Cigar Aficionado

Between $50,000 hands of baccarat in a private gaming salon at the Cosmopolitan and five-figure blackjack limits being pressed at the Wynn, plenty of high-stakes action goes down in the posh gambling dens of Las Vegas. But for some two months each summer, the city’s poker mecca is a stretch of converted conference rooms without any showy frills at Horseshoe Las Vegas.

The multievent World Series of Poker, held in conjunction with the Paris Las Vegas next door, is highlighted by the Super High Roller No-Limit Texas Hold’em tournament contested by 75 players who each put up a $250,000 buy-in for a chance at the lion’s share of $18.75 million. With its first prize of more than $5.4 million, Las Vegas gambling does not get much headier than this.

This June’s event attracted some of the most talented Hold’em assassins in the world. They are predominantly men of means who made their fortunes playing poker. For this tournament they include North America’s bearded poker king Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey in rose-colored shades and a bucket hat, Jason Koon sporting a pricy wristwatch that you can’t miss, the former chess prodigy Isaac Haxton and Stephen Chidwick, whose $59 million in tournament winnings puts him at the top of England’s all-time money list.

“I’ve always played the highest tournaments,” says Negreanu during an early break in the action. That said, he’s fully aware of the perils that come with following the money: “Fluctuations are big and major downswings are possible.”

But the upside is that the sterling professionals are not here to play against each other. What draws them to a tournament like this is a smattering of wealthy recreational players who are wild about poker. Seasoned players call them amateurs, even though these financial daredevils play for keeps while earning their  serious money elsewhere. This year’s tournament includes the British businessman Talal Shakerchi, the Houston-based fuel entrepreneur Kathy Lehne and Santhosh Suvarna, who owns a string of casinos in India.

“I love to play these tournaments” says Suvarna, bearded, bushy haired, wearing a designer sweatshirt and looking exhilarated to be here. He insists that he normally plays “for very small stakes” at home and does not mind an uphill battle against opponents who beat recreational strivers for a living. His preference, he says, “is to play with pros only. I love to play with Phil [Ivey] because I can learn from him. He has the experience.”

Despite his recreational status, Suvarna is no pushover. He comes in with some $6 million of tournament prize money. And even though he talks about playing small at home, Jason Koon knows different. “He’s an incredible player,” Koon says. “If he is not playing a poker tournament, he is probably in a chair playing a nosebleed cash game.”

Whatever the case, nobody is there specifically to teach the wealthy businessmen, often referred to as VIPs (it’s not a compliment). But if expensive lessons are what they want, the pros are happy to provide tutelage. “Amateurs are the reason why pros have ROI [Return On Investment] in these tournaments,” says Alec Torelli. A high-stakes professional who earned his first million as a poker player while still a teenager, he plays in his share of high-roller tournaments and trains amateurs through a website called Conscious Poker. “Assuming that the pros all break even against each other— despite the fact that some are better and some are worse—the amateurs are likely losers in a $250,000 buy-in tournament.”

And therein lies the mathematical edge that makes the pros willing to endure the gigantic swings that high rollers bring. “The market is extremely sensitive,” says Koon. “A couple amateurs who lose a lot can bring in many pros.” Describing the high-roller poker ecosystem, he adds, “There are the ultra-elite professionals who will play any high-roller tournament. Then there are the pros below them who will sell action”—to minimize risk—“if amateurs play. It can take only one or two amateurs to make or break a poker tournament.”

This is so much the case that unusual accommodations can be made for deep-pocketed guests of honor. A story, which may be apocryphal, comes from an insider who asked that it not be attributed to him: “A tournament start time was adjusted to accommodate a group of amateur billionaires, all arriving on the same private plane and all delayed.”

No such special considerations are made at this tournament. Cards hit the air right on time and the action is aggressive from the start. Negreanu pushes all in against Stephen Chidwick. The bigger-stacked Chidwick calls, only to have Negreanu hit a hand-making jack on the river to take a healthy-sized pot.

Fortified emotionally and financially, Negreanu entertains a pressing question: Do better-heeled competitors ever have any kind of advantage? “They don’t have an edge,” he flatly states about the rich amateurs.

But wouldn’t coming into the tournament wealthy enough to not be materially affected by losing the entry fee or winning first place provide even a psychological advantage? “They have more money [than the pros],” Negreanu agrees. “But, having more money does not mean, theoretically, that they will play better.”

