ANOTHER BIG DEAL! It’s starting to look like poker could be to the movie industry in the next decade what “Westerns” were in the 1950’s. Following tight on the heels of the big budget production of “Lucky You” briefly reviewed just a few days ago in this column, Hollywood is now fully engaged in bringing James McManus’s brilliant book about the Ted Binion murder case to the world’s cinemas.
POSITIVELY FIFTH STREET As “Binion’s Horseshoe” is probably the most hallowed establishment in the history of global poker and still, after many decades, the traditional home of the final stages of the World Series of Poker, the film will attract a lot of interest among the millions of Texas Hold’em fanatics to whom the Binion name has a kind of magic. The working title is “Positively Fifth Street” and the whispers from on set are encouraging. Apparently there’s a race to have “Positively Fifth Street” in theatres before “Ocean’s 13” completes the Clooney casino triology.
DEVIL’S IN THE DETAIL Even Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott, he of the icey stare, hasn’t been able to escape the thrall of the movie madness. He’s currently appearing as himself in a short film entitled “Poker Face”. Not that the camera is likely to intimidate the ex jeweller from Hull who openly confesses to having come up the hard way via a poker education that began a few decades ago in the underground clubs frequented by some of the more aggressive individuals from his part of the North. Ulliott is amazed and delighted at how the whole image of poker has been changed and reformed by the advent of the online game. It’s always nice to know your winnings are heading for the safety of a personal online account these days and not a sore loser with a cosh in a darkened car park. No wonder they call him the “Devilfish”! He’s survived more than the circling sharks in his time.
BUTTERFLY JUGGLE I’ve been playing a few fairly high stakes games of Texas Hold’em in Marbella over Easter with some quite scarey high rollers. Sometimes under these circumstances it’s very hard to get an edge because pretty much everyone has a well honed game and it tends to come down to the cards or the nerves. I did however pick up one psychological trick which I’ve mentioned in the past but have never actually seen personally before. One of the players had taken the trouble to learn the Esfandiari trick of Butterfly juggling his chips. This is so visually intimidating that you are constantly left with the mind-set, “If this guy has taken the trouble to perfect this trick, I can scarcely begin to imagine how awesome he is at playing his hand!” You wouldn’t believe the number of times people were folding to him.
ALL THE ACES poker column: Wednesday, April 26, 2006: More Poker Movie Madness Ahead
