can catch ’em.”
And he’s off on a sermon again: “The tongue
is a mighty sword. Please be careful when you speak
out. Love God first; you’re family second; your
friends; your job, then money and poker. You learn those
things… you might have a shot.
“…Oh, and keep reading Bluff Magazine…heh,
heh, heh…”
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