Poker Fiend

As a new rail link from New York to Atlantic City opens, high-roller Dominic Wells takes to the tables in the historic resort

(The Times, January 2009)

“Hello Atlantic City!” Ten thousand fists punch the air as one. Even in $250 seats you can’t quite make out Madonna’s face, only the canyoned tendons of her mighty thighs. Like the show itself, they are both spectacular and grimly efficient.

But I am not here in the Boardwalk Hall just to see the 50-year-old Queen of Pop. I want to discover how another old girl updates her image: Atlantic City itself. It tends nowadays to be dismissed as the poor cousin of Las Vegas.

Yet it’s only a couple of hours from New York, where gambling is illegal, to this seaside casino town. Billions have recently been spent on redevelopment and – credit crunch permitting – billions more are promised, including a new express train service launching on Feb 6.

Unlike Vegas, the place has a rich history. Long before gambling was legalised in 1978, its luxury hotels were the stuff of legend. You’d see “Diamond Jim” Brady stepping out with Lillian Russell along the world’s first and longest boardwalk, jostled by a carnival of hucksters, freaks and escapologists.

Atlantic City’s streets gave their names to the original version of Monopoly. Most celebrated of all, until the animal rights movement gained ground, were the diving horses of the Steel Pier. Three times a day, a girl in a bathing suit would ride right off a rickety wooden ramp into a tank of water 60 feet below.

The force of one dive detached her retinas, but you don’t let a little thing like that stop you in Atlantic City. She continued the stunt, blind, for another ten years.

After the war, with the spread of air conditioning and suburban swimming pools, the visitors stopped coming. The rich holidayed in Vegas, or flew to Miami. Atlantic City became a decaying, slum-ridden place, largely abandoned even by the Mafia for whom it had been a Prohibition playground.

Enter the casino boom of the last three decades. Even so, and despite a proportion of the profits being ploughed back into the community, Atlantic City has never quite caught up to Vegas. The lovely Boardwalk, still four miles long, is lined with tacky T-shirt shops and massage parlours, and many buildings are still boarded up.

Yet there is a new sense of optimism. Steve Wynne, the casino mogul who invented modern Vegas 20 years ago with the Mirage, opened the gleaming-gold Borgata here in 2003 (a snip at $1.1 billion). Last summer he added The Water Club, an 800-room tower with four pools.

At Harrah’s next door, the whole building turns into a spectacular light show by night, best witnessed from inside the tropical pool under a geodesic dome. The once eye-poppingly tacky Trump Taj Mahal has had a tasteful $100 million makeover, and added the $255 million Chairman Tower. Caesar’s has converted one of the old piers into a covered arcade of shops and restaurants stretching out over the waves.

Outside the casinos, too, things are changing. The newly refurbished Chelsea Hotel proves to be in exquisite taste, more like a trendy Hoxton private members’ club than a hotel. Its retro décor harks back to the city’s jazz-age past, but the saltwater spa, cosy fireside lounges and poolside cabanas cater to contemporary tastes. Add to that an ocean view as limitless as Vegas’s desert, and this is, to my surprise, one of the nicest hotels I’ve ever stayed in.

Atlantic City’s best fine dining restaurant is just round the corner. Again, the Knife and Fork is a canny mix of old and new that makes a welcome change from Vegas’s mix of, er, new and new. A one-time Prohibition-era Speakeasy that had every bottle in the bar broken in a police raid, it now boasts a 10,000-bottle wine cellar. The building is a sprawling old Flemish pile with pointy eaves, recently given a very sympathetic makeover.

Altogether, with its discount fashion outlets, sandy beaches and (in summer) amusement-park pier, there is a sense that you wouldn’t have to gamble to enjoy Atlantic City. But then who am I kidding? That’s why I came. More specifically, I came to play poker. I won $1,100 in a tournament the previous weekend. My aim is to double it this weekend.

