Toro
03-03-2005, 09:37 PM
I keep telling you guys that Worcester is the Poker capital of the World. AJ is grandgnu btw.
Worcester Magazine Cover Story
UNDERGROUND POKER IN THE CITY OF THREE DECKERS
It was a Thursday night, only two weeks ago, in a small, basement apartment under a hairdressing salon in Gardner. I sat in a cramped kitchen with eleven other players.
We circled a homemade, oval, felt-covered table, doing our best to take all in this Texas Hold 'Em tournament. Only one guy drank; some winter version of Sam Adams. Most everybody else sipped a Sprite or a Coke. That was a far cry from the game the previous weekend, where the beers and cocktails were flying.
The host of this poker game in Gardner is an antsy chatterbox named AJ; short, Italian, comedic, but still, KGB-strict. His girlfriend plays, too, but doesn't like it much. She gave up her chips to AJ after AJ went out, but stood behind him the whole time chiming in. AJ says things like, "Here we are at the Sands, folks," making like a commentator on "Celebrity Poker Showdown."
Sands? We're not at the beach," giggles his girlfriend.
I'm a novice; what the pros call a fish. At first, I felt I couldn't do anything right: didn't hold my cards close enough to the table, forgot to put up the ante, didn't push my chips toward the center when I folded. But I felt looser as the night progressed, even though my poker face is as convincing as a six-year-old with her hand in the cookie jar.
You learn the routine fast and the lingo faster. For $20, we each got $5,000 in chips. There was an ante, too. My pile dwindled fast and furious, as the blinds went up every 15 minutes. For the first four or five hands, I caught bupkes: a 2 and a 3, a 10 and a 4, hands like that; unsuited.
I was close to being out and close to being the big blind, when I ended up with an Ace/King. OK. Even I know to stay in on that one. I checked; only later did they tell me that's the point when you most certainly raise. I folded. I lost a lot. I shouldn't have done it. I would have gotten Kings. I placed ninth of twelve for the night.
Gary Cordeiro held a marketing position with a $100,000 salary at Bose Corp. in Framingham. He thought it sucked. About four years ago, Bose sent him to Vegas on business. It inspired him to lay down the biggest hand of his life when he got back. He marched into his boss's office, said he wasn't happy, and headed into the sun to embark on a career in poker.
Bose gave him a handsome severance package. His marriage, however, didn't survive the change. So Cordeiro took his daughter from his first marriage, sold his house for $500,000 and got a smaller one in the same town.
It wasn't a total impulse. "Well, about 10 years ago, I was on the road as a musician," says Cordeiro, "playing piano with a local singer I work with, Kim Page. Out on the road, we played hotels and casinos, and at the casinos, I played a lot of poker. All those other games at the casino -- you can't beat those."
When he turned pro, Cordeiro immediately went down to the tune of $17,000. He knew it came with the shaky territory, so he rode it out and, he says, doubled what he made at Bose his first year, landing at the final table in three big tournaments that year. Cordeiro says he is not a wild spender, though after big wins, he pampers himself. There was one month, he says, when he pulled in $65,000. He bought a sports car. He's got a Rolex. He loves the Vegas nightlife.
Cordeiro operates from a spacious, ranch-style home in the 'burbs of West Boylston, complete with a home office, a Jeep Wrangler in the driveway and a prized limited edition BMW in the garage. Once a month, he hits the road -- usually to Vegas, where he'll most likely move after his daughter grows up. He gets giddy when the plane's touching down over the blinking neon plateau. When he's on the ground, and watches the other planes touch down, he thinks, "Here come the fish." He loves the guys who watch "The World Poker Tournament (WPT)" on the Travel Channel, then come into town drinking and impressing their girlfriends while they bet away their vacation cash.
Since Texas Hold 'Em's popularity has escalated, Cordeiro says, a lot of longtime players have turned pro and a lot of those are spending more time in Vegas. There's a lot of fresh blood to beat. You see, everyone who sees the WPT or World Series of Poker on ESPN thinks they'll wind up at that end table, the sexy girls pouring that suitcase of winnings on the felt. What they don't realize is that thousands of people start out before it's whittled down to the few. Cordeiro and every other pro player we talked to, even though they don't recommend this career choice, refuse to call poker "gambling."
