The whole event took place at the Cercle Cadet poker room, which saw packed tables for four days and a lot of side events and cash games! Second in the main event was fellow Swede Kent Lundmark for 98,051 euros — and he thus added another final table to his CV, which includes a win in the 2010 EPT in Barcelona:

Here is a list of the rest of the final table finishers:

(3) Daniel Pastor (The Netherlands), 70,595 euros
(4) Giorgio La Iacona (The Netherlands), 54,908 euros
(5) Quentin Lecomte (France), 39,220 euros
(6) David Lichentin-Rubintin (France), 29,873 euros
(7) Dan Murariu (Roumania), 21,048 euros
(8) Franck Tzafa (France), 16,342 euros
(9) Tarek Bouchama (France), 13,073 euros.

And — life is full of coincidences — in the breakfast room of the hotel Concorde Lafayette the next morning, as a couple of us joke about what we would have done with the money had we been the lucky winner or runner-up, two well-dressed British ladies take their seats at the adjoining table and have this reading material with them:

Like I said, life is full of coincidences and ironies…

DAN GLIMNE

When I was co-host of the Swedish “Poker Million” show for five seasons, several of our guests – pros, celebrities and Unibet qualifiers – managed to appear on the show twice. But only one managed to reach the final table both times: the actress Magdalena in de Betou. And on one of these occasions, the psyching-out-operation she performed got my respect.

In one of her semi-finals, as the concluding heads-up is about to commence and just seconds before the cameras start rolling, she turnes to the young online qualifier on the other side of the table and says with an angelic smile: “You realize that when this goes on the air, all of your friends back home in X-town will be watching?”

It does the trick; the only thing the young man from then on has on his mind is I-must-not-look-like-an-idiot-on-TV-I-must-not-look-like-an-idiot-on-TV, and so he he folds in the face of even the cheapest bluffs from Magdalena. At the end he has so few chips left that he is easy prey.

Another of my favourite examples, although perhaps more of the in-your-face-manly variety, occurred during a cashgame in connection with one of the Unibet Open events. Our hero here is Swedish pro Davor Pavic, who came second in the 2011 Unibet Open in Barcelona, and he is in this cashgame up against a young guy who although being technically skilled has little experience of live play; that is painfully obvious.

In one pot the young guy gets lucky and wins a coinflip against Davor. The young guy smirks, lets the rest of the table partake of his opinion that Davor is one lousy player, and rounds off the verbal barrage by saying: “I just want you to know that I play online fourteen hours a day and win big!”

“OK”, Davor replies nonchalantly, “so you don’t get laid a lot, in other words…”

The young online player goes on total tilt. Now it is personal, since Davor has challenged his manhood; and he starts chasing Davor Pavic in each and every pot. Against such a seasoned poker warrior it can of course only end in one way – the young guy blows off his entire stack to Davor, who icily has waited for the right opportunity.

Third example: it is aboard a poker cruise in 2008, and there are only two tables left in the tournament. Swedish player Samir Shakhtoor is moved from table 1 to table 2 to balance the numbers, and straight away winds up in the big blind to the left of German player Strassman who is in the small blind. Everyone folds to Strassman, who raises it up. Samir cooly advises Strassman: “Mind how you hold your cards, when you peeked I could see what you had”, before smooth-calling him from the big blind.

Strassman is obviously bothered by Samir’s comment, and testily replies that he is careful and never accidentally shows his hole cards. The flop is A-2-2. Strassman makes a continuation bet, and now Samir instantly moves all in. Strassman goes into the tank for a long while, eventually folding and showing the table his A-J. Samir gives Strassman a wolfish grin in return, turning over absolute air as he rakes home the pot; and of course he has not glimpsed any hole cards but instead done a wonderful job of psyching out the other…

And here is one of my own: during a tournament at The Bellagio in Las Vegas in 2007 I flop an absolute monster in one pot, and I also have position on my opponent. Another important piece of the puzzle is that after hours of playing against him, I have pegged him as having a Latin-American background and sporting an inflated ego the size of a Boeing 747. My task therefore is to get paid as much as possible for my monster, in that situation.