Ever since the US banned online poker sites in 2006, the demand to play live has gone through the roof. Every major casino now has its own card room. You can play knock-out tournaments, where you pay a fixed entry fee for anything up to five hours’ play, or cash games, where you can lose hundreds in a single hand. I played both kinds. Several times. And, I’m ashamed to say, lost at all of them.

First, the Taj, where Matt Damon played in the film Rounders. The poker room is large and functional, with more than 100 tables, but rather tatty. The $100 tournament is disappointingly undersubscribed: just 19 people. The bloke to my right, an Irish plasterer living in New York, is here on a Friday because building work is drying up as the credit crunch bites. He’s a loose player, but I still let him raise me off my pair of eights with his pair of sevens. Bad play, and I don’t improve.

I try Bally’s in the evening. The poker room here is smaller, but more modern. It’s on the sixth floor, the huge windows giving a great view of the city lights. There are 57 players this time, and a livelier atmosphere.

“Man, you guys are so tight,” says an Asian man as he pushes in all his chips (“tight” meaning “cautious betters”), “I’m going to need me some Vaseline.” I survive for four hours, until I play a pair of eights hard: this time I’m not going to fold them! Whoops. My opponent hits a second Jack and I’m out.

The next day, I move on to the Borgata. Wow. Now this is a card room. More tables than the Taj, high ceilings, flat-screen TVs on all the walls, beautiful cocktail waitresses to bring you free drinks while you play. In fact the pulchritude of the “Borgata babes” has become a point of nationwide debate: last summer the casino settled a sexism lawsuit brought by two former waitresses, fired for breaching their contract that they gain no more than 7% of their body weight.

Perhaps they distract me from my game. Or perhaps I really do have the outrageously bad luck that I think I’ve had. Whichever, far from doubling the $1,100 I came to gamble, I lose the lot.

Ah well. If I thought a trip to Atlantic City was a solution to my credit-crunch problems – that I could gamble my way into a fortune – then I, like millions before me, was sadly mistaken.

But as an introduction to the attractions of an unfairly maligned city, a long weekend in Atlantic City does just fine.

GETTING THERE

American Airlines flies to New York from £258 return, www.americanairlines.co.uk. Virgin Atlantic also has flights from £258, www.virginatlantic.co.uk. “Lucky Streak” return bus fare from New York to Atlantic City is just $35, www.greyhound.com. The express train service from New York’s Penn Station launches on Feb 6, $50 one-way (return fare TBC), www.acestrain.com

WHERE TO STAY

Rooms at the Chelsea Hotel start at $85 (plus taxes) for a weeknight in the Lite Tower, and $160 for a Luxe room, www.thechelsea-ac.com. Rooms at the Borgata start at $129, www.theborgata.com

EATING OUT

For the historic Knife and Fork, tel. 609 344 1133, www.Knifeandforkinn.com. Other notable restaurants include Stephen Starr’s Buddakan and Continental at the Pier Shops, Caesar’s Casino, www.caesarsac.com; Dock’s Oyster House, first established in 1897, www.docksoysterhouse.com; and the Red Square, with its ice bar, vodka cocktails and giant statue of Lenin, www.chinagrillmgt.com/redsquarenj

Thousands headed to Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker, but for some the game may not be the best investment strategy

DOMINIC WELLS (CityAM,  September 2009)

 

IN LAS VEGAS the locals have a new term for betting. It’s not gambling, it’s a “contributory anti-recession programme”. Even the bell-boy who attends to your special-price Palazzo suite says not “have a nice day”, but “thank you for contributing to our economy”.They said Vegas would be recession-proof, that even in a downturn people would still gamble. They were wrong. Even as the largest private building project in US history, the $11bn City Center, rises above the Strip for its grand October opening, hotel occupancy is down from 90 per cent last year (95 per cent at weekends) to 84 per cent. Bad news for business, good news for visitors: even a top hotel such as the new Planet Hollywood (very popular with Brits) can be had for $70 on the discount websites.Yet one part of Sin City is still booming: poker.