"It's like anything," says Cordeiro. "You can be a workaholic. Poker is a skilled game. If you are obsessive, you won't make it. The game is all about math. The difference between winning and losing is discipline. In poker, you can go on a bad run for a long time. It's the guy who will lose $2,000 instead of $20,000 who will survive. Over the long haul, the best player will always win. It's even more than math, actually. You have to have a natural temperament to be aggressive."
In the world of poker, there are about 200 players, Cordeiro says, who are at the upper tier of the game, whose names have become household words. Below that are about 50 waiting to get to that end table on the WPT. He says he's in that tier. He's placed well in a bunch of prestigious tournaments and the guy makes a nice living. In this area, he's what they call a known person, and he'd like that celebrity to become national. He's thought about characters he can adopt and stylish quirks he can come up with for the camera.
"There are only a handful of guys who are set for life," Cordeiro says. "Most of them, even though they may win half a million dollars, blow it. Most have big-time gambling problems. For example, when I finished fifth in the U.S. Poker Championship, the guy who won -- I saw him two hours later and he was down $120,000 in a side game. I won $20,000 for fifth place and went to bed. This guy went into a side game and lost. One out of a thousand guys can make a living."
He's off to a good start this year. Though he won't divulge his earnings from year to year, he'll boast that he pulled in $150,000 in January. "Now, I'll pay $10,000 to buy in to the big tournaments," says Cordeiro. "If I'm running bad, I'll play a satellite and pay $1,000. Those guys on TV -- they're all friends of mine. Phil Ivey's a friend. Everyone's different on TV. Phil Harmon -- that's not how he really is. He plays for the camera. He acts like a jerk on TV, to tell you the truth."
You can go to Foxwoods, but that's a lot of trouble and there are plenty of
finished basements and civic club halls in Worcester and plenty of games to fill them (not to mention the charity events) -- especially since TV has edited the sometimes tedious game to appear as exciting as football.
One 30-year-old attorney asks that we come up with a really cheesy alias (how about Chico?) and says he plays at least three times a week -- around here and out on the North Shore. "A few years ago," says Chico, "friends and I started playing a regular game. Three years ago, when ESPN started showing tournaments, I think a lot of people thought this was interesting. When Chris Moneymaker won. When Rounders was so popular. The explosion on ESPN and the Travel Channel -- it's almost annoying, but it's also a good thing, because you can win when people don't know what they're doing."
Like anywhere, there are a lot of people tossing in $20 to $40 for buy-ins at homegrown tournaments. They find them largely through word-of-mouth and bulletin boards on local sites; www.poker.meetup.com (http://www.poker.meetup.com), homepokergames.com and various Worcester sites have plenty of chatter about games in and around town.
Few, if any, of them would talk to us unless we promised anonymity. Technically, after all, it's illegal. Yet it doesn't seem like the cops are breaking through doors to get into three-decker parlors to bust up games; although, it's also safe to say there's an escalating problem of gambling being conducted in public clubs and bars. Sgt. Gary Quitadamo, who handles press relations for the Worcester Police Department, confirms that since September, they have received six complaints involving incidents of gambling in public places. The License Commission investigated all of them. There was no evidence by the time they got there (the cards must have been thrown in a drawer) and warnings were given to each.
"Our license commission is out there periodically," says Quitadamo. "They look at liquor establishments. That's their purpose. If they come across evidence, they will take action. They have seen an increase in activity with the popularity of the Texas Hold 'Em-type games. Our investigators are out there. Are we going to go kicking down the doors of homes? Probably not. But if we see ongoing activity and get complaints, we'll investigate."
A popular way to sidestep the law for clubs is to organize charity games, where a certain portion of the proceeds is donated to a non-profit. As reported in February in The Boston Herald, hundreds of clubs are hosting these charity games across the state each week, prompting Attorney General Thomas Reilly and the Lottery Commission to draw up tougher rules for hosting a game.
Charles Humphrey, a lawyer and the author and Web master of www.Gambling-Law-US.com (http://www.Gambling-Law-US.com), which examines state and federal gambling laws in depth, says public violations have escalated nationally but probably will never be a big issue for law enforcement. "Violations of the anti-gambling statutes are not generally a high priority for law enforcement authorities," says Humphrey, "especially for those violations that carry only small penalties."
Two weeks ago, my friend Dawn and I sat in on a game. I never really played before. We met with Cordeiro the night before and got some tips, watching him climb the ranks in a tournament on partypoker.com. That's a lot of info to pack in, in one night, particularly when you barely understand what a blind is. And pocket aces -- they're good, right?
