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Prisoner of the Bellagio Part V Slim and None | |||
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[Written Friday afternoon, April 6, picking up where #104 left off, literally bumping into Amarillo Slim at the entrance of Doug Dalton's office at the back of the poker room at the Bellagio.]He's got to be around 80, if not older, but he was looking pretty good.He was wearing a cowboy hat with 'the' band ' a rattlesnake that supposedly bit him years ago. He also had on cowboy boots of some exotic animal, and a snazzy blazer with a logo that said 'Slim's Joint.' Doug Dalton, Slim, and I made small talk for a few minutes in the tight space. I told Slim how much I liked his book. He never heard of my book (though Doug was nice enough to say, 'If I ever wanted someone to write about me, you couldn't pick anyone better than Michael Craig'). Slim mentioned that he was buying 5,000 copies of his book. Why he would mention this or do it is beyond me. I asked him how the movie was coming along and he said real well. They're going to put a song about him in the movie. I remember from Tony Holden's book, BIG DEAL, that someone wrote a country song about Slim and they played it non-stop over the P.A. during his tournament, driving everyone crazy. I asked if it was a new song or an old one. He told me it was a new one, and mentioned a couple lines of the lyrics, which sounded exactly like the old one. ('Hell, the devil wouldn't make a bet with Amarillo Slim.') Slim made some reference to the patch on his jacket, "Slim's Joint." If it's a new online poker site, I hope I'm not being skeptical when I say he might be a little late. But we'll see. If Amarillo Slim can start an online poker site in April 2007 and succeed, there's hope for all us poker players. Doug and Slim finished up with some spirited good-byes, which included Dalton saying, 'I'm going to write a book and tell stories about you, Slim, like about you wearing a pink shirt.' He said it as if he was going to tell people Amarillo Slim was a cross-dresser, and Slim acted like Doug had joked about doing such a thing. Then I got several minutes to talk with Doug Dalton, which doesn't sound like much, but he is an incredibly busy man. (Not too busy to give me some comp tickets for meals, which I couldn't turn down.) I was curious about whether the big online games were hurting business at the Bellagio. Bobby's Room, the day before a series of big tournaments, was empty. 'No, I don't think the online games are specifically hurting our business. I think it's that these players are so busy. They are traveling all over the world for tournaments, traveling all over on other business. They just aren't in Las Vegas as much.' Naturally, he extolled the virtues of playing live vs. online. For the biggest games, he makes a good case. I think I'm correct in assuming that part of the pros' edge is their instinct and 'feel.' I heard from numerous sources that David Benyamine has lost $3 million online. How could you not finish a streak like that and NOT feel (a) you lost it faster because of the incredibly fast pace of the online game (plus playing 4-6 tables at a time); and (b) you could have at least used all your weapons to defend those millions in a live game? I mentioned to him that a lot of people were probably going to look at the Five Star to see if poker was, after all, dead ' the legal change killing off the online market, which directly and indirectly fuels the live tournaments and the effect of people jumping off the bandwagon. 'I think the people who say that never wanted to give poker's popularity any credit to begin with. I don't concern myself with them.' Dalton won't give me any reassuring words or predict how big the Five Star will be, but he does give me the chance to tell a couple of my favorite stories on the subject. Through a connection, I contacted GQ Magazine about doing a profile on Howard Lederer. They rejected the idea out of hand. 'We think poker is pretty much played out.' That was in April 2004. I did some writing for GOLF Magazine a few years ago and when GOLF CONNOISSEUR Magazine began production, some editors from GOLF asked if I'd contribute. I told them I was doing poker now, not business and finance, but I would explore common areas of interest. I ended up writing a couple pieces about Las Vegas but not poker. They told me at the outset they weren't interested in poker. In fact, their first issue would announce that poker was a fad whose time had passed. About a year later, after online tournament participation had soared, Party Gaming had a market cap of over $13 billion, and WPT and WSOP entries had skyrocketed, I reminded this editor of that prediction. 'Yeah, I guess we got that wrong.' It being February 1, 2006, I explained that I was being allowed to sit at the table and watch the biggest poker game ever played ' not some televised tournament but the best players in the world, playing with millions of dollars of their own money, against a reclusive Texas billionaire who was out to prove something. So with poker's popularity, by his own admission, defying the magazine's prediction, wouldn't this be a great story to get exclusively? 'Nah, we're standing by our opinion, even though it was wrong last year.' I like the guys at GOLF CONNOISSEUR, but I think that's the last time I ever spoke to anyone there. I finished up with Doug and went out to say bye to Matusow in his mixed game. Mixed game? What mixed game? Mike was still playing the $25-$50 no-limit game. Eskimo was still riffling his pile of $20 chips. Mr. No-Razz-Yes-Badugi was stacking chips and thumbing through placards for a mixed game. With a paid-for entry to the first event on Saturday, a pocketful of meal comps, and unexpected meetings with Mike Matusow, Eskimo Clark, and Amarillo Slim within three hours, I went back to my room to ponder how this was, indeed, my lucky day. | |||
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