Rick
10-15-2004, 10:26 AM
All In
Hollywood gambles on televised poker -- New stars Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke talk about money, hats, and why they love to hate each other by Daniel Fierman
Two million dollars is on a table. It sits there naked, lit from above by miniature klieg lights. Just wads of hundreds wrapped neatly in little bands of white paper. Nine of the best poker players in the world are gathered in a dark, run-down Italian restaurant in Harrah's Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas to play for this money. And someone in this room is going home with it.
Tonight. As soon as the 10th and final player actually shows up.
Most people would arrive on time for a potential $2 million payday. But the assembled carnival menagerie including a hip-hop hepcat, a 10-gallon-hat-wearing Texan, and an overweight patent lawyer scoping the room through snake-eye hologram glasses just roll their eyes. There's no doubt about who is late. None at all. That would be Phil Hellmuth, the loudest, most obnoxious, and biggest all-around crybaby in the poker universe. ''I tell ya, if there ever was a player who was as good as Phil thinks he is,'' cracks the Texan, the legendary Doyle Brunson, ''why, we'd never win a single hand.''
The gathered poker geniuses grin as a woman actually, the only woman perks up and slips the dagger in. ''Just wait,'' says Annie Duke, ''until he gets beat by a girl.''
Duke is a sprightly, sexy, redheaded mother of four, who happens to be cute as pie. She knows Phil well. And unlike a lot of folks in the poker world, she can actually stand him. The rapid-fire jokes go back and forth largely at Hellmuth's expense until finally, 20 minutes later, the man saunters in, all 6 foot 5 of him, smirking and wearing his trademark Oakley sunglasses. He surveys the table, folds himself into his seat, and the cards, finally, are dealt.
The game is No Limit Texas Hold 'Em, and over the next 12 hours, Duke and Hellmuth dismantle the field. Card Player magazine Player of the Year Daniel Negreanu? Gone. World Series of Poker champion Greg ''Fossilman'' Raymer? Toast. And on and on, until Annie finishes off her brother, Howard Lederer, with a divine speck of luck and a five-minute flood of tears. Suddenly, Hellmuth and Duke find themselves face-to-face, peering at each other over $2 million in cash.
They spar back and forth for the better part of an hour, but Duke is in the lead. Hellmuth bets his towering stack of chips on a 10 and an 8. It's not a bad bet the cards on the board give him a pair of 10s but the minute his opponent flips up her cards, which give her a king high in addition to her own 10s, Hellmuth knows it's all over. Duke thrusts her hands to her face and unleashes a $2 million grin. As she dashes for the phone to call her brother and share the news, Hellmuth storms offhands dancing, spittle flying, and muttering darkly. The thrust of his complaint is something along the lines of ''Oh, drat! I was indubitably the far superior player in that contest.'' But on air, it comes out more like ''BLEEP! BLEEP! BLEEP! What the hell is going on here? It's unbelievable! [Kicks a food cart] . . . I love Annie but BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP! Another BLEEPIN' second for me. Second, third, second, third. No money! . . . BLEEP!''
Phil Helmuth and Annie Duke are the most unlikely television stars of 2004. If you don't know who they are, you're probably not a guy under the age of 30. Because to that segment of the population, televised poker has become the avatar of neo-cool; knuckleheads who once spouted ''You're money!'' and ''Vegas, baby, Vegas!'' are now rattling on about check raises and getting beat on fifth street. Poker has spread from network to network ESPN, Bravo, Travel Channel, Fox Sports like the Rage Virus. And audiences have followed.
A few years ago, not even gambling hipsters gave a damn about people like Hellmuth and Duke. In fact, if people thought about poker players at all, it was usually with officious concern or downright derision. Poker pros were people who ground out a living taking cash off the unfortunate, the addicted, or fellow moral invertebrates. ''I spent my life with people looking at me askance,'' says Duke, ''just assuming that I was some sort of degenerate gambler who was destroying my family.''
Cards have been around since the Chinese invented paper, and poker has been famous since Wild Bill Hickok was shot in the back holding aces and eights back in 1876. But the biggest moment in poker history may have come in 2002, when a television producer named Steven Lipscomb figured out that if you embedded a tiny camera in the side of a poker table, you could get a look at the players' cards. And if you could get a look at the players' cards, you'd know when they were bluffing, when they had set a trap, or when they were headed for certain, multimillion-dollar disaster on live television.