Mori Eskandani, a former poker pro and now the president of PokerGO (the world’s largest poker content creator, which puts on high-stakes tournaments for streaming and produces the World Series of Poker telecast for CBS Sports), isn’t so sure of that. “In many cases, if you ask me, the amateurs may be playing purer forms of poker,” says Eskandani. “They don’t have to worry about playing for life-changing money. They’re probably better than 97 percent of the poker players in the world and they are just playing the game of poker, not getting caught up in anything beyond that. There’s no pressure and no ancillary decisions.”

For recreational players, the allure of a super high roller might also be the fantasy-camp aspect. Those who last a bit have a decent likelihood of sitting at the table with Ivey or Negreanu or Koon. “Amateurs love playing against stars of the game,” says Ty Stewart, the WSOP’s executive director, chatting over a ribeye dinner at Jack Binion’s Steak in the Horseshoe. “They get a big kick out of beating them. It’s not something you’d be able to do in any other sport. You can’t step into the boxing ring and take on a heavyweight champion. But in poker, you can do the equivalent of that.”

Best of all, if skill and luck happen to coalesce, an amateur can walk away with millions and a gold WSOP bracelet for his trouble.

Despite the massive buy-ins at risk and life-changing money at the end of the poker rainbow, this competition proceeds like any other—no visible tension or obvious pressure early on. Guys joke around at the tables, seeming to enjoy what one pro casually describes as “just another day at the high-stakes office.”

A pair of players are even arranging a tennis match for when they get off the felt and onto the clay. Of course, there’s cash at stake.

Then Koon, who over two decades has experienced his share of bad beats as well as weird beats, comes up on the short end of a heartbreaking hand that had to have looked promising pre-flop. Three of the game’s top players—Koon, Justin Bonomo and Haxton—with $170 million in combined career earnings, according to pokernews.com, push their chips all in. Bonomo has a pair of aces, Haxton has kings and Koon has queens.

All three hands would have seemed virtually impossible to fold before the flop, and end up as they started, with Bonomo possessing the best hand. It puts Koon out of action, but only momentarily. The structure of the tournament allows for a single rebuy and he takes advantage of it, pushing another $250,000 to the poker gods.

He will later say that rebuying, despite the high cost, was an easy call. “I did not need to consider it,” he explains. “My estimated return on investment here is much higher than the rake [the percentage that the Horseshoe takes out of the tournament in exchange for putting it on]. I am always in a position to rebuy. It is never a question for me.”

If the hit bothered him, you’d never know it. Referring to the fee paid to Bravo Poker Live to rebuy, Koon jokes to one of his tablemates, “The most tilting part of the whole thing is paying $3.00 to the damned Bravo machine.”

The history of these mega pricy poker tournaments can be traced back to 2006. That was when executives at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia, dreamed up the seemingly outre idea of putting on a tournament with a buy-in of 100,000 Australian dollars. Officially deemed the Australian Poker Championship, it became better known as the Aussie Millions.

At the maiden event, just 10 players competed for the prize pool, winner take all. They included Ivey, the former-tech-executive-turned-fulltime-pro Barry Greenstein and British sports-betting specialist Tony Bloom. The beneficiary was Vegas pro John Juanda. He’s a great player who lived up to the nickname Luckbox, as he was blessed with great cards over the course of that tournament.

Though the field was small, word about the event—juiced by its having used a variant known as “speed poker,” in which players have only 15 seconds to make decisions—was huge. In no time at all, other jurisdictions began holding super high rollers of their own. Asia, where the poker scene was blowing up, became prime territory for the deep-pocket donnybrooks, many of them put on by Triton Poker, which held an ongoing string of tournaments organized by high-stakes fanatics Paul Phua and Richard Yong.

Las Vegas shimmied to the highest ventures in 2012. That was when Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté, a billionaire in his own right, introduced The Big One for One Drop. Taking place sporadically, it is a $1 million buy-in tournament, with a portion of the proceeds going to Laliberté’s One Drop Foundation, a nonprofit that works to ensure clean drinking water everywhere in the world.

Despite the charitable component, there is plenty of cash for the winners. At the premiere event, Antonio “The Magician” Esfandiari snagged first prize, which exceeded $18 million.

