THROTTLED BY IVEY! Latest cameo in the billionaire banker Andy Beal story features the world’s best poker player Phil Ivey. Beal had managed to take some revenge on the professionals he assembles to test his poker playing skills by scuttling them for $10,000,000 in the usual series of heads up contests with selected poker legends. He then made the mistake of summoning Ivey for a personal one-on-one.
PHIL YER BOOTS! The event unfolded like so: Day one: Ivey up $2,000,000. Day two: Ivey up $4,600,000. Day three: Ivey drives his sword through Beal’s wallet to the tune of the full $10,000,000! Let’s get this in perspective. Andy Beal is not just some mega rich character with an ego problem. He’s actually a cultured and extremely smart poker player. You don’t make a billion dollars in banking unless you’re a class act. Phil Ivey is however from planet Poker and not of this earth.
MULTI-TABLE TOURNAMENTS For lesser mortals wanting to make a lot of money in a short space of time, multi-table tournaments probably offer the best opportunity. Each player starts with exactly the same chip stack and the blinds increase in steady amounts during the course of the event. The opportunity to win big comes from the fact you are up against hundreds and sometimes thousands of players and it’s all over and done with in a matter of hours. It’s a great test of focus and I recommend the experience at least once as part of your poker education.
SIMPLE EXPERIMENT I decided to try something different the other night to shake up my game. It’s almost impossible to grow up in our society without being attached to money but it occurred to me I’m a lot less attached to other peoples’ money than I am to my own. I have a few wealthy pals who don’t play poker and who are often offering to bankroll me for a 50-50 split of the action. I’ve always declined but for an experiment I thought it would be interesting to see if it affected my game to play knowing that I couldn’t personally lose anything. One snow flake doesn’t make a piste but for what it’s worth I played with absolutely no attachment to the chip stack. It was quite freeing to simply be applying poker instinct without the shadow of financial fear looking over your shoulder every time a big bet had to be faced down. I can’t report a monster evening but certainly a profitable one. The sting in the tail, of course, is the misery every natural born greedster feels at having to do the one thing he dreads almost as much as losing: Share!
ALL THE ACES poker column: Saturday, April 29, 2006: Poker Showdown: Billionaire Andy Beal versus Phil Ivey
