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Poker welcoming players into the fold
Published: 2005-04-09
 Poker welcoming players into the fold
By: ANDREW PHELPS - For the North County Times
Teri Braun stroked her chips for an extra second before tossing them all to the center of the table. "I'm all in," she declared, risking her winnings from the last four hours for a shot at $6,000. Then she laid down her pair of kings, and the men at the table groaned in defeat.
It was a Saturday-night game of Texas Hold'em, the poker game that has exploded into the nation's casinos, living rooms and home computers in the last two years. Braun wasn't at a card house, but at her home in Leucadia.
And the $6,000 wasn't real ---- it was all in chips.
Braun and her husband, David, host invitation-only tournaments for friends every two weeks. Players pay a $20 buy-in for a shot at the community jackpot, which is divvied up to the top players at the end of the night.
Multiple buy-ins are allowed early, if a player loses it all and wants to get back in.
Michael Delgado hovered behind the table, holding a beer and proudly announcing that he was "the first guy to lose."
"Worst-case scenario, you lose $60," Delgado said. "If you're smart, you can play $20 for a couple of hours. You're not at a casino losing your ass."
Home games like this one are legal in California, so long as the host doesn't make any extra money from the games. All the money won must come from the player-funded pot.
Higher stakes
John Slavin, 30, has been playing poker since he was a teenager in Rancho Bernardo. Back then, he could hardly find a game.
"Nowadays, people call me everyday and say, 'Hey, do you wanna get into a home game?' Every day."
But many players, like Slavin, get bored with low-action home games and move on to higher stakes at professional venues. Two years ago, Slavin got serious about poker.
He plays Hold'em at local Indian casinos at least three times a week, he said. The buy-ins are higher: $50, $100, $200. Winning those rounds gets a free ticket to higher-stakes tournaments.
Slavin is confident but not cocky, and he has thousands in winnings to back it up, he said. In February, he played in a $30,000 tournament and took home a respectable $3,500. Last month, he outlasted about 400 people to take 15th place and win almost $1,200 at Viejas Casino's Southern California Poker Tour, which airs on television next month.
At that tournament, Slavin wore a T-shirt that the cameramen loved: "Why work when you can play poker?"
"When I need to make rent, and I need to make money to pay bills, I feel pretty comfortable going to a tournament and making a thousand bucks," he said.
When he leaves for the casino, he said, friends tease him about his "second job."
"This is our little inside joke. I say, 'Oh, I'm off to my office.' Poker's been paying my bills for the last six months."
Slavin is a hotel valet attendant, but wants to make poker a full-time career. He plans to move to Las Vegas in a few months and become a dealer there.
Cashing in
That move would be bold ---- but not unheard-of.
Several years ago, Chris Ferguson chose the same path. Ferguson is a poker superstar, known as "Jesus" for his long, brown hair and beard.
Six years ago, he received a Ph.D. in computer science at UCLA. Mom and Dad thought he might do something more conventional with his degree.
"The family wasn't all that happy. They didn't think it was all that productive," Ferguson said.
But it is lucrative. Today, Ferguson is a multimillionaire who wins tournaments around the world. Early last month, at Harrah's Rincon Casino in Valley Center, he won a 13-hour marathon game of the World Series of Poker.
The buy-in: $10,000. His prize: $655,220.
Ferguson is one of a growing number of celebrity players who never expected to become famous by playing cards. The World Series of Poker is broadcast on ESPN, and the World Poker Tour, a wildly popular series, airs on the Travel Channel.
"There's something about being on TV that changes people's mind," Ferguson said over lunch at Rincon, frequently interrupted by fans looking for autographs or suggesting menu items. "That's strange for me, because I'm the same guy I was three years ago."
In the cards
The surge in poker popularity began in spring 2003, Ferguson said, when the first season of the WPT aired. Poker was on television before, but the card cams ---- hidden cameras that reveal every player's hand ---- got people watching.
"Without knowing what people have, it's like watching paint dry," Ferguson said. "They don't know who to root for."
Texas Hold'em is one of hundreds of variation of poker ---- so is why is it the only one on the tube?
"It's a great game," Ferguson said. "And it's pretty easy to put on TV."
Players are each dealt two cards face down for a round of betting. Three communal cards, the flop, are turned over for more betting. A total of two more community cards and bets ---- the turn and then the river ---- are revealed next. The economy of the cards and the fast action of the game make for great TV, Ferguson said.
It also makes for lightning-fast Internet play, which many players consider to be a huge part of poker's popularity. Ferguson designs software for FullTiltPoker.com, a Web site where real money is bet. Customers can play no-limit games or bet as little as 5 cents.
"You could play 300 hands an hour. You just learn poker that much faster," said Ferguson, who learned the game himself in text-only chat-room versions of the game 15 years ago. "In this Internet age, there are some really good players I've never seen before."