He aggressively bets out after the flop. I fake a long and seemingly thoughtful minute, before turning to him and saying: “Let me tell you how this goes down, my friend. I raise. You fold. Nobody gets hurt.” Than I calmly move a small mountain of chips forward.

My comment has put my opponent with the over-sized ego in an absolute lose-lose situation. If he calls me or raises, he is dead and buried; but if he follows my suggestion and folds to my raise, he will look like a total wimp in front of the entire table. He of course replies by moving all-in, and is busted out since I have him covered with my instant call.

Ah, isn’t poker a wonderful mind game?

DAN GLIMNE

The satellites will start on 23rd April. See you in Paradise… and read more about the event at

http://www.unibetopen.com/st-maarten/

and don’t forget that there will be a Unibet Open event in Paris in May, and one in London in September!

DAN GLIMNE

As a consolation this Unibet Open Online was won by a fellow countryman, Swedish poker warrior David Sonelin who picked up 9409 euros and 40 important points towards the 2012 leaderboard list where both live and online Unibet Open placings are scored. That leaderboard list currently looks like this at the top:

(1) Filip Verboven (Belgium), 72 points
(2) Ruggiero Scommegna (Italy), 70 points
(3) Stieven Razab-Sekh (Netherlands), 68 points
(4) Jan Grajzel (Slovakia), 66 points
(5) Gerret van Lancker (Belgium), 64 points
(6) Tomasz Kozub (Poland), 62 points
(7) Hans Sybrandi (Netherlands), 60 points
(8) Dan Murariu (Roumania), 58 points
(9) Flavien Guenan (France), 56 points
(10) Dariusz Paszkiewics (Poland), 54 points

The best Swedes are at the moment in 16th (Goran Urumovic, 42 points) and tied for 17th (David Sonelin, 40 points). Well, there are still a lot of Unibet Open tournaments left!

A record buy-in triple
Poker has always been a game where records have repeatedly been set and toppled, and now it is time for an eye-opening triple: in the coming months, buy-in records will be established on three different continents.

First out is Asia, where the highroller tournament Manila Millions will be fought out in connection with the APT Philippines during April: that buy-in will be an even 1,000,000 Hong Kong dollars, the highest ever on Asian soil, corresponding to almost 100,000 euros. Then, right on top of that, it is time for a repeat performance in Europe: the first ever Super Highroller tournament on this continent, during the EPT Grand Final in Monaco, and with a six-figure buy-in – an even 100,000 euros. And after that, on 1st July in Las Vegas, we will see the most expensive tournament buy-in in the history of the planet: 1,000,000 US dollars for Event #55 of the World Series of Poker, “The Big One For One Drop”… a hundred times as much as it costs to sit down in the World Championship Main Event.

So how are the attendance numbers shaping up for those tournaments? They of course remains to be seen, but according to what we can read so far there are about 20 players signing up for the Super Highroller in Europe; among them the 2010 World Champion Jonathan Duhamel and the current number one on the ESPN World Ranking list, Jason Mercier. Other names already announced include Daniel Negreanu, Patrik Antonius and Swedish online sensation Viktor “Isildur1″ Blom. And the upcoming battle for Manila is surrounded by rumours of former twice World Champion Johnny “Orient Express” Chan putting in a show, alongside megastars Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Phil Ivey.

The monster buy-in tourney in Las Vegas is the brain child of Guy Laliberté, the French-Canadian founder of the enterprise Cirque du Soleil which owns several of the most high-profile shows in Las Vegas. Laliberté is also the chairman of One Drop, an independent charity organization which has as its main goal to fight poverty in Third World countries by arranging access to fresh, clean water. The declared aim of this tournament with its stupefying buy-in is therefore to collect funds, and so 111,111 dollars out of every buy-in go to One Drop… which still leaves 888,889 dollars per player in the prize pool.

Almost two dozen people have already publicly declared their intention of entering: Laliberté himself, of course, but also Tom ”durrrr” Dwan, Gus Hansen, Daniel Negreanu, Patrik Antonius, Tony Gouga and a few others. And not only professional poker players but also some philantrophically-minded business magnates have put down their names on the starting list, among them Phil Ruffin who owns Treasure Island Casino in Las Vegas. Dwan has incidentally let slip the following comment in an interview las year: ”I am buying in; $1 million has a nice ring to it. It’s so sick, and for such a good cause. Now I just gotta win.”