So we showed up at the house in an affluent section of Shrewsbury (are there any that aren't?), a beautiful colonial with a farmer's porch in one of those developments. The host, a high-ranking executive, had three tables set up, the chips lined and ready to go. About 20 guys showed -- regulars mostly from the neighborhood, or friends of those neighbors, who get together once a month at different houses for tournaments. The buy-in was $40, with no re-buys. A trophy sat in the corner, reserved for the winner.
Even though most at this event were tight-lipped about their identities, they had fun telling us about their experiences. It's a lot like listening to fishing tales -- the ones that got away and the ones they caught.
"Hey, I don't have a sob story," said the host when he got knocked out of the tournament. "I made a play. I had ace, jack and he had an ace, ten. He beat me. He got the ten flop."
Dawn got knocked out midway with a pair of pocket aces. She was peeved, especially that I stayed in longer, although not much longer. I was coached and coaxed into going all in with a king and a queen and lost to a low pair. Steve, a real estate agent, ended up nabbing the trophy and $300.
Most of the guys were from the neighborhood, and the camaraderie was evident, although the play was serious. There was a charming guy from Iceland who said he used to have asthma attacks when he had to go all in; a guy who was on the walkie-talkie to his kids across the street; an older, serious guy, who bet aggressively and seemed to really know what he was doing. Snacks, jokes, lots of beer and a nice challenge. It's better than bar hopping.
"This neighborhood does a lot of things together," said one of the players. "We've got a neighborhood softball team, we have a block party in the summer ... we do some wife swapping." Hard to tell whether or not he was joking.
"I've only played for three months," said another neighbor. "After the first time I played, I said to my wife, 'We should get some chips for Christmas.' Now all my kids play. My five-year-old says, 'Dad, wanna play pokah?' We play a modified game with her. It beats playing War."
A week later, we hit AJ's game. He promotes his bi-monthly tournaments on his site, www.triplethreatpoker.com. (http://www.triplethreatpoker.com.), and regularly has 10 to 16 players at his games, twice a month. He works full-time and doesn't take a rake of the take. "Growing up, we'd play a lot of seven-card stud," says AJ. "I actually started this back in 2002 and it was just with friends -- three players here, four there, and six if you were lucky. Over time, my friends would be unreliable or broke. Someone clued me in to a Web site called pokergames.com, where people post their home games, so I posted on there. I'd start picking up some locals. Some people started coming from Worcester, even Boston. It has really taken off over the past year."
Twelve of us sat around a large homemade table constructed by one of the players. AJ runs a tight ship -- much more concerned with players keeping their cards down, pushing in the chips and other subtleties that the game a week earlier didn't have. Like the other game, though, he set his timer and the blinds went up accordingly.
AJ never lets go of his official chart and is consistent with the updates. He'll announce the blinds and plays, sometimes imitating poker commentator Vince Van Patten, who everyone seems to agree knows nothing about the game.
AJ has dreams. "I would like to play in about four tournaments a year," he says. "I'm going to the World Series of Poker. There's no question; TV got me into this. I played poker, but not like this. It's the best game ever. My game is getting much better. I'm not better than these guys, but I like it better than they do."
The group was a diverse one. It included Cory Boisse, who donned a black shirt, black cowboy hat, even darker glasses, crossed his arms and sternly talked up the times he's played against the guys on TV. He says he plays at Foxwoods weekly, but wouldn't talk about how much he makes; just insinuating he brings in a little side money. There was Dan L., the only guy who sucked down some beers and the funniest at the table. Adam, the smiling Nicaraguan, sat at the edge and kept everyone guessing with his lies after the fold, and his impulse to jump up and run to the bathroom to pee in the middle of a big hand. And James, who had white hair, and picked up the nickname "Whitey Bulger" during the night.
I went out fairly early, and it seems everyone went out a little quicker at this game -- where unlike the Shrewsbury tournament, there were antes. My chips dwindled quickly. Again, I was informed to go all in, hoping to catch a straight. I didn't.
The final three hung on for a couple of hours, Nate, Dan and Whitey flopping back and forth as chip leaders. Nate walked away with third place, and Dan and Whitey got more aggressive, ultimately the win falling in funny Dan's hands. Everyone was tired, and some were planning on coming back the following evening for some seven-card stud. You may leave richer, you may leave poorer, but you always leave looking for the next game.
Charlene Arsenault may be reached at charlenea@worcestermag.com.
