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Jeff Haney on how a Southern California native stared down his opponents to win the poker title at Bellagio
Published: 2006-04-26
 Joe Bartholdi, a wispy 26-year-old poker pro with an intense stare-down technique befitting his tenacious style of play, can usually be found firing it up at the tables in the Bellagio's poker room.
He enters tournaments only occasionally, Bartholdi said, preferring the juicy cash-game scene that has thrived on the Strip, going hand-in-hand with poker's astounding growth in popularity.
But this time, Bartholdi chose the right spot to test his tournament skills.
Bartholdi, a Las Vegas resident for seven years, collected the top prize of $3.76 million Monday night by winning the World Poker Tour Championship tournament at the Bellagio.
The featured event, and finale, of the World Poker Tour's fourth season, the championship drew a field of 605 entrants at a buy in of $25,500 apiece for a prize pool of more than $15 million, making the tournament one of the biggest and most anticipated on poker's calendar.
After seven full days of poker, Bartholdi appeared emotionally exhausted late Monday night as he mugged for the cameras behind piles of cash stacked on a poker table in a Bellagio ballroom.
"I didn't really have a general strategy; I just tried to adjust to each situation as it came up," Bartholdi, a Southern California native, said. "I thought I was going to win (Sunday), when everybody around me started telling me I could do it. I just went with that, and started feeling I was going to win it."
He said he hoped to buy a house with his winnings. Plans were also afoot for a Caribbean vacation.
"But I haven't really thought about the future yet," he said.
Bartholdi - who ponied up the entire entry fee at once rather than trying to win his way in through a "satellite," or preliminary tournament - gave credit to his ample cheering section, made up of friends and family from Las Vegas and the San Diego area.
"We're just so happy for him; words can't explain," said Joe's younger brother, Thomas Bartholdi, 22, also of Las Vegas.
Two crucial decisions marked Bartholdi's path to the title - one on just the fourth hand of the day, the other on the final hand about six hours later.
Bartholdi became the chip leader on that early key hand. He called down a couple of big bets by James Van Alstyne and won a sizable pot with pocket eights after Van Alstyne mucked his hand. The board was showing an ace and four baby cards. By taking the lead in the betting, Van Alstyne was trying to represent a pair of aces, but Bartholdi would have none of it.
On the last hand, Bartholdi called David Matthew's all-in bet after the flop revealed an ace, a nine and an eight with two hearts. Bartholdi was holding a nine and a five for a pair; Matthew was on a heart flush draw that never materialized.
A small-business owner from Toronto, Matthew said his second-place prize of $1.9 million will finance his new career as a professional poker player.
Matthew qualified for the tournament by investing $25 in an online satellite while playing Internet poker in his hotel room at the Excalibur last fall.
"I was playing in the Festa al Lago (tournament at the Bellagio), and I got bounced on the first day," Matthew said. "You know how you feel when you get bounced early - you want to play again right away. So I saw this $25 satellite, I decided to go for it, and that's how I got here."
Van Alstyne of Las Vegas entered the day as chip leader but got caught running a couple of big bluffs. He finished fifth to earn $439,375, but left bitterly disappointed in his showing.
"That was probably the worst final table performance in the history of poker," he said.
Las Vegan Claus Nielson, originally from Copenhagen, Denmark, placed fourth and collected $659,120. Also at the six-man final table were Roland de Wolfe of London (third place, $1.02 million) and tournament veteran Men "the Master" Nguyen of Bell Gardens, Calif. (sixth, $292,915).
The 17 tournaments making up World Poker's fourth season carried a collective prize pool of more than $85 million. The tournaments air at 9 p.m. Wednesdays on the Travel Channel (Cox cable channel 66), with the championship event scheduled to air June 28.
Jeff Haney can be reached at 259-4041 or at haney@lasvegassun.com.More chances to win
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Pokermania takes over Los Angeles social scene
Published: 2006-04-23
 By Jillian O'Connor
At first, I laughed at all the poker zombies popping up in L.A. But then they got my husband.
If you don't act now, nearly everyone you know could be affected by the virulent strain of pokermania sweeping the 48 contiguous states.
And meanwhile, the CDC does nothing to control its spread.
Though the poker zombies haven't tried to bite off my flesh, they have, in fact, eviscerated our social life. Friends are no longer interested in dinner, drinks and, say, talking. Instead, they gather around Ikea tables, muttering about implied odds and ``the nuts'' -- a card-junkie expression I don't quite know the meaning of, though I'm told it's not dirty.
All of a sudden, everyone's decided to join the math league, and the only protection I've found is to hide the chips. Poker is the new meaning of their lives, and there is no cure.
People who once couldn't be enticed to do something so cerebral as watch ``Wheel of Fortune'' are now at risk as the disease takes hold and reprograms their left brains. Complicated odds estimation is, like, so cool now.
The first sightings of poker zombie gangs were reported back in 2003, after Bravo began airing table footage of highly admired celebrities like, um, Ben Affleck and Coolio. One would think that celebrity lineup would be enough to prevent would-be hipsters from taking up the game, but no.
After infection, my local zombies were first identified by their incessant e-mails about upcoming games. As the addiction took hold, they changed from bar hoppers with no discernible interests to instant card freaks who couldn't go more than a night without a fix.
In the movies, zombie language is mainly confined to ``arrrgghhh!'' But in real life, nascent poker freaks speak in glib tones about ``a beer hand'' (usually a 2-7, and thus a good time for a drink) and ``pocket pirates'' (a pair of jacks face down). Which, in uninfected English majors like me, generally provokes the response ``arrrgghhh!'' The zombies' current game of choice is Texas hold 'em (As Seen on TV!). But I have also noted the Omaha style creeping into West Hollywood. (I live in fear that every state has its own variation, and that -- someday -- I shall be privy to them all.)
Poker, once just a grown-up alternative to fish and war, has now become as basic a need as food, water and iPods.
Everybody's doing it, so there's almost no escaping, especially if you come upon an impromptu game at an alleged non-poker party. Even hiding in a corner with a bag of Trader Joe's cookies doesn't work; I've tried.
They will draft you and claim your twenty.
And if you beat the zombies at their game, they'll accuse you of having beginner's luck, which seems to rank as mortal sin among the poker-devout, whose god is none other than repeat champion David Sklansky, author of ``Hold 'Em Poker'' -- always a fledgling freak's primer.
The craze is by no means limited to men, but you will find few females at the Southland's more frightening off-track card rooms, where the stained drapery, creepy bartenders and hollow-eyed clientele set the scene for a wedding reception of the damned.
In the event you do find yourself in one of these tawdry gambling palaces, one useful weapon I have found for warding off the undead -- male or female -- is the universal ``don't make me play poker'' cry: ``arrrgghhh!'' That usually distracts the zombies long enough to make a getaway.
After all, it's not in the Sklansky book.
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