I was there at the start of the 40th annual World Series of Poker, together with a posse from Betfair.com who sponsor the upcoming London competition (this month’s World Series of Poker Europe) to see just how big the game has become.The largest of the three tournament rooms at the Rio hotel has 150 tables of 10 players each, and would dwarf a football pitch. The rustling of chips sounds like a Biblical swarm of insects. The WSOP’s most successful player, Phil “Poker Brat” Hellmuth, arrives dressed as a Roman centurion attended by 100 female gladiators and muses.“We were worried,” admits WSOP communications director Seth Palansky. “We thought there might be just 40,000 entries, compared with 58,000 last year. We looked at hosting fewer events, making it just two weeks long; but in the end, we decided to make it the same as last year. And it’s paid off. The economy is having little or no effect on the tournament.”In the end, there are a record 60,875 entries from 115 countries. Over $174m in prize money is to be paid out over 57 tournaments. The overall winner of the coveted Main Event, to be decided on the final table in November, will receive $8m in cash.

Some players are hardened pros, for whom the $10,000 Main Event fee is less than they might bet on a single hand. But most of the 6,000-plus entrants, these days, are amateurs and semi-pros who have qualified via online “satellite” tournaments. Craig Burgess from Worcester is one. He entered a $540 tournament on Betfair.com, which won him a trip to Vegas and a 10-grand seat at the Main Event. “I’ve won these satellites for the last three years,” he says. “But sadly, if I have a weakness, it’s that I can be impetuous. I win online, but I’m not at my best in a seven-day live tournament.”Burgess got knocked out on Day Two in the end, but isn’t too downhearted. He makes enough money from online sports betting and occasional poker that he’s given up his day job altogether.All over Britain, it seems, adventurous souls are bucking the recession by playing poker – tax-free. Meanwhile, my carefully saved stock market investments have performed about as well as a one-armed juggler. Well I’ve had enough. I’m taking matters into my own hands. Instead of investing in blue chips, I’m going to invest in poker chips. I’ll take a bankroll of $1,000, and see what return I can get at the poker tables.

TIGHT AND LOOSE

In fact, the stock market and poker have a lot in common. “Buy when others are selling, sell when others are buying” is one trading maxim. Similarly in poker, you should play tight (ie betting only on the very best hands) when others are playing loose, and loose when others are playing tight. Both disciplines reward complex mathematical formulations as to size of investment/bet against expected return, as well as, occasionally, sheer gut instinct.Aaron Brown, an executive director at Morgan Stanley and a life-long poker player, says that “finance can only be understood as a gambling game”. In his book, The Poker Face of Wall Street, he maintains it’s no coincidence that poker and the futures market were both big in the American west in the 19th century.Phil “Unabomber” Laak is one top poker player who started out options trading in New York. Matt Glantz, Atlantic City’s top cash player, is another. Why shouldn’t I follow in their footsteps?I have a week in Vegas in which to show a profit on my grand. I start off playing cash at the Mirage casino, famous for its erupting volcano. I’m jet-lagged. I lose $124. Lesson one: don’t play when you’re not at the top of your game. A couple of days later, I feel ready for the Big One: a $340, deep-stacked tournament at the elegant Venetian-style casino.In any tournament, they raise the “blinds” (a forced bet you must make every round) at regular intervals to stop you sitting there forever waiting for Aces. In this one, they raise the blinds more slowly, favouring the more skilful and patient player.Which, for a while, is what I am. I bet the good hands that I do get aggressively. When I go “card-dead” for a while, I manage a couple of bluffs when I spot other players betting weakly. But after eight hours’ play, it all goes horribly wrong. I have A3 of clubs, and I’m hoping for two clubs to come up on the flop. They do! According to the statistics, there is now a one in three chance of a fifth club giving me a winning flush by the final “river” card. I call a big raise of 10,000. Bad move. Because now a third player re-raises another 15,000.