©2005 Worcester Magazine All rights reserved.
Worcester Magazine Cover Story
UNDERGROUND POKER IN THE CITY OF THREE DECKERS
It was a Thursday night, only two weeks ago, in a small, basement apartment under a hairdressing salon in Gardner. I sat in a cramped kitchen with eleven other players.
We circled a homemade, oval, felt-covered table, doing our best to take all in this Texas Hold 'Em tournament. Only one guy drank; some winter version of Sam Adams. Most everybody else sipped a Sprite or a Coke. That was a far cry from the game the previous weekend, where the beers and cocktails were flying.
The host of this poker game in Gardner is an antsy chatterbox named AJ; short, Italian, comedic, but still, KGB-strict. His girlfriend plays, too, but doesn't like it much. She gave up her chips to AJ after AJ went out, but stood behind him the whole time chiming in. AJ says things like, "Here we are at the Sands, folks," making like a commentator on "Celebrity Poker Showdown."
Sands? We're not at the beach," giggles his girlfriend.
I'm a novice; what the pros call a fish. At first, I felt I couldn't do anything right: didn't hold my cards close enough to the table, forgot to put up the ante, didn't push my chips toward the center when I folded. But I felt looser as the night progressed, even though my poker face is as convincing as a six-year-old with her hand in the cookie jar.
You learn the routine fast and the lingo faster. For $20, we each got $5,000 in chips. There was an ante, too. My pile dwindled fast and furious, as the blinds went up every 15 minutes. For the first four or five hands, I caught bupkes: a 2 and a 3, a 10 and a 4, hands like that; unsuited.
I was close to being out and close to being the big blind, when I ended up with an Ace/King. OK. Even I know to stay in on that one. I checked; only later did they tell me that's the point when you most certainly raise. I folded. I lost a lot. I shouldn't have done it. I would have gotten Kings. I placed ninth of twelve for the night.
Gary Cordeiro held a marketing position with a $100,000 salary at Bose Corp. in Framingham. He thought it sucked. About four years ago, Bose sent him to Vegas on business. It inspired him to lay down the biggest hand of his life when he got back. He marched into his boss's office, said he wasn't happy, and headed into the sun to embark on a career in poker.
Bose gave him a handsome severance package. His marriage, however, didn't survive the change. So Cordeiro took his daughter from his first marriage, sold his house for $500,000 and got a smaller one in the same town.
It wasn't a total impulse. "Well, about 10 years ago, I was on the road as a musician," says Cordeiro, "playing piano with a local singer I work with, Kim Page. Out on the road, we played hotels and casinos, and at the casinos, I played a lot of poker. All those other games at the casino -- you can't beat those."
When he turned pro, Cordeiro immediately went down to the tune of $17,000. He knew it came with the shaky territory, so he rode it out and, he says, doubled what he made at Bose his first year, landing at the final table in three big tournaments that year. Cordeiro says he is not a wild spender, though after big wins, he pampers himself. There was one month, he says, when he pulled in $65,000. He bought a sports car. He's got a Rolex. He loves the Vegas nightlife.
Cordeiro operates from a spacious, ranch-style home in the 'burbs of West Boylston, complete with a home office, a Jeep Wrangler in the driveway and a prized limited edition BMW in the garage. Once a month, he hits the road -- usually to Vegas, where he'll most likely move after his daughter grows up. He gets giddy when the plane's touching down over the blinking neon plateau. When he's on the ground, and watches the other planes touch down, he thinks, "Here come the fish." He loves the guys who watch "The World Poker Tournament (WPT)" on the Travel Channel, then come into town drinking and impressing their girlfriends while they bet away their vacation cash.
Since Texas Hold 'Em's popularity has escalated, Cordeiro says, a lot of longtime players have turned pro and a lot of those are spending more time in Vegas. There's a lot of fresh blood to beat. You see, everyone who sees the WPT or World Series of Poker on ESPN thinks they'll wind up at that end table, the sexy girls pouring that suitcase of winnings on the felt. What they don't realize is that thousands of people start out before it's whittled down to the few. Cordeiro and every other pro player we talked to, even though they don't recommend this career choice, refuse to call poker "gambling."
"It's like anything," says Cordeiro. "You can be a workaholic. Poker is a skilled game. If you are obsessive, you won't make it. The game is all about math. The difference between winning and losing is discipline. In poker, you can go on a bad run for a long time. It's the guy who will lose $2,000 instead of $20,000 who will survive. Over the long haul, the best player will always win. It's even more than math, actually. You have to have a natural temperament to be aggressive."