Sick or not, the million-dollar tournament in Las Vegas will be structured as a three-day event. Since one of the principles in play during the WSOP is that the starting stack is always 3x the buy-in (4500 in chips in a $1500 event, 30K in the Main Event where the buy-in is $10,000, and so on), the participants in this monster buy-in – also already known as the “No-Limit Holdem High-Roller WSOP Championship” – will start with 3,000,000 in chips.

That of course is in itself another world record. Amassing 3M in chips usually takes the top players in the WSOP Main Event four or five days, but here it is the starting stack! Furthermore the blinds will start at 3000-6000 with an ante of 1000, so 500 x the big blind is respectable indeed. The levels will be one hour each. The number of entrants will be maxed at 48, which if this goal is attained will mean a prize pool of over 42 million dollars with some 10 million or so going to the winner. That number is throughout poker history trumped only by Jamie Gold’s 12 million dollars, for his victory in the 2006 Main Event of the WSOP which attracted 8773 players. Just a liiiittle fiddling around with the numbers and first prize can be pegged at let’s say 12,5 million dollars, establishing yet another fanciful world record… but, as I have said, this assumes a full starting field of 48 players.

This record triple in buy-ins will definitely put its mark on the poker year 2012. But at a more realistic level you can qualify for both the next Unibet Open in Paris, the WPT in Marbella and the WSOP this summer in Las Vegas – the satellites and qualifiers are already rolling at Unibet!

And don’t forget that the Fast Poker client is now up and running; just go to your Unibet web site, check the new features under “Poker”, download the new client and you are ready for the fastest poker action of your life!
DAN GLIMNE

That feat of course temporarily puts him at the top of the 2012 UO leaderboard – but six tournaments remain: three online, and three more live. The first UO online event is scheduled for 25th March, and the next UO live event will take place in Paris 3-6 May. Sounds like the right time of the year – isn’t “Paris in the Spring” a little romantic song, if I remember correctly?

But one notable development is that the Unibet Open live tournaments more and more turn out to be a festival for money-changing-hands events, apart from the already existing side tourneys and cash games. In fact, three such events took place in Prague.

One was the Million Poker Sit & Go Final, consisting of six players who had placed at the top of the rake race and thus were rewarded with a trip to Prague. There they played a sit-and-go, with Byelorussian player Alex Harbatsevich winning it. How much money he was going to win for that feat was however decided through quite a thrilling procedure: a total of 35 sealed plastic envelopes were placed on a poker table, and Alex was given scissors and told to choose and open one at a time. Inside each envelope was a piece of paper stating an amount in euros, from 3,000 € to all the way up to 1,000,000 €. As soon as Alex had gotten three identical amounts, that would be the money he had won – much like a lottery ticket of the scratch-off variety. (And yes, the higher the amount, the rarer those pieces of paper: the one million euros was stated on three such only, meaning Alex had roughly 1 chance in 5,000 to win this staggering sum.)

The first envelope Alex chose was for 5,000 €; but the second contained a 1,000,000 € piece of paper, much to the excitement of the audience! In the end however the amount first repeated three times was 5,000 euros, which he duly took home. Just to show it was a fair deal, all the remaining envelopes were opened afterwards before the audience, to show that there were indeed three “containing” 1,000,000 €.

Secondly, there was also a blackjack final played out among 18 finalists who had qualified online and received flight tickets to Prague and a stay at the Hilton. Dutchman Kevin van der Hulst was the eventual winner of this for 8,000 €, interestingly coming strongly from behind at the end to capture the crown with some very courageous and creative betting!

And finally there was the Unibet Live Betting Championship, with eight finalists who had also qualified online and thus had been rewarded with a pleasant five-star stay in Prague. The final – with five of the eight coming from Sweden, yayyy! – was played out on Sunday, while the Main Event was going on in the background (or vice versa). Each participant received a Samsung Tablet, an iPad clone of sorts, and was given a certain amount as his starting capital and according to the rules had to place at least thirty bets within the allotted time of a few hours. The eventual winner was young Swede Andreas Karlsson, who walked away with 5,000 euros.