ESPN started broadcasting the World Series of Poker the poker world's signature, monthlong event, which culminates in a Texas Hold 'Em tournament in 1994. But the network aired the games only at odd hours like 3:30 a.m., presumably when executives figured those degenerate gamblers would be watching. But in 2003, producers noticed that even in the wee hours poker was earning surprisingly strong ratings. So they threw some money behind the World Series and set about turning a bunch of flabby guys playing cards into the best reality TV on TV. Armed with the mini-camera, an editor, hilarious running commentary, and an impossible run to victory by an unknown named beautifully, incredibly Chris Moneymaker, poker exploded.
''Last year we only [showed] seven hours, but we re-aired them 15 times each. Every time we aired them, they did well,'' says Mike Antinoro, who exec-produces World Series for ESPN. ''That's when we said, This is something here. People will watch the same show over and over again!''
Soon, the Travel Channel was winning record ratings with its coverage of the World Poker Tour card playing's answer to the PGA and Bravo was earning killer numbers with its Celebrity Poker Showdown, featuring stars like Ben Affleck, Matthew Perry, and Allison Janney. ESPN tripled its coverage in 2004 and earned its best ratings for an original series ever. As fans largely young males, TV's most elusive and coveted demographic tuned in, it was inevitable that stars would emerge. Enter Hellmuth and Duke.
Hellmuth, 40, was born and raised in Wisconsin, the son of academics and a child of privilege. Afflicted with a horrible case of acne and a singular ability to rub people the wrong way, Hellmuth spent most of his high school years a bad student and social outcast but he was extremely good at poker. At the University of Wisconsin, he earned a spot playing in high-stakes home games with professors and deans, raking in thousands and going straight to the bursar's office to pay his tuition. ''The next thing you know I had my student loans paid off and $20,000 in the bank and I was like, 'Wow! How can I use this?''' he says, in a limousine he's chartered specifically for the interview. ''One night I won $6,500 playing at a professional game and I dropped all my classes.''
His first 10 trips to Vegas he got cleaned out. Then he started winning. And winning. And winning. He informed anyone who would listen that he'd be the youngest World Series of Poker champion in history, and then he did it, beating the legendary Johnny Chan in 1989 at the age of 24. (Today he stands as an all-time money leader in tournament Texas Hold 'Em.) But he also became famous for his legendary McEnroe-esque meltdowns: tossing chairs, yelling at other players, *****ing incessantly about his own bad fortune, or claiming, as he did at this year's World Series, that ''if there weren't luck involved, I guess I'd win every one.'' Poker had found its villain.
''To tell you the truth,'' muses Duke, ''I think he has Asperger's syndrome. He's a really nice guy with a very good heart who just doesn't know how to behave.''
''If we went to central casting trying to find somebody, we would be looking for Phil Hellmuth,'' says Norman Chad, a poker commentator for ESPN. ''He is perfect. You always have a guy in a white hat and a guy in a black hat and Phil forever wears the black hat. I'm surprised World Wrestling Entertainment hasn't imported him.''
The white hat belongs to Duke. A 38-year-old single mother of four, she was getting her Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania when she discovered poker. It was her older brother, Howard then a rising star in both backroom money games and high-profile tournaments who turned her on to Hold 'Em. ''I was a month from defending my Ph.D. and I freaked out. I realized it wasn't what I wanted to do. I had just gotten married at the time and we moved to Montana and we were living in this house with a $125-a-month mortgage made out of chicken wire and stucco. I kid you not.''
But Montana had card rooms, and armed with a $2,400 loan from her brother, she started playing old ranchers and farmhands. Soon word got out that a giggly, sexy twentysomething was dominating. ''A lot of guys get angry when they see women at the table because poker is kind of like a Turkish bath. It's where the men go to get away from women,'' she says over a banana-strawberry smoothie. ''If you invade that space, they get very angry. And you know what? I'm going to do whatever I can to piss them off. Because first of all, they're chauvinist pigs anyway. But second of all, it's going to increase my earn. And if you don't like me, that's fine. Because I just got all your money.''
How could TV resist? They're not the best all-around players despite what Phil will tell you, your dog, and any inanimate object within shouting range. (That title probably belongs to Phil Ivey, a handsome 28-year-old, stone-faced African-American who is often tagged as the ''Tiger Woods of Poker'' and generally eschews big tournaments for casino money games; his colleague Daniel Negreanu estimates he took home more than $10 million last year.) But they are the most telegenic.