FLUKING A FLUSH

The way he’s betting, the way the board looks, I’m certain he has three of a kind. Do I fold, and wave goodbye to the 15,000-odd chips I’ve invested in this hand, leaving me with just 35,000? Or do I go all-in, giving myself a third chance of fluking a flush and earning a monster chip stack of 110,000?I think for so long that they call a “clock” – that’s when the pit boss comes over and counts down a minute in which you must act. I should fold… but damn it, I came here to win. I need that huge chip stack. Death or glory! Better to burn out than fade away! “Five, four, three, two…” counts the pit boss. “All in,” I say, and push all of my chips into the centre.My opponent smiles… calls… flips over three of a kind. Fine. As expected. Now come on, just one more club to win. The turn card is dealt… then the river card… no club.I’m out.Number 150 out of 660 starting players. No one at the table meets my eye. It’s clear that my move was not brave and commanding as I had hoped, but ridiculously risky. As a poker-player, it seems I’m less Warren Buffet, and more Nick Leeson.The rest of the week doesn’t get much better. I play eight hours a day, but despite a couple of victories, I end up not growing my $1,000 bankroll, but shrinking it to… $0. Maybe it was unwise to play poker the week that Vegas’s tables are stacked with the world’s finest players. Or just maybe I can do better at the WSOP Europe. Either way, the stock market can breathe easy. I won’t be converting my unit trusts to chips just yet.

The World Series of Poker Europe presented by Betfair is at the Empire Casino, Leicester Square, 17 September to 1 October, www.wsope.co.uk. For the chance to win a £20,000 package to the WSOPE Main Event from as little as £2.20, see wsope.betfair.com

While the rest of Britain sweltered in the early Summer heatwave, seven celebrities risked their shirts in a charity poker tournament. Read our play-by-play account of their flops and flushes.

Last week, while most of England stripped off in the sun, seven celebrities led by Jamie Oliver were trying to keep their cards close to their chest. They were competing in a Texas Hold ’em tournament at exclusive London restaurant Sketch, in aid of the One2One Children’s Fund which supports social and educational projects all round the world, and sponsored by one of Britain’s most popular 3D poker websites, PKR.

Players had stumped up £350 a head to play with the celebrities, with an extra £100 to buy new chips if they ran out, and each table had one star to the left of the dealer.

“Sorry,” joked Jason Flemyng at our table when this was announced, after looking over his shoulder in a pantomime of seeking the real celeb. Clearly the actor realised that his star wattage would not power quite as many flashbulbs as Jamie Oliver, or Teddy Sheringham.

I’ve played against celebrities before. Patrick Marber, who wrote the poker play Dealers’ Choice, was an excellent player, ruthless and inscrutable; by contrast Roger Lloyd Pack, who played the poker shark in the play’s recent West End revival, was in real life hesitant and unsure. Nancy Dell’Olio used her low-cut top to devastatingly distracting effect, but clearly couldn’t play, so no surprises there; while Sir Clive Sinclair was a careful better, calculating the odds, but lacking flair.

What of the celebrities here? Would Jamie Oliver live up to his own hype? Could Teddy Sheringham score? Who, after six hours of play, would reach the final table around midnight? Click on our picture gallery (left) to find out.

Jamie Oliver

The famously voluble chef and tireless campaigner is a recent convert to poker, but has taken to it like he does to everything: with gusto. He plays in a “home” game with Dexter Fletcher and Jason Flemyng, and is, apparently, fiercely competitive, reading dozens of poker books to improve his play. And yet in the PKR One2One game, he is the first celebrity to be knocked out. He had been dealt two eights, the “flop” of three following cards were all lower, so he felt confident in betting the lot with what he thought was the top pair — but he came up against the dreaded pair of aces, “pocket rockets” as they are known.

