IN THE FIRST years of the World Series of Poker, everything about the occasion was amateur except the players. Word went around, although no one was actually invited, and the events were not even scheduled. 'If seven seven-card stud players arrived at the Horseshoe at the same time, they'd play the seven-stud contest provided one of them wasn't asleep,' Eric Drache told me. Despite the haphazardness, the event grew steadily, and after five years Jack Binion asked Drache to organize it for him. 'I don't take a fee,' Drache said. 'Jack has done me so many favors I could do this for the rest of my life and still be in his debt. Anyway, I like organizing things.'
Now a schedule is sent out a couple of months in advance to a mailing list of players all over the world; there are thirteen separate events; a public-relations firm from Los Angeles issues daily press releases, and they are regularly picked up by the wire services; television cameras film the highlights of the main events; even the London Times and Observer carry the results.
Meanwhile, the players keep on coming. By 1981, the number of experts willing to put up a ten-thousanddollar stake to compete for the title of World Hold 'Em Champion had grown from the original six to seventy-five. There were at least a couple of hundred aspirants for the other titles, and still more who came to the Horseshoe simply for the side games that are played day and night while the tournament is in progress.
By late afternoon on May 5, the end of the second week of the World Series, only two players remained of twenty-seven who had anted $5000 each - plus a fiftydollar buy-in for table time and dealers - to enter the seven-card high (limit) world championship. Johnny Moss, Doyle Brunson, Puggy Pearson, and Stu Ungar had all been eliminated on the first day. Other big names - Chip Reese, Bobby Baldwin - had followed them during the second morning, and only Eric Drache and A. J. Myers were left for a final showdown under the inhumanly bright lights set up by the television crew.
Their appearance suggested that they had reached a secret agreement to stage the game as a confrontation between the East Coast and the West. Myers's patterned shirt was open halfway to his navel, showing gray chest hair and a heavy gold chain around his neck. His straw hat with the wide scarlet band printed with white flowers was tilted at a rakish angle, his half-glasses were perched on the end of his nose, and he was chewing a gigantic cigar. A second cigar, wrapped in cellophane, lay on the table beside his stacked chips. Eric Drache, in contrast, was a model of Eastern discretion: subdued sports jacket of herringbone Harris tweed, Viyella shirt, sober woolen tie. He looked more like an Oxford don than like a gambler. He also looked bored.
'I feel I'm anteing myself to death,' he had said to me a couple of days before. 'If they made a film of my life, half the footage would be of my hand throwing in ante after ante after ante. As if it had a life of its own, like Dr. Strangelove's. And every ante is one step closer to the grave. O.K., I'm winning at the moment, so it's easy to enjoy it, because I can kid myself that I will use the money for something more interesting than poker, like travel. But I won't, of course, and I wonder where this is going to end. I'm never going to have a job now. I mean, who is going to pay me three hundred thousand dollars a year? I'm at the top of my profession, and there aren't many opportunities at the top. I'd probably be good in public relations, but I'm not prepared to start at the bottom and work my way up - even if I had the qualifications. So poker is my only security. Some security, though Johnny Moss is a great inspiration: seventy-four years old, still playing every day, and still winning. Even so, I'm thirtyeight now, and I wouldn't want to think my next thirty or forty years are going to be spent in a poker game. I've already been playing professionally for twenty years. In the same game, really. I mean, how long is a poker game? If you play for a living, there is no end to it. Just because it breaks up doesn't mean it ends. The players may go away, but they are still thinking about it, replaying hands, working out their strategy. And they'll be there again the next day. Them or someone else.
'It's utterly unproductive. You can't even carryon a conversation. The losers say, "Shut up and deal," and anyway how much input can there be with guys who play twelve hours, then go home and sleep? What's happened to them? What are they going to talk about? Their dreams? A few years back, there was one old guy, a regular, who didn't even know there was a war on in Vietnam. That's why we all enjoy it when someone comes in from out of town. But we don't get many of them, because the game is too high.
'So we have our family of Vegas professionals. Part of the tension of the game is not created by the size of the stakes; it's a family tension, a terrible intimacy. It's like being stir crazy, doing time with the same seven guys in a cell day after day. If someone told me I had to go to the Horseshoe and play for forty-eight hours straight, I'd wonder what I'd done wrong that merited two days in jail. You're just stuck there. There's nothing to see, and, for me, there's not even that much interest in the game anymore. I've seen it all before. Everything that could happen has happened: I've fallen asleep in the middle of a deal; I've played an entire hand without being dealt any hole cards. I've not yet had a guy die on me at the table, though others have. Apart from that, you name it, I've seen it.