''I had another player once criticize me for being a media whore,'' says Duke. ''My response was 'And that's bad because . . . ?' You only have so many opportunities that come your way in life. I'm going to take my window the moment I have it. Because in a couple of years it may not be there.''
Together Hellmuth and Duke are developing a reality show ΰ la The Apprentice for poker players. Duke, who coaches Ben Affleck for pocket money, has a sitcom about her life in the works; Lisa Kudrow is executive-producing and Jenna Elfman has been mentioned as a possible star. And naturally, they both have movies they're trying to set up at studios. If everything works out, neither of them will ever have to grind it out in money games to make a living again. It's something neither was particularly good at anyway, and it's a lifestyle that brutalizes family and friends. ''I've seen so many people fall into the trap [of gambling] it makes me sick,'' says Hellmuth. ''I'm not sure I'd push this on my kids. In fact, I'd rather see them have something to fall back on.''
It's midnight in a loud club in Oranjestad, Aruba. It's one of those places that serve up foot-tall neon drinks and never-ending games of tropical grab-ass. It's also where Ben Affleck, Annie Duke, and Phil Hellmuth have decided to go drinking the night before a World Poker Tour tournament in Aruba.
Well, kind of drinking. As Affleck dodges fans, Hellmuth announces that he rarely drinks anything but Dom Perignon and is thus indulging only in water. But when the DJ stops the music to announce there's going to be an all-male dance competition, sobriety doesn't stop him from bounding up on stage alongside a Venezuelan tourist, accomplished Showdowncohost/player Phil Gordon, and a fat guy named Stan. Duke smacks her head and sips her beer. Everyone else is giddy with anticipation. The Venezuelan goes first, to mild applause. Gordon does an amicably geeky shuffle, which goes over beautifully. Then Hellmuth steps forward.
It's unclear exactly where the boos start coming from. They're quiet at first, but soon the self-proclaimed Best Poker Player in the World is met with full-throated catcalls. He throws up his hands in frustration and shouts, ''I can't win!''
Duke grins at her black-hatted friend. ''You never could, Phil!'' she howls. ''You never could.''
From Entertainment Weekly (http://www.ew.com)
Hollywood gambles on televised poker -- New stars Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke talk about money, hats, and why they love to hate each other by Daniel Fierman
Two million dollars is on a table. It sits there naked, lit from above by miniature klieg lights. Just wads of hundreds wrapped neatly in little bands of white paper. Nine of the best poker players in the world are gathered in a dark, run-down Italian restaurant in Harrah's Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas to play for this money. And someone in this room is going home with it.
Tonight. As soon as the 10th and final player actually shows up.
Most people would arrive on time for a potential $2 million payday. But the assembled carnival menagerie including a hip-hop hepcat, a 10-gallon-hat-wearing Texan, and an overweight patent lawyer scoping the room through snake-eye hologram glasses just roll their eyes. There's no doubt about who is late. None at all. That would be Phil Hellmuth, the loudest, most obnoxious, and biggest all-around crybaby in the poker universe. ''I tell ya, if there ever was a player who was as good as Phil thinks he is,'' cracks the Texan, the legendary Doyle Brunson, ''why, we'd never win a single hand.''
The gathered poker geniuses grin as a woman actually, the only woman perks up and slips the dagger in. ''Just wait,'' says Annie Duke, ''until he gets beat by a girl.''
Duke is a sprightly, sexy, redheaded mother of four, who happens to be cute as pie. She knows Phil well. And unlike a lot of folks in the poker world, she can actually stand him. The rapid-fire jokes go back and forth largely at Hellmuth's expense until finally, 20 minutes later, the man saunters in, all 6 foot 5 of him, smirking and wearing his trademark Oakley sunglasses. He surveys the table, folds himself into his seat, and the cards, finally, are dealt.
The game is No Limit Texas Hold 'Em, and over the next 12 hours, Duke and Hellmuth dismantle the field. Card Player magazine Player of the Year Daniel Negreanu? Gone. World Series of Poker champion Greg ''Fossilman'' Raymer? Toast. And on and on, until Annie finishes off her brother, Howard Lederer, with a divine speck of luck and a five-minute flood of tears. Suddenly, Hellmuth and Duke find themselves face-to-face, peering at each other over $2 million in cash.
