Posts Tagged ‘andy beal’
2010 Poker Hall of Fame Nominations by Lee Jones
Poker News Daily asked me for my thoughts about the ten finalists for this year’s Poker Hall of Fame. This caused me some angst as I decided what criteria I should use in giving my input.
I mean, let’s consider the Baseball Hall of Fame. Back in my youth, I lived and breathed baseball, so I know a little about the game. There are some interesting problems that come up in selecting candidates there. For instance, people still argue whether Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame. His results on the field are beyond dispute, but then he sullied the entire game with his subsequent gambling problems.
As I thought about that, I decided that if I had a vote (which I don’t), I would have to include a component that I wasn’t embarrassed to see that person in the Hall of Fame, no matter what his or her accomplishments were on the felt. If it helps gauge my attitude about this, in my record book, Hank Aaron is the home run leader.
So here are this year’s candidates, broken into a few groups.
Ship them this year, please
Chris Ferguson: Chris is arguably the most recognizable poker player in the world (who doesn’t live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue). He helped develop the software for Full Tilt and via his sponsorship by them has appeared on what seems like virtually every poker TV show in history. And he’s got five bracelets. Chris is soft-spoken and a bit of an introvert, but he is always pleasant and polite with the fans that surround him begging for autographs.
Dan Harrington: Another guy who has been around forever and has made himself relevant at the tables and as a writer. It is strong enough that he won the 1995 WSOP Main Event. However, his back-to-back final tables in the 2003 and 2004 Main Events, the latter of which had a post-boom field of 2,576 players, may make him the “Johnny Vander Meer of Poker.”
While many others had reached consecutive final tables in the sub-100 player fields of the early days, Harrington may well be the only person who will ever do it when the average field of the two consecutive events was over 1,500. Away from the tables, Dan has been a prolific and highly influential writer, perhaps best known for quantifying the “M” value of stack size in a tournament.
Linda Johnson: Linda isn’t a regular participant in the tournament tour (she’s too busy running poker cruises), so you’re not going to see her racking up a room full of tournament trophies, her bracelet in Razz notwithstanding. But her true value to the game has been twofold:
1. She nurtured the game through its dark times and never slowed down after the boom. Even with her busy schedule, she hosts poker meetings, answers e-mail questions about poker, makes appearances, teaches classes, and acts as the ultimate poker ambassador.
2. Her generosity, both through poker and outside of it, is unimaginable. Linda and I are friends and much of what she does is under the radar. She has shared her good fortune with more people than anybody (including her) could count.
Tom McEvoy: Tom won the WSOP Main Event 27 years ago. And then last year he won a made-for-TV tournament of former champions. He still cashes in major events and made himself relevant in the online poker world early with his representation of PokerStars. On the ambassador front, he is unfailingly polite and gracious (and in fact was one of the first people to push for non-smoking poker tournaments).
Erik Seidel: Erik is my sleeper. He is one of those folks (along with Barry Greenstein) who truly understands poker’s place in the greater world. He’s got a family and spends enough time away from them with his Full Tilt duties as it is. So, he doesn’t choose to play in every cash game and TV show that he could. In short, if Erik Seidel devoted every waking minute to poker and promoting himself, the writers would be climbing all over each other to vote for him.
His famous battle with Johnny Chan was in the 1988 WSOP Main Event – 22 years ago – and he’s won eight bracelets since. In short, I suspect that poker Hall of Famedom is not high on Erik’s list of life priorities. Sort of the “Cal Ripken of Poker,” Erik has simply gone out and done his job, incredibly well, for over two decades. Oh, and he’s been a gentleman throughout, from the baseball cap right down to the running shoes. I’d stand up and cheer at his Hall of Fame induction.
Just wait, they’ll be in
Phil Ivey, Barry Greenstein, and Jennifer Harman: These three are getting in – it may just take a little time. The internet has made time compress, but remember we’re talking the Hall of Fame, not All-Star, balloting here. For instance, unless a meteor strikes the Earth and envelops the planet in a two-year smoke cloud that destroys life as we know it, Phil Ivey is going into the Poker Hall of Fame at some point. But another five years won’t change that and will likely only add to his already near-immortal resume.
Greenstein and Harman have been mixing it up in the biggest poker games in the world for the last decade or so; they have no difficulty there. And Harman was the go-to person when the big game denizens needed help in their match against Andy Beal. Furthermore, both have recently turned their attention to charitable work – that’s huge in my book. I just want to let their cakes bake a little while longer.