Ferguson said players can learn 90 percent of the skills they need online ---- but the crucial 10 percent must be learned at the table. Online players never have to handle chips, speak politely or maintain a poker face, and it shows when they get to a real table, he said.
'Business almost doubled'
All this popularity pleases Bob Moyer, the general manager of Oceans 11, a non-Indian card house in Oceanside. There are only 10 others in California.
"When the Indian reservations expanded, we lost initially 10 or 11 percent of our business," Moyer said. The game's resurgence came when the first season of WPT aired.
"When that happened, our business, within 6 months, almost doubled."
Everyone is playing more, Moyer said, including women.
"Probably, for every 10 men, there's one lady who plays," he said. "Before, you never saw a lot of ladies playing poker. We offer small tournaments every day for beginners to come in. That draws a lot of females."
John Slavin persuaded his girlfriend to play, even though she had never gambled before meeting him. Now she's winning home tournaments.
"She's totally excited about this. She watches on TV with me," Slavin said.
"I have the support of her, as well. If I come home broke after losing 500 bucks or something, she doesn't yell at me."
Moyer has been in the business for 33 years, and he has watched poker evolve from a seedy underground game to a mainstream family activity. At Oceans 11, card rooms aren't smoky and foreboding ---- they're well-lit, clean and inviting. And every table is under the watchful eyes of security cameras.
Bonding and betting
Marc Sanna, visiting the Rincon poker tournament from Orlando, Fla., said poker is an opportunity to bond with his 14-year-old son, Alec. They play together at the computer, having started with $5 buy-ins at PartyPoker.com and then raising the stakes.
"After a couple of months, we were really in the money," Sanna said.
Alec's mom is not thrilled. "She doesn't like gambling, period," Sanna said.
But he said he monitors his son's bets and uses the game as a teaching tool for money management. "I let him know all the pitfalls," Sanna said.
Alec wants to grow up to be a professional poker player, an ambition his dad supports but calls a "20,000-to-1 shot."
Those odds don't daunt Slavin. He insists he is not a compulsive gambler, although he says it's a very addictive game.
"So far, I'm not like the kind of guy who has to sell my property to go play cards," Slavin said. "I don't mind if I go broke sometimes. I have plenty of chances to make it up."
Slavin, like any amateur or professional cardplayer, has indeed gone broke. Once he took a $2,500 check to a casino and lost it all in four days of gambling. He wasn't fazed.
Some might see his attitude as false confidence, but he sees it as business savvy.
"That's $2,500 that I invested ---- I think it's a great learning experience," Slavin said.
"This is like a business. You have to invest money into this game, by buying books, by taking the time to read them, by losing money, by playing the game.
"I have no doubt in my mind that it will pay off."
Andrew Phelps is a freelance writer. Contact him at ap@andrewphelps.com.
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Playing Poker with Daniel Negreanu
Published: 2005-04-14
 April 14, 2005 04:14 PM US Eastern Timezone
''Playing Poker with Daniel Negreanu''; The New Weekly Poker Column from Poker Champion and 2004 Player of the Year Daniel Negreanu
LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 14, 2005--Move over, baseball, the game of poker is well on its way to becoming the national pastime!
Daniel Negreanu, the all-time money winner on the professional poker circuit, has teamed with Card Shark Media to write the most informative, entertaining and engaging weekly newspaper poker column ever, specifically targeted to the huge and fast-growing poker market. 'Playing Poker with Daniel Negreanu' launches today and is available to newspapers throughout the USA and Canada.
Daniel Negreanu is unquestionably the top dog in professional poker. He is the 2004 ESPN Player of the Year, 2004 Card Player Magazine Player of the Year, and 2004 World Poker Tour Player of the Year. And what's more, Negreanu is the all-time professional poker prize money leader having earned almost $6 million since turning pro in 1998. Negreanu is a multi-year winner of the most prestigious World Series of Poker (WSOP), and is the owner of three coveted WSOP bracelets.
'Playing Poker with Daniel Negreanu' targets the estimated 50 million active poker players and spectators in the USA and Canada. Negreanu, an experienced writer, will offer poker strategies, tips, rules, and anecdotes from his experience playing with poker's best professionals and most famous celebrities. The column will address a multitude of poker games not just Texas Hold'Em.
Daniel Negreanu is known for his aggressive style of play and his engaging personality. Among his major tournament victories are the multiple wins at the World Series of Poker, the Five Diamond World Poker Classic, the Borgata World Poker Tour Championship, Championship Poker at the Plaza, and the Los Angeles Poker Classic.
Daniel Negreanu, age 30, was born in Toronto, Canada. In 1998, he ventured to Las Vegas to play in his first WSOP event -- and he won! Now a full-time Las Vegas resident, Daniel is a fixture at poker tournaments around the world and is a regular at the big cash games in Vegas.
Card Shark Media (CSM) is the exclusive syndicate for distribution of Daniel's poker columns to newspapers in the USA and Canada.
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