In the world of poker, there are about 200 players, Cordeiro says, who are at the upper tier of the game, whose names have become household words. Below that are about 50 waiting to get to that end table on the WPT. He says he's in that tier. He's placed well in a bunch of prestigious tournaments and the guy makes a nice living. In this area, he's what they call a known person, and he'd like that celebrity to become national. He's thought about characters he can adopt and stylish quirks he can come up with for the camera.
"There are only a handful of guys who are set for life," Cordeiro says. "Most of them, even though they may win half a million dollars, blow it. Most have big-time gambling problems. For example, when I finished fifth in the U.S. Poker Championship, the guy who won -- I saw him two hours later and he was down $120,000 in a side game. I won $20,000 for fifth place and went to bed. This guy went into a side game and lost. One out of a thousand guys can make a living."
He's off to a good start this year. Though he won't divulge his earnings from year to year, he'll boast that he pulled in $150,000 in January. "Now, I'll pay $10,000 to buy in to the big tournaments," says Cordeiro. "If I'm running bad, I'll play a satellite and pay $1,000. Those guys on TV -- they're all friends of mine. Phil Ivey's a friend. Everyone's different on TV. Phil Harmon -- that's not how he really is. He plays for the camera. He acts like a jerk on TV, to tell you the truth."
You can go to Foxwoods, but that's a lot of trouble and there are plenty of
finished basements and civic club halls in Worcester and plenty of games to fill them (not to mention the charity events) -- especially since TV has edited the sometimes tedious game to appear as exciting as football.
One 30-year-old attorney asks that we come up with a really cheesy alias (how about Chico?) and says he plays at least three times a week -- around here and out on the North Shore. "A few years ago," says Chico, "friends and I started playing a regular game. Three years ago, when ESPN started showing tournaments, I think a lot of people thought this was interesting. When Chris Moneymaker won. When Rounders was so popular. The explosion on ESPN and the Travel Channel -- it's almost annoying, but it's also a good thing, because you can win when people don't know what they're doing."
Like anywhere, there are a lot of people tossing in $20 to $40 for buy-ins at homegrown tournaments. They find them largely through word-of-mouth and bulletin boards on local sites; www.poker.meetup.com (http://www.poker.meetup.com), homepokergames.com and various Worcester sites have plenty of chatter about games in and around town.
Few, if any, of them would talk to us unless we promised anonymity. Technically, after all, it's illegal. Yet it doesn't seem like the cops are breaking through doors to get into three-decker parlors to bust up games; although, it's also safe to say there's an escalating problem of gambling being conducted in public clubs and bars. Sgt. Gary Quitadamo, who handles press relations for the Worcester Police Department, confirms that since September, they have received six complaints involving incidents of gambling in public places. The License Commission investigated all of them. There was no evidence by the time they got there (the cards must have been thrown in a drawer) and warnings were given to each.
"Our license commission is out there periodically," says Quitadamo. "They look at liquor establishments. That's their purpose. If they come across evidence, they will take action. They have seen an increase in activity with the popularity of the Texas Hold 'Em-type games. Our investigators are out there. Are we going to go kicking down the doors of homes? Probably not. But if we see ongoing activity and get complaints, we'll investigate."
A popular way to sidestep the law for clubs is to organize charity games, where a certain portion of the proceeds is donated to a non-profit. As reported in February in The Boston Herald, hundreds of clubs are hosting these charity games across the state each week, prompting Attorney General Thomas Reilly and the Lottery Commission to draw up tougher rules for hosting a game.
Charles Humphrey, a lawyer and the author and Web master of www.Gambling-Law-US.com (http://www.Gambling-Law-US.com), which examines state and federal gambling laws in depth, says public violations have escalated nationally but probably will never be a big issue for law enforcement. "Violations of the anti-gambling statutes are not generally a high priority for law enforcement authorities," says Humphrey, "especially for those violations that carry only small penalties."
Two weeks ago, my friend Dawn and I sat in on a game. I never really played before. We met with Cordeiro the night before and got some tips, watching him climb the ranks in a tournament on partypoker.com. That's a lot of info to pack in, in one night, particularly when you barely understand what a blind is. And pocket aces -- they're good, right?