Honorable mention
Scotty Nguyen: Forgive me, but his antics take him off my list (as they did for fellow PND writer Dan Cypra). Scotty certainly has the poker (and crowd-attracting) chops to get into the Hall of Fame, but until he gets his behavior under control, he’s not on my list.
Daniel Negreanu: So I really like Daniel. He’s a great guy and fun to talk to. And given another few years, his tournament and cash game record would almost certainly merit Hall of Fame consideration. But he needs to learn to control his rants. Maybe that means realizing that he doesn’t really have “off the record” as an option when he’s standing around a reporter. Perhaps it’s just letting some old stuff fade out of his life and fully embracing the extraordinary fortune that the game of poker has brought him. I’m not sure, but I hope he’ll find whatever it is.
Lee Jones is the Card Room Manager for Cake Poker and has been in the online poker business since 2003. He is also the author of “Winning Low Limit Hold’em,” which is still in publication over 15 years after its first printing.
Chau Giang – Poker Player Profile
Born on July 2, 1955 in Vietnam, Chau Giang fled to the United States in the late 1970s. After landing in Florida, he moved to Colorado where he worked as a chef. It was during his stint in the Centennial State that he picked up poker, and soon after learning the game he moved to Las Vegas to play full-time.
Giang is especially proficient at Omaha Eight-or-Better, but he excels at all forms of the game. Legend has it that in his first year as a professional player he made over $100K, which is now a large amount of money, but was an astronomical sum back when he did it.
Over the years, Giang has managed to pry himself from the lucrative ring games to play a few tournaments, mainly at the World Series of Poker. In 1993, he won his first bracelet by shipping the $1500 Ace to Five Draw event for $82K. His second WSOP title came five years later when he won the $2K Omaha Eight-or-Better tournament for $150K. 2004 saw him win his third and most recent bracelet in $2K Pot Limit Omaha for $188K. Giang has a total of 51 WSOP cashes for $1.7 million, which puts him eighth on the all-time money list.
Away from the WSOP, Giang has also found success on the World Poker Tour, where he has 13 cashes and three final tables. In 2005, he hit the biggest score of his poker career, taking second in The Sixth Annual Jack Binion World Poker Open for $773K. Two years later in 2007, he took third in the L.A. Poker classic for another $341K. All told, Chau Giang has over $3.5 million in live tournament earnings.
Additionally, Giang is a regular at the ‘Big Game’ at Bellagio, and was involved in the series of high-stakes heads-up battles with billionaire Andy Beal as a member of ‘The Corporation’.
Learning From the Game: Poker and Personal Finance
But after you've got all the flat-screen TVs, iPods and laptops you could want, what's next?
Several experts with ties to both the financial and poker industries say poker players can always apply the tenants of good personal finance to come out ahead of the game.
And by following a few basic rules of thumb that apply to both poker and personal finance, poker players can make the transition to managing their own money more effectively.
Set Goals
Most players understand that having a long-term goal, such as moving up in stakes or winning a major tournament, can help a player focus and play better poker.
Jim Wang, the man behind the financial community at Bargaineering.com, says setting up a major financial goal to work towards is similarly key to staying motivated enough to do the hard work that goes into successfully managing your finances.
Just as important as those big goals, though, is having smaller ones to meet along the way.
If you're looking to buy a house, Wang says you'll want to focus on monthly savings goals so you can have a sense of accomplishment along the long path to buying your own home.
In poker and finance, there will always be days when things don't go your way.
Whether it's taking on sudden unexpected expenses due to a leaking roof or learning that your Toyota stock unexpectedly tanked when someone's Prius decided to run away, Wang says being able to look at your success in meeting small goals can help ease the pain of temporary setbacks by giving you perspective and keeping you focused on the long term.
Look for Value
One of the most fundamental aspects of winning poker is getting value out of your hands by getting your money in the pot when you're getting the right price.
If you're constantly calling pot-sized bets with flush draws, chances are you'll go broke pretty quickly.
But if you're tagging along when your opponents bet too small, you'll find yourself winning over the long run.
Wang says that concept translates directly to the financial world in the form of value investing, where you put your money into stocks that are underpriced compared to their book value.
For instance, if the book value of a company is $1 per share and it's currently trading for $.80 per share, generally speaking, that's where you want to put your money.
Looking for value is what allowed billionaire banker and world-class Limit Texas Hold'em ace Andy Beal to become one of a small handful of Americans to actually increase his net worth during the current recession.