He was more successful at the One2One charity auction, where he raffled off a special meal at his restaurant Fifteen. Bidding reached £4,800, at which point Jamie, with typical chutzpah, announced he’d double the prize, and take £4,600 from the runner-up too. Nearly ten grand for charity; now that’s good play.

Teddy Sheringham

The colourfully shirted striker plays a lot of poker; and as you would expect of a professional footballer, it’s often for big money. He is modest about his ability, and it’s up to his friend to sing his praises: “He’s tight and aggressive, the perfect tournament style.”

“It’s a funny game tonight,” offers Sheringham, who’s clearly used to match reports, “not a lot of people here know what they’re doing. They’re here for the charity, not because they play a lot of poker. It makes it hard to bluff, since they’ll stay in no matter what.”

And is he a successful player? Does he make money over the course of a year or lose it? He won’t answer, and again it’s his friend who assures us that yes, Sheringham makes good money. And now Sheringham reveals the reason for his diffidence: he’s not modest, he just reckons he can do better at the tables if other players don’t realise how skilled he is!

As in football, then, so in poker: a disciplined, highly competitive player with a killer instinct, who can stick it in the back of the net when he gets the hand for it. Which, sadly, he doesn’t. Every poker tournament calls for some luck, and cannot be won on skill alone. He ends up “short-stacked”, ie with dangerously few chips, and has to risk going “all-in” with A5. He comes up against A7, giving him only the slenderest odds of victory. It doesn’t come off. Sick as a parrot, Brian.

Jason Flemyng

One of the busiest actors you may never have heard of, Flemyng has appeared in over 40 films and TV dramas since his breakthrough in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Sadly, he is less successful at poker. TimesOnline’s player knocked him out when the flop came 10, 6, 6, turning a Q-6 into three of a kind. Your devious correspondent checked with this excellent hand rather than raising — which is called “slow-playing”, or pretending you don’t have a hand when you do. Flemyng foolishly took the bait, raising wildly with nothing, and was quickly skewered.

Flemyng’s mate Dexter Fletcher, who clearly looks out for him, kept coming over to hiss at him to play “tight”, or conservatively. He is particularly concerned that Flemyng is getting married soon, and shouldn’t lose too much money, even if it is going to charity.

But to no avail. Flemyng is very obviously a lovely bloke, but utterly devoid of the killer instinct and ruthless competitive streak you need to succeed at poker. Which makes his bride-to-be a lucky woman. Better a good-looking, kind-hearted, charming and considerate husband than a devious, back-stabbing poker shark, surely?

Dexter Fletcher

The increasingly wild-haired star of Hotel Babylon is a serious player who early on built up a chip stack so huge that he wasn’t sure how much was in it. Living near one of London’s top poker clubs, the Gutshot, he runs his own home games to which he attracts other celebrities, yet he still downplays his own abilities. He is wrong to. Crucially, he has the courage to see a bet through to its conclusion, even when there is the risk of losing, but unlike his friend Flemyng he has the wisdom to know when to do so and when it’s a hopeless cause. He’s also quick to remind you that the real point of the game today is not the play, but the worthy One2One charity they have all come to support.

In the end, Fletcher does well. He reaches the coveted final table (there are seven tables of nine players, and each time nine players are knocked out, the seats are redistributed and a table taken away), and finishes eighth, just after the comedian Norman Pace.

Norman Pace

The cherubic comedian, best known as half of Hale and Pace, is the closest thing the celeb contingent has to a seasoned professional. He plays in a number of tournaments, and presents “The Open” on the Sky poker channel. “I like to mix up my hands,” he says of his style of play. “I create a tight image to start with, then re-raise people off hands and bluff a lot later on when people don’t expect it of me.” Before becoming a comedian, he was a teacher, and has both the cunning and the discipline to do well. He ends up seventh, most successful of all the celebrities.

Interestingly, his wife Beverley is Party Poker Women’s World Open Champion, and their two sons are sponsored players. Clearly the family that bets together, gets together.