So, quite an interesting development. What will Unibet have on offer in Paris in May? As for the third live tournament, in London on 13-16 September, I am hoping to see them run the new heads-up format I have devised and previously described here – keep your fingers crossed! It is currently under evaluation, so we’ll see.

The fourth Unibet Open live tournament, probably in November although nothing has been officially declared yet, will mark the 5th Anniversary of the Unibet Open Series – and it is rumoured to be taking place in a very exotic locale indeed! Something tells me I should pack my swimming trunks and some suntan lotion, in addition to my card protector and sun glasses…

DAN GLIMNE

Now I am particularly fond of heads-up poker; as writer Bob Ciaffone once put it, ”poker in its purest form of all”. Once I get heads-up in a sit-and-go, the records I keep show that I will win it twice as often as I will finish second.

What happened day before yesterday was however that I had, as per my contract with Unibet, been given a ”ticket” to the HU Online Championship… which I took to be ”a reserved seat”. When I sat down before my computer with half an hour to go before the tournament, I duly exchanged my ticket for spot number 150 or so; and then, when the tournament started, no table popped up. Confusion, and a telephone call; whereupon I was informed that no, the ”ticket” was not equal to a reserved seat, and that only the 128 first to register (a total of 179 had registered by 8 p.m.) were allowed into the tournament. Had the number of registrations reached 256 (= the next level) or above, then 256 would have taken part.

Understandable in a way, as the players in the current HU format knock each other out according to the reverse progression 256>128>64>32>16>8>4>2>1… but it led me to thinking that it must be possible to arrange a heads-up tournament in such a format that it can accept any number of players.

Also, there would be advantages to this. With the limit set at 128 players in the HU Online Swedish Championship, there was a total of 3712 euros going to the victor; had all 179 registered players been allowed in, first prize would have been over 5000 euros! And, as I said, all registered players would have taken part, causing no disappointment – as it did now – to those 51 who had their money refunded while staring dumbly at their screens.

Now here is my suggestion for a new HU format, for future tournaments:

The basis of my format is the wellknown ”Swiss system”, which since 1895 has been used not only in chess tournaments throughout the world, but also in checkers, oware, Othello and dozens of other games where the players by necessity face off two at a time.

In short, adapted to HU poker for any number of players (but a large starting field), the software (or the tournament director and her/his crew, when playing live) would randomly choose which opponent you would face in the first round. If there is an odd number of entrants, the player who receives a ”bye” (= does not play an opponent in that round) is also chosen randomly.

After this first round of play, half of the players will have won their match (win = 1 point, loss = 0 points), while half of them will have lost. Now the Swiss system kicks in: if you won your first match, you will in your second match face another player who also won his/her first match; and if you lost your first match, you will instead face another ”loser” in the second round.

After the second round, ¼ of the field will have won two matches; ½ will have won one match; and ¼ will have lost two games in a row.

In the third and subsequent rounds, the same principle applies: you will as far as possible meet an opponent who has won the same number of matches that you have. If you have 2 points so far, you will meet an opponent who also has 2 points; if you have 1 point, you will meet an opponent who also has 1 point; etcetera.

And so it goes on, for another 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 rounds (depending on the number of entrants): players with a certain number of points so far will in the next round meet another player with the same number of points. In this way, the Swiss system works like an old-fashioned separator for milk and cream; you climb upwards or descend downwards until you ”have found your level”.

Four basic rules within the Swiss system are that (A) you may never meet the same opponent twice, but must instead as far as possible in each round meet a new opponent with the same number of points that you have; (B) a player who is given a ”bye” (when there is an odd number of entrants) must always be randomly chosen from the group with the lowest number of points so far; (C) that player who receives a ”bye” is given 1 point, quite in accordance with the Swiss system; and (D) a player can only receive one ”bye” in the entire tournament.

After let us say 7 or 8 or 9 matches in total (again depending on the number of entrants), the best players will have risen to the top points-wise. Now the best 16 players (or possibly 32, if the starting field is sufficiently large) are in the money and then play off for the respective prizes in the classical fashion: 16>8>4>2>1 winner.

