Photograph by Mike DeFilippo
Four casinos provide the metropolitan area with a total of 62 poker tables: 22 at Harrah's, 19 at Ameristar, 13 at Lumiére Place and eight at the President. Over the past 10 years, I have probably sat in games at all those tables, except for one. That is the table where they play the biggest game in town: the Pot-Limit Omaha game at Harrah's in Maryland Heights.
PLO is not a friendly "Dogs Playing Poker"–type game. It is "Great White Sharks Playing Poker": brutal, aggressive, high-stakes poker. Fresh blood in the water incites a feeding frenzy.
I am a recreational poker player. I enjoy splashing around in the shallow end with the low-limit players, but lately I've considered taking a swim with the sharks.
In 2002 there were 25 poker tables in local casinos. That was before Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 World Series of Poker's Main Event. Poker, once the province of a colorful fraternity of rogues and blacklegs, entered the mainstream. Its unique, minimalist lexicon invaded and corrupted polite conversation. Now an estimated 50 million Americans play poker in some form — whether for high stakes in casinos or at kitchen tables for pennies. Author Jim McManus defines the relationship of money to poker in his book Positively Fifth Street: "It's important to understand that money is the language of poker, its means of keeping score."
In my opinion, playing poker without wagering money is like playing Twister while fully clothed: anticlimactic.
Poker is cheaper than golf, healthier than smoking crack and more socially acceptable than collecting hard-core porn. Like golf, poker can be played for large amounts of cash and is shown on ESPN. Like drugs and the sex trade, poker is considered a vice, therefore regulated by laws.
In Missouri it is only legal to gamble — and that includes poker — in casinos. Chapter 572 of the Revised Missouri Statutes codifies and defines gambling. According to a representative of the St. Louis County prosecutor's office, "There is no exemption for home-based gambling." I know six scofflaws who have broken the law on the first Tuesday night of the month in their home game for the past 20 years. I am sure there are prominent citizens with similar stories.
I play poker in casinos because the games are straight and legal, but my lungs have taken a beating from 10 years of secondhand smoke. Although the poker rooms are nonsmoking, smoke creeps in through the ventilation from other parts of the buildings and gets trapped in my asthmatic pipes. I need a break.
As a last hurrah I planned to play a marathon poker session at the four area casinos, buy into our town's first HORSE, or mixed-games, poker tournament, and attempt to build a $500 bankroll for the big PLO. While $500 is the maximum buy-in allowed by the state at any one time, some PLO players keep their bankrolls in casino chips. This allows them to sit at the table with thousands of dollars.
This story is true, except for the parts when I bluff.
HARRAH'S, 8:10 A.M.
ACES CRACKED
I feel lucky today. The poker gods must be smiling.
My wake-up call was an hour late, but I still caught my 6:35 a.m. flight from Cleveland back to St. Louis. A safe landing portends further good fortune. Harrah's is the closest casino to the airport's long-term parking lot. I will go to the casino and start a day of poker.
Harrah's poker room opens at 8 a.m. Twenty players — more than half of them retirees — already occupy two $3- to $6-limit Texas Hold 'em tables. The casino runs daily "Aces Cracked" promotions. The first five players to lose a hand when dealt pocket aces "win" $100. Lumiére Place and the President also offer Aces Cracked promotions. Ameristar replaced its deal with a "high hand" promotion.
Playing to lose is an odd but popular concept further emphasized by the "bad beat" jackpots that all local casinos offer. If I am lucky enough to lose at Harrah's with four of a kind, I could receive half of the $161,336 tallied on the bad-beat board. It is a fool's errand, but most players love it.
My first few hours of play result in a serious case of "flop lag": All my pocket pairs, straight draws and flush draws blank on the flop. Their mates appear on cue — on the next hand's flop. Patience and time are the only cures for flop lag, as long as my stack does not first suffer a mortal wound in the meantime.
I muddle along for more than four hours, riding the ebb and flow on an $80 stack. At
1 p.m. I find two red aces lying facedown on the table in front of me. Normally I would raise pre-flop with this hand to thin the field, but instead I call. This is referred to as "limping in." A crusty codger does not disappoint. Two kings appear in the community cards, matching the one in his hand, giving him a set of kings. My aces go down in flames. I am awarded $100 for my loss. It is backwards poker: Play strong hands weakly and hope to lose.