Benedict Wong

The Manchester-born actor is a familiar face on British TV having appeared in shows like The Bill and State of Play. He’s also venturing into the deeper waters of Hollywood with appearances in Danny Boyle’s Sunshine and forthcoming sci-fi thriller Moon. He is currently shooting a movie called Shanghai with John Cusack, Gong Li and Ken Watanabe.

At the break, he confesses to have been rattled by a “bad beat” — ie a statistically unlikely defeat — when his pair of aces lost to someone’s pair of fives after a third five turned up on the flop. “In poker terminology you call that…” Cracked Aces, isn’t it? “… really s***.”

Sadly he never fully recovered from the blow, ending up short-stacked and having to push in with a pair of Jacks — not a bad hand, but only just better than a 50-50 chance against his opponent’s AK. He lost the toss.

Charlie Condou

The former Nathan Barley actor will this summer abandon his role as Marcus Dent in Coronation Street, to concentrate on other acting roles; he has just made a film with Viggo Mortensen. He is a quiet and unflamboyant player, who seems to know his stuff.

In the break, however, he is licking his wounds: the flop gave him two pairs, a monster hand… but it also gave his opponent a straight — an even bigger monster. It’s not the sort of blow from which it’s easy to recover, and he does well to last for quite a few hands after that.

Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott is Britain’s most colourful poker player, known for his shades, black tie and suit, and his personalised diamond knuckledusters: “Devil” on one fist, “Fish” on the other. He leads the professional players delivering seminars at Europe’s largest poker festival, Poker in the Park in Leicester Square, with free entry and hourly tournaments for over-18s today and tomorrow.

–How did you get the nickname “Devilfish”?

It was a guy called Stephen Au-Yeung. He had this dodgy game: one time I was heading to his house to play, having won all this money earlier, and I thought “what’s the point, I’ve already won”, and went home to sleep instead.

That night, three black guys burst in to Stevie’s place with shotguns, obviously looking for me!
Even so, I went back another night, and Stevie decided I looked like a Devilfish: it’s what the Chinese call that poisonous puffer fish that kills you if you don’t cook it right.

–You’re known as a very aggressive player. Does that work for or against you?
It’s about 50-50. People know I’m aggressive – in my last tournament I bluffed all my chips, so my opponent would have to make a huge call — so a lot of people avoid me. The flip side is that a lot of younger guys want to take me on.

I don’t stand for any nonsense – I had an argument at the table with Mike Tyson recently in Vegas! I would never insult a young lady, or have a go at a young kid, but taking on Phil Helmuth, or a player like Mike the Mouth, someone’s got to stand up to them.

— That’s not the only way to win, is it. Chris “Jesus” Ferguson is the opposite: very mathematical and controlled. I’ve played against him myself, and he didn’t play a hand in an hour.
Yes, people ask me what sort of player Chris is, and I say, I don’t know — I’ve only been playing against him for ten years, I haven’t seen him play enough hands to tell! You keep expecting pigeons to land on him.

— What’s the most you’ve ever won or lost?
I lost $400,000 in a single pot once. My biggest tournament win was $674,500. During the recent World Series, playing in Vegas, I was losing about a million dollars. Then I played a private game at the Bellagio over about five nights, and came back winning.

— I hear you play piano almost as well as you play poker.
My guitar-playing’s better actually. I can’t read a lick, but I can pick up a tune in a few minutes. I like to jump up with a band when I get the chance, I did that just recently actually. It were a good night: I was with my niece, and she found her boyfriend because he put on his MyFace or whatever it is that I was his favourite player, so she got in touch.

— You’ve got seven children of your own. Enough for a poker game!
Along with my 21-year-old girlfriend, it definitely is. The youngest is 11, and yeah, we have games together. I used to play with my Mum and Dad, though Dad was not a very good loser. I’d bunk off school to play on a flat tombstone in the cemetery, they’d never look for you there.