What happens if you need a tiebreaker to select the 16, because there are several players with the same number of points? In chess and other games it can get a tad complicated here, as you start counting ”sub-points”; basically, if you defeat player A who in turn in his/her matches has defeated better opponents than player B has, then defeating player A is worth more ”sub-points” than defeating player B. While this can of course be calculated at lightning speed by the software, I instead suggest a much simpler and more crystal-clear rule for my format; that in case of equal points, the tiebreaker be the total accumulated time you took to defeat your opponents in the matches that you won (the ones you lost are ignored here). Thus, aggressive play will be rewarded.

The obvious question is of course, how many rounds of play are needed? The rule of thumb within chess etc is that to produce a clear winner with reasonable accuracy, you need the same number of rounds as if it had been a knockout tournament. Thus, with let’s say 193 entrants, you round up to the next multiple which is 256, and find that nine rounds are needed in order to produce a clear winner.

However, we do not need to produce a clear winner in my new HU format (call it the Glimne Heads-Up Format or GHU format for short); rather, we only need to produce the top 16 players, for which seven rounds should be sufficient here. Add a further four rounds to that for the final 16>8>4>2>1 progression, and you have a total of eleven rounds with such a large starting field as 193 in the example here. (Smaller starting fields will of course need fewer rounds.)

It should be pointed out that the proven Swiss system has been used in hundreds of thousands of tournaments since Julius Müller first suggested it and it was put to practice in 1895 in Zürich; and in the GHU format I have adapted it to ”select” those players which will wind up in the money, and then have them fight it out for the top spots – possibly with a ”seeding” built in, so that the players at the very top will start in separate halves of the field.

The advantages of the GHU format are several:
(A) It will adapt to any number of players, instead of stopping at 128 or 256 and shutting out disappointed entrants.
(B)The prize money will be bigger.
(C) Even if you lose a game or possibly two, you still have a chance of winding up in the top 16.
(D) It will be much better at actually selecting the best players, unlike the classic knockout system where all it takes against a worse opponent is a ridiculous two-outer on the river and you will be history – the luck factor is simply lower with the GHU format, since everyone gets to play several rounds.
(E) Each participant will get more play value for his or her money.
(F) The excitement and the hope will last longer, before the top 16 (or whatever number) are eventually chosen.

As for the disadvantages, there is pretty much only one: the GHU format requires another two or three rounds in total, compared to the knockout format. But is that not a reasonable price to pay for a format with more play value, more money (also for the arranging site) and less luck?

Over to you, dear readers…

Both Qureshi and Cates have played on Macedo’s accounts; furthermore, Macedo has – among other things – tricked a number of his poker friends and colleagues into heads-up matches against the alleged fish ”sauron1989”, and stood by via Skype with all kinds of suggestions and ”helpful” advice as to how these friends and colleagues should play their cards. Problem was, it was Macedo himself who was ”sauron1989”, and who had no problem busting his opponents when he had willing cooperation regarding information about their hole cards!

It seems that the list of cheating scams and other ungentlemanly behaviour is steadily growing. On 8th December 2009 Swedish star Viktor ”Isildur1” Blom lost a staggering 4.5 million dollars to Cole South and Brian Hastings… whom, assisted by Brian Townsend, turned out to have shared and analyzed Blom’s hand history in violation of the site’s strict policy. And another Swedish professional – I will not mention his name here – lost over a million dollars to the same online opponent over the course of a few weeks, before he got sufficiently suspicious and took his laptop to a specialist where it was found that ”somebody” had installed a trojan which took six screen dumps per minute and sent them on via the Internet. No wonder the Swedish pro lost, when his oppponent could see his hole cards!

Once in my life, I have seen for myself just how incredibly deadly this particular information can be. It occurred in May 2005, when I was co-hosting the first season of the Swedish poker programme ”Pokermiljonen” for Unibet. On the day before shooting was to begin, my co-host Joakim Geigert and I were in the studio while all the technical stuff was being set up and tested – lights, cameras, and not least the table where all the poker action was going to take place. The head of the production team, Isabelle M., was sitting at the table where there was a mock game with cards and chips going on (no money, of course) and she was via a headset and microphone continually ordering spotlights, sound levels and everything else to be adjusted and finetuned. Via the holecard cameras and a whole row of monitors Joakim and I could follow the mock game in detail, and since only Isabelle could hear us via her headset, we eventually could not resist whispering information to her about what her opponents had in hand.