They spar back and forth for the better part of an hour, but Duke is in the lead. Hellmuth bets his towering stack of chips on a 10 and an 8. It's not a bad bet the cards on the board give him a pair of 10s but the minute his opponent flips up her cards, which give her a king high in addition to her own 10s, Hellmuth knows it's all over. Duke thrusts her hands to her face and unleashes a $2 million grin. As she dashes for the phone to call her brother and share the news, Hellmuth storms offhands dancing, spittle flying, and muttering darkly. The thrust of his complaint is something along the lines of ''Oh, drat! I was indubitably the far superior player in that contest.'' But on air, it comes out more like ''BLEEP! BLEEP! BLEEP! What the hell is going on here? It's unbelievable! [Kicks a food cart] . . . I love Annie but BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP! Another BLEEPIN' second for me. Second, third, second, third. No money! . . . BLEEP!''
Phil Helmuth and Annie Duke are the most unlikely television stars of 2004. If you don't know who they are, you're probably not a guy under the age of 30. Because to that segment of the population, televised poker has become the avatar of neo-cool; knuckleheads who once spouted ''You're money!'' and ''Vegas, baby, Vegas!'' are now rattling on about check raises and getting beat on fifth street. Poker has spread from network to network ESPN, Bravo, Travel Channel, Fox Sports like the Rage Virus. And audiences have followed.
A few years ago, not even gambling hipsters gave a damn about people like Hellmuth and Duke. In fact, if people thought about poker players at all, it was usually with officious concern or downright derision. Poker pros were people who ground out a living taking cash off the unfortunate, the addicted, or fellow moral invertebrates. ''I spent my life with people looking at me askance,'' says Duke, ''just assuming that I was some sort of degenerate gambler who was destroying my family.''
Cards have been around since the Chinese invented paper, and poker has been famous since Wild Bill Hickok was shot in the back holding aces and eights back in 1876. But the biggest moment in poker history may have come in 2002, when a television producer named Steven Lipscomb figured out that if you embedded a tiny camera in the side of a poker table, you could get a look at the players' cards. And if you could get a look at the players' cards, you'd know when they were bluffing, when they had set a trap, or when they were headed for certain, multimillion-dollar disaster on live television.
ESPN started broadcasting the World Series of Poker the poker world's signature, monthlong event, which culminates in a Texas Hold 'Em tournament in 1994. But the network aired the games only at odd hours like 3:30 a.m., presumably when executives figured those degenerate gamblers would be watching. But in 2003, producers noticed that even in the wee hours poker was earning surprisingly strong ratings. So they threw some money behind the World Series and set about turning a bunch of flabby guys playing cards into the best reality TV on TV. Armed with the mini-camera, an editor, hilarious running commentary, and an impossible run to victory by an unknown named beautifully, incredibly Chris Moneymaker, poker exploded.
''Last year we only [showed] seven hours, but we re-aired them 15 times each. Every time we aired them, they did well,'' says Mike Antinoro, who exec-produces World Series for ESPN. ''That's when we said, This is something here. People will watch the same show over and over again!''
Soon, the Travel Channel was winning record ratings with its coverage of the World Poker Tour card playing's answer to the PGA and Bravo was earning killer numbers with its Celebrity Poker Showdown, featuring stars like Ben Affleck, Matthew Perry, and Allison Janney. ESPN tripled its coverage in 2004 and earned its best ratings for an original series ever. As fans largely young males, TV's most elusive and coveted demographic tuned in, it was inevitable that stars would emerge. Enter Hellmuth and Duke.
Hellmuth, 40, was born and raised in Wisconsin, the son of academics and a child of privilege. Afflicted with a horrible case of acne and a singular ability to rub people the wrong way, Hellmuth spent most of his high school years a bad student and social outcast but he was extremely good at poker. At the University of Wisconsin, he earned a spot playing in high-stakes home games with professors and deans, raking in thousands and going straight to the bursar's office to pay his tuition. ''The next thing you know I had my student loans paid off and $20,000 in the bank and I was like, 'Wow! How can I use this?''' he says, in a limousine he's chartered specifically for the interview. ''One night I won $6,500 playing at a professional game and I dropped all my classes.''