By picking up what he recognized as underpriced assets during a market downturn, Beal was able to reap the benefits to the tune of more than $1 billion while everyone else was running scared.
Amy Calistri, the co-author of Check-Raising The Devil and editor of the StreetAuthority.com investment newsletter, who covered Beal's heads-up matches against Ted Forrest, says there's no difference between his strategy and what any non-billionaire investor can do by digging around and looking for the kind of deals that others may pass up.
Do the Leg Work
While there are some poker savants who don't have to worry about things like reading up on poker strategy and reviewing their own play, for the rest, these can be the very foundation of long-term success in the game.
If you're putting in your time at the tables and staying sharp by constantly reviewing your play to fix your leaks, a solid win rate will follow.
Similarly, Calistri says investing is about more than just picking a stock and waiting for the price to go up. Time spent studying all the available data are what allow you to determine whether you're going to be getting good value.
Likewise, studying your results will help you to incorporate what you've learned from experience into refined strategies and experience is the difference between mediocre returns and true success.
"The same instincts that tell you whether a trade is going to be good are the same instincts that tell you whether your hand is good or bad," says Dan Shak, a hedge fund manager by day and tournament poker champion by night. "It's a feeling that says, ‘I've been here before, I've felt like this before, this is what happened before.'"
In another parallel with poker, Calistri says the Internet has made becoming a successful investor much easier than it used to be, simply because there's so much information out there to help you learn and make good decisions.
"Mom and pop investors can get access to all the SEC reports that every company files, and they can go through detailed statistics," she said. "There's much more information out there than there was even five or ten years ago. Sites that do detailed calculations for you, or compare companies - those just didn't exist before."
Stay Disciplined
Once a strategy is developed, the need to stay disciplined is important in poker and investing.
Shak says getting too emotional can lead to making bad decisions, which in turn can lead to going broke.
"I try to keep my highs not too high and my lows not too low," he said, of both poker and running a hedge fund. "I just assume that successes are temporary. I never take anything for granted."
That realism means even though Shak cashed in the first five major events he played this year, including a January heads-up win over Phil Ivey in the Aussie Millions $100,000 Challenge, he doesn't assume he's going to continue cashing at the same pace.
"I know that the chance of making the money in any event is generally 10 percent," he says. "So even if I cash in five tournaments in a row, I still have a 10 percent chance for the next one."
Discipline is also as important when it comes to your own finances, says Wang.
Diversifying your investments can work like bankroll management does in poker, by limiting the effects of variance and keeping a downswing in one investment from affecting your entire portfolio.
And much like poker, early success can sometimes be a bigger long term problem than early failure, if you lose your discipline and develop bad habits as a result.
"Every investor thought they were a genius in the mid-to-late 1990s with all the tech stocks going up, like an online poker player who starts off on a lucky streak and doesn't recognize it for what it is," said Calistri.
Only by keeping a critical eye on your results can you avoid making those kind of mistakes and by continuing to do the legwork necessary for making good investment decisions, Calistri says you are more likely to repeat your successes.
Plus, even when you fail - and just like in poker, there will be moments of failure - you can learn from your experience and improve your future results.
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Andy Beal spotted playing at Bellagio
Andy Beal is back at the Bobby’s Room
According to 2+2 forums, the billionaire banker Andy Beal has been spotted in Bellagio.
Andy Beal is famous from his really, really, really high stakes games against the best poker players of the world aka “The Corporation”.
Beal played against “The Corporation” which consisted of players like Doyle and Todd Brunson, Ted Forrest, Howard Lederer, Jennifer Harman and Barry Greenstein. They played Fixed Limit Hold’em with as high as $100k/$200k stakes.
Now people are rumoring that Andy Beal is back at the Bobby’s Room where he has been spotted playing Fixed Limit with $30k/$60k and $50k/$100k stakes. At least Eli Elezra, Jennifer Harman and Phil Ivey have been playing against Beal.
Source: 2+2
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Inside Gaming: Carl Icahn Comes to Andy Beal’s Rescue; PartyGaming and Bwin Talk Merger
Poker News in Brief: Nov. 23-29, 2009
With only the main event of the U.S. Poker Championships to keep poker fans busy they were left to contemplate the identity of the rumored Swede who has taken millions off Tom "durrrr" Dwan.
There was a ton of other poker news, however, and we're going to break some of it down for you today in our regularly scheduled Poker News in Brief feature.
This week we're going to look at PKR Live III results, another world record broken on PokerStars, an Andy Beal update and a certain young celebrity with a penchant for poker.