Now Isabelle M. is a pretty accomplished opponent at the table – but for that half an hour, she played like God: laying it down every time she was an underdog, but relentlessly pressing her advantage every time she had the better hand. All the time she did not for a second reveal what was going on, but instead kept giving orders about camera angles and other details while receiving information about her opponents’ hole cards via her headset; and her chipstack grew by the minute as Joakim and I could feel the hair on our heads standing straight up. Never, never before or since have I seen such a display of crushing, ruthless invincibility at the poker table. That was a stunning insight… until the others eventually got suspicious of her clairvoyant moves, and rumbled us for some relieved laughs.

Anyway.

It is a small consolation that live poker, ever since the game was invented in or around New Orleans circa 1820, has been even more afflicted by rampant cheating, large and small, for those two centuries. Perhaps it is psychologically unavoidable, in a game which is played not only for but primarily WITH money.

Once, during a trial in the 1930’s in the USA concerning the infamous bankrobber Willie Sutton, the judge asked: ”Why do you always go after banks?” Sutton’s reply has become a classic: ”Because that’s where the money is.”

And so it is with poker, as with for example the credit card industry: since that is where the big money is, it is unavoidable that weaker souls will forever try to figure out how to cut a piece of the pie for themselves. They follow Walter Darring’s old adage: ”Get the money and get it honest, but if you can’t get it honest, get it anyway.”

Live poker has throughout its existence attracted swindles, rampant cheating and incorrigible con men. The list is endless – and by the way does not limit itself to poker. In 1886 Oscar Wilde, who at the time was in the US for a lecture tour, got lured into a game of cards in New York City… where everyone at the table, except of course the famous playwright, was in on the scam.

It created a sensation in 2003 when the Russian gymnast and Olympic gold medal winner Vera Shimanskaya was caught by the Spanish police. She and her male partner had won close to a hundred thousand euros playing poker in casinos, by marking the cards during the game. And German player Ali Tekintamgac, I am sure, will not need any introduction to my readers!

Perhaps the time has come to do what the legendary Doyle Brunson once suggested: establishing a ”Poker Hall of Shame”, not least as a warning to others. Brunson even suggested a couple of names for starters: Walter ”Puggy” Pearson (for his occasionally extremely rude behaviour towards both other players and casino staff); John ”Doc” Holliday (who during his career shot and killed several opponents); ”Nigger Nate” Lanette (who once bit off an ear from a dealer at the Stardust); Stu ”The Kid” Ungar (for his generally unsympathetic and unsporting behaviour at the table); Nick Vacchiano (a specialist at positioning himself next to female dealers, insulting them in unspeakable fashion); and Nick ”Shoeshine” Simpson (who organized large-scale cheating during the 1960’s and 1970’s, and once under the table urinated on a dealer who gave him too many bad cards).

And one should keep in mind that not only players, but also the casinos and gaming houses, have many times behaved in immoral fashion – to put it mildly. In his book ”Tales of Old Las Vegas”, Sam O’Connor tells of how it was during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, after the casinos had started using dealers in the poker rooms but before the Nevada Gaming Commission had established rules for how much could be raked from each pot. The visiting tourists would then often find themselves in what on the inside was called ”snatch and grab games”, and which had dealers whose specialty it was to take all they could get away with from the pots, on behalf of the house. It worked best with games such as five-card draw, where the players had a lot more to look at than the chips – in those days often silver dollars – in the middle. As O’Connor ironically and punningly puts it in his book: ”It was too much money to be called a rake; it more closely resembled a shovel.”