So we showed up at the house in an affluent section of Shrewsbury (are there any that aren't?), a beautiful colonial with a farmer's porch in one of those developments. The host, a high-ranking executive, had three tables set up, the chips lined and ready to go. About 20 guys showed -- regulars mostly from the neighborhood, or friends of those neighbors, who get together once a month at different houses for tournaments. The buy-in was $40, with no re-buys. A trophy sat in the corner, reserved for the winner.
Even though most at this event were tight-lipped about their identities, they had fun telling us about their experiences. It's a lot like listening to fishing tales -- the ones that got away and the ones they caught.
"Hey, I don't have a sob story," said the host when he got knocked out of the tournament. "I made a play. I had ace, jack and he had an ace, ten. He beat me. He got the ten flop."
Dawn got knocked out midway with a pair of pocket aces. She was peeved, especially that I stayed in longer, although not much longer. I was coached and coaxed into going all in with a king and a queen and lost to a low pair. Steve, a real estate agent, ended up nabbing the trophy and $300.
Most of the guys were from the neighborhood, and the camaraderie was evident, although the play was serious. There was a charming guy from Iceland who said he used to have asthma attacks when he had to go all in; a guy who was on the walkie-talkie to his kids across the street; an older, serious guy, who bet aggressively and seemed to really know what he was doing. Snacks, jokes, lots of beer and a nice challenge. It's better than bar hopping.
"This neighborhood does a lot of things together," said one of the players. "We've got a neighborhood softball team, we have a block party in the summer ... we do some wife swapping." Hard to tell whether or not he was joking.
"I've only played for three months," said another neighbor. "After the first time I played, I said to my wife, 'We should get some chips for Christmas.' Now all my kids play. My five-year-old says, 'Dad, wanna play pokah?' We play a modified game with her. It beats playing War."
A week later, we hit AJ's game. He promotes his bi-monthly tournaments on his site, www.triplethreatpoker.com. (http://www.triplethreatpoker.com.), and regularly has 10 to 16 players at his games, twice a month. He works full-time and doesn't take a rake of the take. "Growing up, we'd play a lot of seven-card stud," says AJ. "I actually started this back in 2002 and it was just with friends -- three players here, four there, and six if you were lucky. Over time, my friends would be unreliable or broke. Someone clued me in to a Web site called pokergames.com, where people post their home games, so I posted on there. I'd start picking up some locals. Some people started coming from Worcester, even Boston. It has really taken off over the past year."
Twelve of us sat around a large homemade table constructed by one of the players. AJ runs a tight ship -- much more concerned with players keeping their cards down, pushing in the chips and other subtleties that the game a week earlier didn't have. Like the other game, though, he set his timer and the blinds went up accordingly.
AJ never lets go of his official chart and is consistent with the updates. He'll announce the blinds and plays, sometimes imitating poker commentator Vince Van Patten, who everyone seems to agree knows nothing about the game.
AJ has dreams. "I would like to play in about four tournaments a year," he says. "I'm going to the World Series of Poker. There's no question; TV got me into this. I played poker, but not like this. It's the best game ever. My game is getting much better. I'm not better than these guys, but I like it better than they do."
The group was a diverse one. It included Cory Boisse, who donned a black shirt, black cowboy hat, even darker glasses, crossed his arms and sternly talked up the times he's played against the guys on TV. He says he plays at Foxwoods weekly, but wouldn't talk about how much he makes; just insinuating he brings in a little side money. There was Dan L., the only guy who sucked down some beers and the funniest at the table. Adam, the smiling Nicaraguan, sat at the edge and kept everyone guessing with his lies after the fold, and his impulse to jump up and run to the bathroom to pee in the middle of a big hand. And James, who had white hair, and picked up the nickname "Whitey Bulger" during the night.
I went out fairly early, and it seems everyone went out a little quicker at this game -- where unlike the Shrewsbury tournament, there were antes. My chips dwindled quickly. Again, I was informed to go all in, hoping to catch a straight. I didn't.
The final three hung on for a couple of hours, Nate, Dan and Whitey flopping back and forth as chip leaders. Nate walked away with third place, and Dan and Whitey got more aggressive, ultimately the win falling in funny Dan's hands. Everyone was tired, and some were planning on coming back the following evening for some seven-card stud. You may leave richer, you may leave poorer, but you always leave looking for the next game.
Charlene Arsenault may be reached at charlenea@worcestermag.com.
©2005 Worcester Magazine All rights reserved.