His first 10 trips to Vegas he got cleaned out. Then he started winning. And winning. And winning. He informed anyone who would listen that he'd be the youngest World Series of Poker champion in history, and then he did it, beating the legendary Johnny Chan in 1989 at the age of 24. (Today he stands as an all-time money leader in tournament Texas Hold 'Em.) But he also became famous for his legendary McEnroe-esque meltdowns: tossing chairs, yelling at other players, *****ing incessantly about his own bad fortune, or claiming, as he did at this year's World Series, that ''if there weren't luck involved, I guess I'd win every one.'' Poker had found its villain.
''To tell you the truth,'' muses Duke, ''I think he has Asperger's syndrome. He's a really nice guy with a very good heart who just doesn't know how to behave.''
''If we went to central casting trying to find somebody, we would be looking for Phil Hellmuth,'' says Norman Chad, a poker commentator for ESPN. ''He is perfect. You always have a guy in a white hat and a guy in a black hat and Phil forever wears the black hat. I'm surprised World Wrestling Entertainment hasn't imported him.''
The white hat belongs to Duke. A 38-year-old single mother of four, she was getting her Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania when she discovered poker. It was her older brother, Howard then a rising star in both backroom money games and high-profile tournaments who turned her on to Hold 'Em. ''I was a month from defending my Ph.D. and I freaked out. I realized it wasn't what I wanted to do. I had just gotten married at the time and we moved to Montana and we were living in this house with a $125-a-month mortgage made out of chicken wire and stucco. I kid you not.''
But Montana had card rooms, and armed with a $2,400 loan from her brother, she started playing old ranchers and farmhands. Soon word got out that a giggly, sexy twentysomething was dominating. ''A lot of guys get angry when they see women at the table because poker is kind of like a Turkish bath. It's where the men go to get away from women,'' she says over a banana-strawberry smoothie. ''If you invade that space, they get very angry. And you know what? I'm going to do whatever I can to piss them off. Because first of all, they're chauvinist pigs anyway. But second of all, it's going to increase my earn. And if you don't like me, that's fine. Because I just got all your money.''
How could TV resist? They're not the best all-around players despite what Phil will tell you, your dog, and any inanimate object within shouting range. (That title probably belongs to Phil Ivey, a handsome 28-year-old, stone-faced African-American who is often tagged as the ''Tiger Woods of Poker'' and generally eschews big tournaments for casino money games; his colleague Daniel Negreanu estimates he took home more than $10 million last year.) But they are the most telegenic.
''I had another player once criticize me for being a media whore,'' says Duke. ''My response was 'And that's bad because . . . ?' You only have so many opportunities that come your way in life. I'm going to take my window the moment I have it. Because in a couple of years it may not be there.''
Together Hellmuth and Duke are developing a reality show ΰ la The Apprentice for poker players. Duke, who coaches Ben Affleck for pocket money, has a sitcom about her life in the works; Lisa Kudrow is executive-producing and Jenna Elfman has been mentioned as a possible star. And naturally, they both have movies they're trying to set up at studios. If everything works out, neither of them will ever have to grind it out in money games to make a living again. It's something neither was particularly good at anyway, and it's a lifestyle that brutalizes family and friends. ''I've seen so many people fall into the trap [of gambling] it makes me sick,'' says Hellmuth. ''I'm not sure I'd push this on my kids. In fact, I'd rather see them have something to fall back on.''
It's midnight in a loud club in Oranjestad, Aruba. It's one of those places that serve up foot-tall neon drinks and never-ending games of tropical grab-ass. It's also where Ben Affleck, Annie Duke, and Phil Hellmuth have decided to go drinking the night before a World Poker Tour tournament in Aruba.
Well, kind of drinking. As Affleck dodges fans, Hellmuth announces that he rarely drinks anything but Dom Perignon and is thus indulging only in water. But when the DJ stops the music to announce there's going to be an all-male dance competition, sobriety doesn't stop him from bounding up on stage alongside a Venezuelan tourist, accomplished Showdowncohost/player Phil Gordon, and a fat guy named Stan. Duke smacks her head and sips her beer. Everyone else is giddy with anticipation. The Venezuelan goes first, to mild applause. Gordon does an amicably geeky shuffle, which goes over beautifully. Then Hellmuth steps forward.
It's unclear exactly where the boos start coming from. They're quiet at first, but soon the self-proclaimed Best Poker Player in the World is met with full-throated catcalls. He throws up his hands in frustration and shouts, ''I can't win!''
Duke grins at her black-hatted friend. ''You never could, Phil!'' she howls. ''You never could.''
From Entertainment Weekly (http://www.ew.com)