Billionaire poker player bids on Trump Casinos
It appears that billionaire banker Andy Beal isn't quite done with the poker world.
The Dallas-based businessman made a bid for three bankrupt Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. Casinos in Atlantic City this week.
Beal was portrayed as a fearless poker player in Michael Craig's The Professor, the banker and the Suicide King: The Richest Poker Game of all Time.
In the book, Craig chronicled Beal's heads-up matches against the likes of Phil Ivey, Jennifer Harman and Doyle Brunson, which were some of the biggest games ever played.
Under Beal's buyout proposal, an affiliate of his Dallas-based bank would convert its $486 million mortgage on the casinos into equity.
Beal's bid is just the latest in a series that included Trump Entertainment bondholders and Donald Trump himself.
The three properties in question are the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort, the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino and the Trump Marina Hotel Casino.
Russian breaks world record on PokerStars
Russian online player innerpsy broke the record for number of hands played in a 24 hour span this week.
The 21-year-old poker pro somehow managed to log 40,088 hands on PokerStars in just one day.
"Before this challenge I never actually played more than 20,000 hands in a day before but the idea came up and I just figured I could do it," he told PokerStars Blog. "It was one of the toughest things I have ever accomplished, but I am proud I managed it."
The challenge was hosted on PokerStars by Russian forum Card Game Masters and nearly 10,000 fans logged on to watch innerpsy burn his way through more hands than some poker players go through in their lifetime.
Qualifier wins PKR Live III
A 21-year-old English man made history by winning the biggest PKR Live payout ever in London this week.
Vincent "vd12345" Diver qualified for the event for just $5 on PKR and went on to outlast 133 players to take the first place prize of PKR Live III for $33,500.
"It's an incredible sum to me and it still hadn't kicked in until I saw it on my PKR account," he said. "It has opened up a lot of doors for me."
This year's PKR Live required a buy-in of $1,000 and took place at the Loose Cannon in London. The event has grown in every year of its existence.
Grandmothers arrested for playing poker in Cyprus
Forty two women between the ages of 75 and 95 were arrested at private home game in Cyprus this week.
The police raided the house where the games took place in Ayios loannis and proceeded to charge the women for illegal gambling. The police also confiscated €100 in betting money, 546 playing chips and 530 playing cards.
Playing cards for money is illegal in Cyprus and the police regularly conduct raids at clubs, betting ships and various associations.
The women were playing poker and gin rummy.
The raid took place on Sunday at 6 p.m. after a series of complaints from neighbors about noise.
Zac Efron a poker pro?
Renowned director Richard Linklater says teen heartthrob Zac Efron is a poker shark.
Linklater told the UK's Press Association that although Efron looks clean cut, he will take your money if you play poker against him.
Linklator is currently directing the young star in Me and Orsen Welles, which sees Efron play teenager Richard Samuels who ends up working with a young Orsen Welles.
Efron has never played the popular WPT Celebrity Invitational, which takes place every year at the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles.
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Tags: 2009, 5, andy beal, cent, Donald Trump, Doyle Brunson, durrrr, EUR, HB, Jennifer Harman, king, legal, London, Loose Cannon, Los Angeles, Online Player, Phil Ivey, player, Poker, poker player, pokerstars, Pro, qualifier, Russia, Tom "durrrr" Dwan, tournament, women
James McManus Discusses the Poker History Book Cowboys Full
Earlier this decade, when poker wasn’t the behemoth that it is today, a noted writer by the name of James McManus accepted a job from Harper’s Magazine to cover the 2000 World Series of Poker (WSOP).
Far from looking at it as simply a poker entity and observe the proceedings, McManus decided to dovetail his story of the tournament with the ongoing murder investigation of the late Ted Binion and chronicle his efforts to play. After using a satellite to gain entrance into the Main Event, McManus went on to finish fifth in the $10,000 tournament and chronicled the whole story in what has become one of the poker world’s seminal books in “Positively Fifth Street,” which was released in 2003.
Since then, however, McManus has limited his writing about poker to newspapers and magazines. His last non-fiction book, “Physical: An American Checkup” (2006), looked at the American health care system and pointed out its problems even prior to this year’s debate on the issue. Now, one of the most notable scribes in the business has returned with what might be called the definitive book on the history of the game.
“Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker” was released on October 27th and documents, as best as possible, the development, growth, and history of what once was considered to be America’s game and has since expanded around the world. From the beginning of the creation of playing cards in China and Korea to today’s game, McManus nails the goal of putting a history to a pastime.