O’Connor in particular mentions one Rex Reynolds, who in those days was a dealer at the Fremont Hotel & Casino i Downtown. ”Every bet, every turn of the card brought something new to take the players’ attention away from the dealer and the pot and Rex used all the tools of misdirection that were at his disposal. He pointed to the cards with one hand while the other hand took the money. When the cards were turned over, he helped himself again. His sleight of hand was exceptional. He could hide silver dollars behind the deck. He could palm as many as four or five silver dollars at the opportune moment and slip them noiselessly into the wooden rack. When the winning hand was at last turned over, Rex had taken whatever the lack of player awareness had allowed.”

In interesting account, of the ”snatch games” awaiting unwary tourists in Las Vegas in those days!

But it is in the end important to point out that the game of poker today, thanks to existing rule sets and regulating authorities, despite everything is much LESS riddled with cheating today than ever before – in terms of per player taking part and per dollar wagered. And if we persist in being watchful and sharing information on various forums, the game will hopefully be even cleaner in the future.

DAN GLIMNE

One classic anecdote in this regard concerns Jack Straus, the 1982 world champion. It is the mid-1980’s and Jack is in the middle of a poker game one evening at Binion’s Horseshoe in Las Vegas – and stuck for a couple of thousand dollars, after suffering some severe bad luck. There is a phone call for him and Jack goes over to the poker manager’s desk to take it; this is before the age of mobile phones. At the other end of the line is an old friend of Jack’s, who is making his last call from Death Row in one of the prisons down in Texas.

“Jack”, says his friend sorrowfully, “the Governor denied my pardon earlier today, so I’m afraid it’s the electric chair for me tomorrow…”

“Yeah, yeah”, Jack impatiently interrupts him, “just wait until you hear what an unbelievably lousy day I’ve had at the tables…”

The Main Event in this year’s World Series of Poker was a short affair for me: some five hours or so of day 1, and then I was out. When I hit my best hand of the day, a full house, a Japanese player on my immediate left had slowplayed a pair of Kings to sneakily hit a higher full house, which cost me half of my stack to find out; and the rest of my stack vanished when I hit my second-best hand of the day, a King-high flush… which of course right at that moment was up against an Ace-high flush. Bad luck, bad play, bad timing? Whatever the combination of the three, it sent me to the rail.

Play poker long enough, and you will see not only the improbable but also the nearly impossible happen. Mathematically, when playing hold’em, the worst badbeat you can suffer at any given moment is being outdrawn on a 1 in 990 shot: if after the flop you have the stone-cold nuts, and your opponent’s only chance of outdrawing you is hitting the perfect turn card AND the perfect river card in succession. In other words you can have a 99,9% chance of winning the pot, and still lose it. Those are the realities of poker.

Has it happened? Of course: On day 1A of the 2006 Main Event of the WSOP, one player got his chips all-in with a pair of Fives against another with a pair of black Eights, upon which the flop was 5-5-6 with two spades. Nothing less than quads, versus a mere weak overpair; has the player with four Fives won the pot? No, as the turn was the 7 of spades… and the river the 9 of spades, giving the player holding 8-8 a straight flush. Now that’s as bad a beat as it gets.

Another famous hand, but from day 1 of the 2008 Main Event of the WSOP, had the American player Justin Phillips with K-J of diamonds up against the Japanese player Motoyuki Mabuchi holding A-A. The board came A of hearts, Queen of diamonds, 9 of clubs… and then 10 of diamonds on the turn and A of diamonds on the river, and of course the money went all-in since Mabuchi had quad Aces but Phillips had caught the perfect turn and river to make a royal and bust Mabuchi. Ooops.

But wait, it can actually get even worse. Here is an anecdote told by former world champion Greg Raymer to journalists when he visited Oslo in 2005 – and I am not about to argue about how true it is, I am just quoting him:

It is a cashgame in Las Vegas, and two players are all-in before the flop. Even though they do not have to (it is a cashgame), they turn up their cards: one has 7-7, the other has A-A. The dealer turns up the flop… which is 7-7-x!

“Oh well”, the player with the Aces mutters. “I’ve still got two more Aces in the deck.”

“No, you don’t”, replies a third player at the table. “I folded an Ace with a weak kicker when you guys went all-in.”

“So did I”, says a fourth player. “There are no more Aces left in the deck.”