I started playing seriously at the ripe old age of 15, when an older guy saw some talent in me and signed me into the local casino. I then lost for the next two years, so I don’t know what talent he saw. Then I was driving up and down to the motorway to get to games other people wouldn’t play. We’d play Dealer’s Choice, where you had to be able to play any one of 15 types of poker. It’s a different story from the internet today, where it’s all so easy.

–And where would you recommend playing?
My own site, of course: www.Devilfishpoker.com. We’re running the Poker Olympics at the moment while the real thing is going on, with extra prizes to the winners. I play there, too, and there’s an extra “bounty” for you if you knock me out.
— And in London?
The one I play in the most is the Victoria Casino. But the Gutshot club and Loose Cannon are both very good.

— I hear you were name-checked in EastEnders.
Yeah, they were playing poker, and someone says to Barry or whoever, “Who do you think you are — Devilfish?”

There’s a book out at the moment, Swimming with the Devilfish, and I was in a film, Poker Face, which went to Cannes. That was fun, I got invited to this huge, crazy house where all the parties happen. And I’ve just been with Ben Affleck in America…

Amazing how big poker is these days, innit?

www.pokerinthepark.com, Leicester Square, free, over-18s only, Fri 4-9pm, Sat 10.30am-6.30pm. www.devilfish.com

“RAISE 2,000,” I say, and toss my chips on to the table. My face is carved from granite, but my heart thumps so loudly it could start its own drum ‘n’ bass label. In any big poker tournament there’s always one Table of Death, the one table where all the top pros happen to be seated. And I’m on it.

This is Day One of the prestigious World Series of Poker Europe, which for two weeks takes over the Casino at the Empire in London’s own beating heart, right on Leicester Square. Gathered here today for poker glory and a prize pool of more than half a million pounds are the world’s very best players… and me.

The capital’s gone mad for Texas Hold ‘Em: your local pub probably runs a weekly tournament; most casinos now offer tournaments and cash games; and the new Fox poker club opens on Shaftesbury Avenue this Friday after a series of mildly farcical delays. But this tournament is on a completely different scale: 582 players spread across nearly 60 poker tables have have paid £1,000 each to enter.

Just the noise of riffled chips is deafening. The Casino at the Empire is part of the Harrah’s chain, which owns half a dozen Las Vegas landmarks including Caesar’s and the Rio, home of the massive World Series of Poker. And, hearteningly, it’s also my regular. I often descend, fortified by a few drinks, to the all-night poker room at this high-tech Aladdin’s Cave. But it’s one thing to pit your wits and nerve against a few late-night gamblers and wannabe pros, and quite another to take on a clutch of World Champions.
Especially when so many are sat at my table. To my left, five-times WSOP champ Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, so named because with his long black hair and beard he resembles Christ seated at the Last Supper — that is, if He had worn a black Stetson in place of a halo. Opposite, Ramsey “the Ramsinator” Ajram, a fearless British player. To my right, Antonio Esfandiari, a former magician and WSOP champion, dressed in a lurid green shirt. “Whatever you do,” my friend and poker mentor “Casino” Steve had warned me earlier, “stay away from the guy in the green shirt.” Now he’s only gone and sat next to me.

But the scariest of the lot is a blond Scandinavian youth with the fluffy white cardigan of a school teacher, the tousled hair of a choirboy and the ice-cold stare of a serial killer. He pauses after my raise, fiddles with his towering chip stacks, deep in thought. Will he call me? For once, I wish he would.

Instead, this cherubic assassin does a clever thing: he scrutinises not my face, but my fingers. He notices a tell-tale tremor, more often the sign of a massive hand than of weakness… and folds. A big bald bully in shades is less cautious. “I’m all-in,” he growls, shoving his whole stack into the centre, hoping to force me off the pot.