“Poker has a long-deserved reputation as the cheaters’ game, but the book reminds us that cheating has been a big part of baseball, football, cycling, boxing, horseracing, marriage, taxes, politics, warfare, and most other human activities,” McManus stated before the interview with Poker News Daily began. “It’s naive to single out poker as being overly luck-based or larcenous, especially when making laws banning some games, while encouraging others. For the State to encourage lotteries and bingo while banning poker is greedy and cynical.”
McManus continued by discussing the theory that poker is luck-based and how his book handles that issue. “I think the book makes it fairly clear how much luck is involved in other games, such as baseball and football, games that few people think of as being determined by luck,” McManus said. “Luck determines the winner of baseball’s World Series about as much as it does the winner of the WSOP.”
PND: After the success of “Positively Fifth Street,” why didn’t you write another poker book immediately?
McManus: Because I was sent by a magazine to get an executive physical at the Mayo Clinic, by another magazine to cover the debate about stem-cell research, and by another to write about emergency surgery my daughter had undergone. It seemed only natural that I would combine this material into a book, which turned out to be “Physical: An American Checkup” (2006).
In the meantime, poker still had my interest. My agent, editor, and I were all surprised that there was no single book on the history of what is clearly America’s card game and arguably the national pastime, especially during the boom years this decade. As such, I continued to research the poker story and it became “Cowboys Full.”
PND: What were some of the problems in writing a book on a subject that doesn’t have a well-known and documented history?
McManus: One problem was that I had no training as an historian; it’s one reason I call it the story of poker, not the history.
Another was that people tend not to keep records of their poker action, especially when they work as blacklegs and swindlers. You’re forced to rely on lore, hearsay, and the work of feature writers such as Mark Twain, who were paid to exaggerate for humorous or dramatic effect. The book addresses this problem directly and makes a serious effort to deduce what was actually going on. The reporting becomes more precise and historically reliable as I cover the last third of the 20th century, especially when famous hands began to be televised.
PND: What was more difficult, the research for or the writing of “Cowboys Full”?
McManus: Most definitely the research. I have 35 years of experience as a writer, but very little as a researcher, although Google and the Amazon search function made the job a lot easier than if I had to do it with microfiche. I also couldn’t have done it without David Schwartz’s hospitality and sage advice at the UNLV Center for Gaming Research or without his marvelous history of gambling, “Roll the Bones.”
PND: You look at poker from sides that the average person wouldn’t consider. When you talked to academics and scientists about poker and its effects on human history, did they understand what you were doing?
McManus: In many cases, I was relying on what people had written. People like John von Neumann, Oskar Morgenstern, David Halberstam, and the presidents and generals in charge of World War II and the Cold War were already dead while I was writing.
At the same time, I interviewed plenty of folks including Todd Brunson, Barry Greenstein, Jennifer Harman, Linda Johnson, Andy Beal, Crandell Addington, Chris Ferguson, Aaron Brown, Tony Holden, and Gabe Kaplan, who understood some of these issues a lot better than I did before I started talking to them.
PND: What was the most surprising aspect of poker you learned from your research?
McManus: How important its logic and psychology was, and continues to be, to the military and diplomatic strategies deployed in a world in which several countries, including some extremely unstable regimes, have nuclear weapons. In other words, how important poker-based game theory is to life beyond the green felt.
PND: What can the reader take away from “Cowboys Full” other than a grasp of the history of the game?
McManus: That it isn’t just a history lesson. It has dozens of pretty cool stories about actual games: riverboat hustles, friendly games in the White House and the homes of ordinary citizens, $40 million showdowns between Andy Beal and the corporation of Las Vegas pros captained by Doyle Brunson, Jennifer Harman facing off against Andy while waiting for her second kidney transplant, Stu Ungar making a WSOP final table from the intensive care unit, and Chris Moneymaker’s bluff against Sammy Farha. They’re all there and more.
PND: Now that you have followed up “Fifth Street,” are you finished writing books about poker?
McManus: No, but almost. I’m currently writing the final book of the trilogy. Book one was a memoir about the WSOP, which became “Positively Fifth Street.” Book two is the history of poker, which is “Cowboys Full.” Book three is a novel tentatively titled “The Winter Casino” about a very large tournament played in a city being threatened by an Al-Qaeda cell with a nuclear suitcase device.