I rack up, rap the table, say "seat open" and leave with $56 in profit, thanks to my last losing hand. This is my lucky day. Thank you, poker gods.
I know I should proceed directly from Harrah's to the nearby Ameristar Casino in St. Charles. That would soften my carbon footprint. Instead I stomp another hole in the ozone and scuff some ice chips off Antarctica in my drive downtown. I need to unpack my gear from yesterday's business trip.
TAKE THIS ROUND: $56
TAKE SO FAR: $56
LUMIÉRE PLACE, 2:30 P.M.
RUSH HOUR
I decide to walk from my downtown haunt at 15th Street to Lumiére Place. This and the return hike will likely be the only exercise I get all day.
The poker room at Lumiére Place, while sleek and stylish in its furnishings and finishes, is inefficient in its design. The low-key lighting is more appropriate to set an intimate mood in a restaurant than to provide visibility at a card table. The room's original layout called for 12 poker tables and a cashier's cage. A 13th table occupies the space planned for the cage. Today that decision seems like a bad one.
The casino mailed a promotion rewarding its customers with free money coupons that double in value if redeemed before 5 p.m. The coupons' values are determined by the players' level of gaming activity. There is a short wait for a $3-to-$6 game, but immediate seating is available in the $1-to-$3 no-limit game. No-limit poker spikes my blood pressure like I have been mainlining table salt. I take the seat and hope to ride the blinds until my $3-to-$6 seat opens. The floor person directs me to the table-games area for chips to avoid the cashier lines. I buy $200 in $5 chips at the mini baccarat table.
A baccarat game furnished the flash point between James Bond and the villain Le Chiffre in Ian Fleming's novel Casino Royale. The 2006 film of the same name pitted 007 against his nemesis in a high-stakes, no-limit Texas Hold 'em game instead. Hollywood didn't let facts interfere with the game's final showdown. The rules regarding all-in bets and side pots were altered to add dramatic tension to the climactic hand. Only poker geeks like me noticed or cared.
I am called for my $3-to-$6 seat before I can play a single hand of no-limit. I put $80 on the table. The rest stays in my pocket. All local poker tables abide by table stakes rules: Any money placed on the table must stay in the game until the player cashes or busts out.
I catch an early run of cards and ride the rush. My brain is squirting dopamine to its pleasure centers like a lawn sprinkler during a summer drought. Sometimes the rush is better than the money won — but it is a fickle succubus. She plants an invigorating kiss on every nerve ending during a run of hands, then leaves to tease some other guy across the table.
I double my buy-in within the first two hours. I want to leave, but the line for the cage is long. I pocket my chips with the intent of cashing out later, rap the table and say "seat open."
TAKE THIS ROUND: $78
TAKE SO FAR: $134
ST. LOUIE'S POKER ROOM ON THE PRESIDENT CASINO, 5:35 P.M.
POKER PIÑATA
It is downhill from Lumiére Place to the President — literally and figuratively.
The two establishments are both owned by the same company, so one boarding card allows entry into either joint. Unfortunately, I am not able to cash out my Lumiére boodle at the President's cashier window.
The poker room is situated on the ship's lower deck. A World Poker Tour rerun plays on one of the room's television sets. Watching high-stakes poker on TV while playing low-limit poker in a casino is like watching porn while having sex: It enhances the experience, but the pros always seem to do it better.
The President's poker room is the Jurassic Park of poker. It is the only room in town where one can find the nearly extinct game of seven-card stud.
I need to work on my stud game in anticipation of the HORSE tournament at Ameristar on Monday night. HORSE is an acronym for five poker games played in rotation: Hold 'em, Omaha, Razz, Stud and Eight or Better. I have not played stud in a casino in a long time; my experience at the President reminds me why.
I become the poker piñata. Every player takes a whack at me. My chips fly out and land in their stacks. I can hear the poker gods laughing. The final blow is delivered by a Jabba the Hutt look-alike. I am busted. I rap the table and say "seat open."
I trudge up to Lumiére Place to cash out my earlier winnings, then complete the walk up Washington Avenue to my studio.