“Then I’m snappin’,” I say calmly, and push in all my chips. I’ve only learned this slang word for “calling instantly” today, but I’m using it to convince the others I’m a globe-trotting poker veteran. The pros are like sharks: if they smell blood, if they think you’re “dead money” (a novice, easy to knock out), they’ll eat you alive. I turn over pocket Aces, the best of all starting hands, that comes along just once in every 221. Cursing, the bald bully hurls his humble King-Jack on to the felt.

I’m way ahead. Things get tense when the dealer turns up a second King, but my pair of Aces stays good. I’m up to 17,000 chips! Not bad considering we all started, six hours and a lifetime ago, with just 3,000.

After that, the Poker Gods smile on me. Even the world champs give me respect. I loosen up, shoot the breeze between hands. Poker’s a sociable game, after all, played by clever people with a lot of time on their hands. And so I learn that the “AYODHYA” tattoo on a player’s arm means “Undefeatable” in Sanskrit, and that his brother has one that’s an ambigram – ie it reads the same upside down. I learn the Finnish for “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”: it is, I am reliably informed, “superopsimopsitopsipangphenomenalis”. And I learn one of the many side-betting games that pros use to while away the hours, as if betting on their poker hands wasn’t quite enough.

Esfandiari plays it with Ramsey, at €100. It goes like this: while having his shoulders rubbed at the table, Esfandiari asks the massage girl a random question – “How many push-ups can President Obama do?”, or “How much money would it take to get Ramsey there to give up sex for six months?”, or “How much would you have to pay him to shave his head?” Whoever gets closest to her number wins. The results are funny, and strangely revealing.

And somehow, even on the Table of Death, I manage not just to stay alive, but to prosper. I catch some good hands, and pull off a bluff or two. And when finally, after 12 intense hours of play, the tournament director calls a halt, I’m up to 25,000 chips.

It’s now midnight. I savour a beer on the balcony of the Empire’s Icon bar, literally and figuratively on top of the world, as drunken clubbers lurch about Leicester Square below. I have made the top 15%. One of just 120 men left standing from Day One.

True, I didn’t play the Main Event. This has a nerve-shredding buy-in of £10,000, lasts five days, and is open to all-comers this Thursday – come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough. But for me, it’s more than enough. I’ve held my nerve against the pros. And I have every chance still of making serious money.

Because on Monday, Day Two, I have to do it all over again…

THE first official tournament in the World Series of Poker Europe. The globe’s very best players… and me. With a hangover.

Last night I was at the WSOPE launch party at London’s glamorous Casino at the Empire, drinking with ex-World Champs like Chris “Jesus” Ferguson. He looks like Jesus would, if Our Lord and Saviour played the devil’s game: black beard, black preacher’s hat, slow patient style. I played him once and he folded every hand for an hour.

Here’s Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott, Britain’s most colourful pro, only as young as the girl he feels (three decades his junior). He laughs when he recalls giving me my nickname: Dominic “No Tells” Wells. And tiny Annie Obrestad, just turned 21, sweet little killer of a player, already a champion but too new to have a nickname. She’s just been banned from poker ads for looking too young! “Now shuffle up and deal.” We’re off! I should sit tight and play like “Jesus”.

It’s a three-day tournament, no rush. But I am cursed with interesting hands.

I play them, get into trouble. Within an hour, I’ve lost half my chips. Disaster! Devilfish, at the next table, is down to almost zero. Phil “Poker Brat” Hellmuth, the world’s most successful player, is knocked out after just 83 minutes, blaming “my old nemesis: patience”. At least I’ve beat the champ!

The concentration is incredible. Even innocent questions like “where do you usually play?” are fishing for info on your betting style. The only noise is a constant shuffling of chips. You can tell a top player by how skilfully they run them through their fingers. By evening, I’m back on top. A passing acquaintance helps by greeting me cheerily with “Ah, the poker writer!” My standing at the table shoots up. And I play a great hand, which boosts my confidence…