'I would willingly pay a hundred dollars a day to have a news ticker go by, so I'd have something to occupy my mind. As it is, I try to manufacture interest. Sometimes I pick up my cards and look at all three at once. Sometimes I squeeze them very slowly to keep myself in suspense. Sometimes, if I'm drawing to a flush, I arch them up so that the upper card reflects on the back of the lower; then I can tell whether it's black or red and narrow my chances down to even money. Anything to alleviate the boredom. I look at every pretty girl who passes, and every welldressed guy. That's not good for my poker; you're supposed to concentrate. But I'm so bored I do it anyway.'
Drache had been tired that day, after a long poker session constantly interrupted by people bringing him problems about the tournament and its organization. The voice of the switchboard operator intoning 'Tele- phone call for Eric Drache, telephone call for Eric Drache' was a continual ground bass to the din of the casino. He was probably also tense about the imminent seven-stud competition, in which his professional reputation would be at stake. But now he had made it to the final showdown, and he seemed bored again, despite the occasion, despite the money involved, despite the overwhelming competitive urge to win. When all was said and done, it was just another poker game.
Drache and Myers lounged nonchalantly in their chairs and made jokes to each other sotto voce. The television producer fussed around them irritably, trying to create the impression of seriousness and strain he considered appropriate to the worth of the chips $ 135,000 - divided between them on the table. He gestured to the camera and sound men to close in on Drache. Drache grinned at the tournament's floor manager, an old friend from the game in New Jersey. Speaking clearly for the benefit of the microphone probing the air above his left shoulder, he said, 'If I lose two pots in a row, Frank, call time out.' Then he ducked down, took a Kleenex from a box beneath the table, and wiped his forehead. The television producer signaled brusquely to his cameraman to switch to Myers.
Drache leaned back and said to me, 'In the last year, I've spent more time with A.J. than I have with my wife,' Myers nodded cheerfully while his wife and his daughter, the odalisque, sitting behind him, smiled their approval.
Drache was probably not exaggerating. He and Myers seemed to know each other's game so intimately that they might as well have been playing with all the cards exposed. Drache bet on an open pair of aces - a very strong hand - but when Myers raised him back, showing nothing higher than an eight, he folded immediately.
'Pity,' said Myers, and turned over his hole cards: two more eights.
'Surprise, surprise,' said Drache.
The cards were not running for Drache, and Myers was 'on a rush,' hitting hand after hand, as if by magic. There was nothing Drache could do except endure it stoically, retrench, risk nothing, and hope that his chances would come before the antes ate him up.
'It's a war of attrition,' he said. 'And it's costing me seven hundred dollars a hand.' But he did not seem perturbed.
In seven-card stud, each player is dealt two cards face down at the start and one card face up. According to Vegas rules, which were drawn up to promote action by getting the players committed to the pot, 'the low man brings it in' - that is, the player with the lowest exposed card has to bet. Three more cards are then dealt face up, with a round of betting after each, initiated by the player with the highest exposed cards. The seventh card is then dealt face down, and there is a final round of betting.
For six consecutive deals, Drache was forced to bring it in, Myers raised immediately, Drache folded. Myers half turned to his wife and daughter and the railbirds massed behind them. He arched his eyebrows, turned out his palms, and said, around his cigar, 'This man plays poker for a living, would you believe it?' Drache laughed along with everyone else, but was not taken in: he knew better than anyone that the wisecracks were a form of pressure, keeping him on the defensive.
Finally, Drache won a hand. 'Watch it,' he announced. 'I'm on a rush.' He won the next hand, too, but then began folding again.
'End of rush,' said Myers.
For two hours, the game dragged on uneventfully, and then it flared briefly to life for one hand. On the sixth card, Drache was showing a nine, a deuce, and a pair of fours, and had two more nines in the hole, giving him a full house. Myers was showing a jack, a seven, and a pair of fives; he had a second jack in the hole, giving him two pairs. But when Myers bet after the seventh card Drache did not raise him. Correctly. Myers's last card was another jack, giving him a higher full house.
After that, it was only a matter of time before Drache was frozen out - 'like Broomcorn's uncle,' as they say in Texas, chewed up by the antes. Twenty minutes later, he 'went down to the river' (took all seven cards) on an open-ended straight, nine to the queen, and did not make it. Myers took the hand and the championship with aces up. His prize money was $67,500, Drache's $27,000.
Within a couple of hours, they were facing each other again across the poker table, but for much higher stakes than were allowed in the official championship.