In 2014, the champ was Dan Colman—for more than $15 million—with Negreanu finishing second. “I won $8.7 million,” he re. “In the moment, I saw myself as losing $7 million.” itting that he was initially upset about placing rather than winning, Negreanu acknowledges, “The next morning, though, I saw it differently. I was more like, ‘No, you won $8 million. You’re okay.’ ”

These days, a lot of the high-roller action is built around PokerGO. As well as employing Eskandani, who recently took down $201,600 in a mixed-games tournament held in the PokerGO studio at Aria, it is the brainchild of a serious amateur by the name of Cary Katz. He made his fortune in the student-loan business and decided to launch a poker streaming service that would put on tournaments at stratospheric stakes. PokerGO runs heads-up matches featuring six-figure buy-ins—with players like Phil Hellmuth, Negreanu and Doug Polk—as well as multiplayer tournaments from which winners leave with millions.

“If you come into the PokerGo studio, you better bring a suitcase full of money,” advises Eskandani, repeating  the motto on the wall at the studio entrance: “Making and breaking millionaires.”

As to the appeal of these sky-high events for the uber wealthy, Eskandani says, “If you have a $20 million bankroll”—whether you are a pro or not—“entering a $5,000 event is just not going to get your juices flowing. But in an event like this, with $250,000 at stake, you have your wits totally about you and you will play your best game.”

By day two of the three-day, Super High Roller tournament, a bunch of pros have bought in late, hoping to capitalize on a tightening field. “Some of the established players want to get in at the last possible second,” explains Jack Effel, vice president of the World Series of Poker. “That way, you enter when there are fewer players in the tournament. You don’t have to beat quite so many of them to get to the money. You double up once or twice, and then you start employing your strategy.”

He points out that while amateurs are there to get in as much play as possible, the pros are simply angling for cash in the most expedient way possible.

Eskandani adds that the pros have more at stake than just a six-figure buy-in. “The first prize of $5 million is what’s on the line for them,” he says. “The buy-in is big, obviously, but what’s bigger is that you can win $5 million in three days. That does a lot for a poker player’s bankroll. It’s an opportunity that does not come up very often.”

Hence, the losers take it badly in the moments following a knockout. They can be seen skulking out of the tournament room, uninterested in conversing with reporters about what went wrong. Mostly, they want to go home and do whatever it takes for a quick recovery.

“Professional poker players are very well trained in the mental game,” says Torelli. “When they bust, they know that they need to bounce back. Maybe they go to the gym or else they might meditate or study. There will be another big tournament tomorrow. There is no time to play the victim. If you don’t rebound right away, you give up a huge edge.”

On the third and final day of the tournament, the field has thinned to just 14 players. In short order, five of them, including Ivey (who ended up in 11th place) are eliminated. That makes for a nine-person final table. Amazingly, among the players pushing for first is a lone amateur, the Indian casino owner Suvarna. He’s endured major swings. He won do-or-die all-ins when he needed to, and, on occasion, came perilously close to being knocked out.

While those pros who remain at the table become grim and focused, losing their early-day jollity, Suvarna smiles like a little kid. He stays loose, bears down when he needs to and appears to be having the time of his life.

With his second buy-in having vaporized early on, Koon and a crowd of friends turn up to watch the final table.

Koon seems to have a particular soft spot for Suvarna. During breaks, he huddles up with the recreational player and it’s easy to wonder if maybe Koon is coaching the amateur and has a piece of him. “No, no,” says Suvarna. “Jason is good luck for me.”

While Koon does not cop to the fortune factor, he does say, “I was not coaching Santhosh. He is a friend of mine. We met at a Triton tournament a few years ago. He asks questions, but I am not coaching him. He’s a big fan of poker, an incredible amateur who plays all the time.”

At any rate, the tournament comes down to heads-up action between Suvarna and the online wizard Ben Tollerene. With that turn of events, Koon has two pals in the heads-up race. He watches intently as they swap chips back and forth, like boxers throwing preliminary jabs and getting a feel for the situation. The pressure spikes when Suvarna pushes all in. Tollerene, with a small chip lead, calls and reveals two pair to the amateur’s jack-high straight.

Suddenly, shockingly, the casino owner from India has a 10-1 chip lead and the pro is on the ropes. Suvarna finishes him off by making a pair of 10s on the river, to best Tollerene’s queen high. With that, the unlikely amateur secures the biggest win of his poker life.

After the fact, Tollerene follows Negreanu down the high road of second-place finishers, casually telling a PokerGO interviewer that the second prize of $3.5 million is nothing to complain about. He looks resigned to the outcome.

On the other hand, an ebullient Suvarna, who will go on to win another $640,000 or so via four more World Series of Poker cashes, shares the kind of sentiment that stokes dreams for every high-stakes amateur. “Sometimes,” he says before being dragged off for a photo in front of chip stacks with his winning hand fanned out, “the fish catches the fisherman.”