Right then, it happens; at the adjoining table a player wins a huge pot, jumps up to shout with joy… and bumps into a passing waitress so that her tray, drinks and all, spill out over the table with the upturned Sevens and Aces and cause the dealer to drop the cards in hand; in short, everything is a mess. Once things have been mopped up, the floor manager is called over to take a decision. He calls for a new deck, orders the exposed hole cards and the flop to be restored, and the rest of the cards to be shuffled together and the turn and the river to be dealt out to finish the hand. And of course, the turn is… the third Ace, and the river is… the fourth Ace, giving the pot to the player who now has quad Aces.

As the Danish writer H.C. Andersen once said, some stories are so good that they deserve to be true…

But my favourite badbeat story of all times, and a guaranteed true one at that? It has to be this one, from the early 1990’s and once again the legendary casino Binion’s Horseshoe in Las Vegas. In a one-table satellite to the Main Event of the WSOP, there are now only two players left, heads-up: former world champion Jack Keller, and Todd Brunson, son of the famous Doyle Brunson. Todd Brunson is holding the A-K of diamonds, Jack Keller the Queen of spades and the Jack of clubs, all the chips go in before the flop, and the flop is… Queen of diamonds, Jack of diamonds and Two of clubs, giving Keller top two pair but Todd a monster draw. The turn card is… the Ten of diamonds, giving Todd Brunson a royal straight flush!! Keller gets up to shake Todd Brunson’s hand and congratulate him to the victory – but is it all over? Has Keller lost the satellite? Is it really game, set, and match?

No… the river card is a second Jack of diamonds!! “I had never seen anything like that, and still haven’t to this day”, writes Doyle Brunson in his book “My 50 Most Memorable Hands” when he recalls that hand which he witnessed as a spectator. The floor manager of course has no choice but to step in and declare the hand void and the chips returned, so that the match could continue.

As the saying goes, ”It aint over till it’s over…”

So who knows what will happen, with still two live Unibet Open events to go? Remember, a specially engraved Rolex watch will go to the player suffering the worst badbeat during the year’s UO events. And with my luck in Las Vegas to go by, I would not be surprised to find out that it is me in the end… but at least the Rolex watch will be a nice consolation, together with another story afterwards to bore my friends and poker colleagues with.

DAN GLIMNE

But it is also here in the tournament rooms of the Rio that I have what the Japanese call a ”satori”: a sudden and deep insight.

I have totally missed the big picture.

Whatever the number of participants will be at the end, it is gravely misleading; it is only the tip of the massive iceberg. The total number of hopeful players, across the world, who have done battle with the ambition of making it here to the Main Event of the WSOP must be absolutely staggering.

In well over a hundred countries, in satellites at many, many dozen web sites but also in casinos, card clubs and even in some high-end private homegames, men and women have for nearly a year aimed at and dreamt about a seat in the Main Event. How many can they have been altogether? Only the poker gods themselves can know that number. But the Main Event here at the WSOP is, despite it being the world’s annual most publicized poker event, only the visible top of a gigantic pyramid where perhaps a million individuals make up the base. For each one who will sit down here in the Amazon Room and the Pavilion at the Rio, starting tomorrow, hundreds have fantasized, hoped, tried and failed.

If you consider all of this, the World Poker Championship may very well be the single biggest competitive event on the planet when looking at the total, and I mean the t-o-t-a-l, number of participants.

It is almost beyond what can be intellectually and emotionally grasped. And it will be still more mindboggling when we two weeks from now are down to the ”November Nine”: those nine players who in the end will have accomplished the nearly impossible, making it all the way to the final table. How will they feel inside when they in a few months’ time march onto the stage under the bright lights, to take up the final battle like those gladiators who once walked out onto the sands of the Colosseum? It is perhaps no coincidence that poker tournament tables have the same oval shape as the arenas of Ancient Rome. Hell, Caesar; those who are about to die salute you!

And up on the stage of the Pavilion, in a glass box watched by armed guards, the glittering, massive, diamond-encrusted gold bracelet that is reserved for the eventual winner is on public display; the modern-day wreath of the Olymp. None of us who see it cannot but fantasize about what it would feel like to wear it, as its rightful owner.

DAN GLIMNE