Some people might consider a solo walk through downtown at 10 p.m. a bigger gamble than any poker game. Not me. People leave me alone while I am involved in a conversation with myself, like some Gollum/Smeagol of the streets. "I'm tired. I need sleep." You have to do this. Finish what you started. "I play poorly when I am tired." You play poorly period. Quit whining. Get to St. Charles. "You're right. You want to drive?"
TAKE THIS ROUND: -$70
TAKE SO FAR: $64
AMERISTAR CASINO, 10:47 P.M.
DEALER CHANGES
Thousands of slot machines chime their siren songs as this odyssey winds through another casino. My dopamine and adrenaline evaporated hours ago. The only hope for clarity lies in a ration of caffeine.
I take an open $3-to-$6 Hold 'em seat. Time is measured in dealer changes. A different dealer occupies the box each half hour. In the 1970s the word "dealer" held a different connotation for me. Both types of dealers deliver intoxicating and addictive substances, but the dealers in casinos are licensed by the state. Tipping a poker dealer is referred to as "toking" them. I assume it refers to giving them a token, as opposed to the drug-related definition of "toke."
It is at least two dealers later before I win a huge pot, when a guy holding a straight reraises my full house. Chips materialize in my stack. I must be winning, but I could be dreaming, I am so tired. Even the poker gods are asleep.
It is about 1 a.m. I try to push my winnings up to the $100 mark, but I settle for almost doubling my buy-in. I rack up the extra $78, rap the table and say "seat open."
I take inventory on the drive home. A 17-hour day, counting travel and downtime; decent winnings; some competitive fun — a lucky day.
TAKE THIS ROUND: $78
TAKE SO FAR: $142
AMERISTAR CASINO, THE NEXT WEEK
HORSE TOURNAMENT
It is pouring rain on my drive to St. Charles for the $75–buy-in HORSE tournament. The Cardinals are heading for an opening-day rainout. I would rather play poker than watch baseball, and I am too old for pickup games of contact sports. Tournament poker satisfies my competitive streak without the risk of physical injury. It also requires a different strategic approach from cash games. Once you go broke, you are out.
A field of 40 players has entered the first HORSE tournament in town. Like me, some of them are tired of Hold 'em and seek new challenges. Others are "donkeys": inexperienced players who have never played at least one of the five games before. Hee-haw.
I bring an industrial fume mask to help me filter out the secondhand smoke. My lungs still ache from Friday.
Through a fine run of cards and some remarkable luck, I find myself heads up at the final table with a player who has the name "Wurm" tattooed on his forearm. This is the name of Edward Norton's character in the poker movie Rounders. We decide to split the $1,656 in first- and second-place prize money. I net $730 after subtracting initial buy-in and dealer tip.
Combined with Friday's winnings, I now have a bankroll of $872. This is more than the $500 I planned to allot for entry to the PLO game at Harrah's.
I originally intended to pull a Dante's "Inferno"–style descent into the depths of the big PLO game with poker author Jeff Hwang as my spirit guide. But he won't even play in that game, and he understands PLO strategy much better than me.
"The nature of PLO is that the big stacks control the size of the game," Hwang warned me when we talked for this story. "Having a game with no cap on the buy-in, where players have $5,000 to $10,000 of chips in their stacks, allows them to build the size of the pot pre-flop. For normal players like myself, it is difficult to control the swings. It is not up to you how volatile the game is; it is up to your opponents."
I watched that game one day. On one particular hand a player made a $3,000 bet — before any cards were dealt on the flop. If those players are sharks, then I must admit I am a spineless jellyfish. The phrase "you can't gamble with scared money" keeps popping into my head.
I reread some of my old poker books for wisdom and guidance. In Caro's Fundamental Secrets of Winning Poker, Mike Caro, "the mad genius of poker," writes, "In poker, you don't get paid to win pots — you get paid to make the right decisions." I like paying for gasoline, groceries, meals and movies with winnings. I would rather spend the dough than risk it just to prove a point.
The right decision is to keep the money that I won, skip the PLO game and take a break from the casinos for a couple of months.
Seat open.
Since the original reporting there have been some changes in area poker rooms. Lumiére Place has improved its table lighting. The President moved its poker room from the lower deck to the upper deck. And Ameristar replaced its $3- to $6-limit Hold 'em game with $2- to $4-limit and $4- to $8-limit games.