Tags: 5, andy beal, Barry Greenstein, Captain, cent, China, Doyle Brunson, Editor, Gabe Kaplan, interview, Jennifer Harman, king, Las Vegas, law, Linda Johnson, News Daily, player, Poker, Poker News Daily, President, Pro, Todd Brunson, tournament, vegas, writer, WSOP
Phil Ivey Appears on the Cover of ESPN: The Magazine
2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP) November Nine member Phil Ivey graces the cover of the November 2nd issue of ESPN: The Magazine. The expose, entitled “4 Days, 3 Nights, $1 Million,” chronicles Ivey’s jet-setting exploits at the craps tables in casinos around the world.
Chad Millman followed Ivey from Foxwoods to Austria, with his article explaining Ivey’s stature in the industry: “Phil Ivey is a poker pro, but to call him that limits the scope of his game. It’s like saying Jay-Z is just a rapper. Ivey is an all-around player, a man with the need and nerve to wager obscene amounts on poker, pro and college sports, craps, or his own golf game.”
The tale began at Foxwoods in Connecticut, where Ivey, a whale, was put up in the Mashantucket Suite, a two-story gem. Instead of heading to play poker, his bread and butter, Ivey hit the craps tables in a private room, ordering the most expensive bottle of wine in the house (worth $2,100) to get the evening started off on the right foot. After 25 minutes at the table, Ivey was up $185,000, betting $30,000 to $50,000 per place bet. The wine didn’t even arrive until Ivey was ready to head out, leading Millman to comment, “We [got] it to go.”
After Ivey’s personal jet was grounded in Groton-New London Airport, the facility’s manager came out armed with a magazine featuring Ivey on its cover. On aviation officials questioning Ivey’s erratic flight pattern, he noted, “I guess they don’t know you.” Ivey signed the airport manager’s magazine copy before the poker pro and November Nine member tipped him $1,000 for having “to stay open so late.”
In Montreal, the crew headed to the local casino, where Ivey cashed a check for $1 million to seed his bankroll. Shortly after the start of his craps session, Ivey had bled $360,000. Then, Chris “Gotti” Lorenzo, his manager, took to the felt and rolled point after point, number after number, boosting Ivey’s arsenal of chips to $2.5 million after just 20 minutes of play. Then, Millman stepped up and lost Ivey $240,000 after hitting a seven with several place bets out. Ultimately, Ivey left Montreal up $752,000, or nearly $1 million after just 24 hours on the trip.
Ivey and company then headed for Amsterdam, where Millman painted a picture of Ivey’s social life: “Now that he’s made the WSOP’s final table, Lorenzo has pushed him to pull back the curtain a bit. He’s an A-list celeb among A-list celebs, texting with Michael Phelps about attending D.C. charity events, going backstage with Jay-Z, golfing with Michael Jordan.”
Millman also recapped the source of some of Ivey’s wealth, explaining that he took $16.6 million off of billionaire Andy Beal as part of the “Corporation” three years ago. He continued, “Last year, [Ivey] reportedly won more than $7 million online. And while he has already won $1.2 million for making the final table – and stands to earn $8 million more if he wins it all – he’s made side bets worth another $4 million with people who doubt him.”
The article also spotlighted several aspects of Ivey’s unique high-stakes lifestyle. Besides jet-setting around the world seemingly at will, Ivey drives an SLR McLaren worth $500,000 and a Rolls-Royce Phantom worth $400,000. He lives on a golf course in Las Vegas and put his sister through law school. He’s one of the key faces behind Full Tilt, the second largest online poker room in the world. Ivey’s “office,” so to speak, contains three computer monitors, five flat-screen televisions, and the arcade version of Pac-Man.
The journey ended with a Full Tilt Poker function in Salzburg and the poker pro having earned a crisp $1 million over the course of four days. Check out the November 2nd issue of ESPN The Magazine featuring Ivey.
The Nightly Turbo: POKERBLUFFS revealed, Legends Update, and Andy Beal in Trouble?
Andy Beal enters Casino-business with Donald Trump!
Real Estate and Casino mogul Donald Trump, who is also the host of tv’s reality series “The Apprentice”, and Beal Bank (Andy Beal) have decided to enter the casino business again.
-”Andy Beal likes to play the biggest games”
Andy Beal is one of the bankers who are going to invest to the company which Donald Trump lost. In February 2009 Trump Entertainment Resorts was filed for bankruptcy for the third time. Yesterday the company informed that they have chosen Donald Trump to lead it again.
Trump’s daughter Ivanka and the Texas based Beal Bank are the co-owners.
“We’re going to invest $100 million initially… it will be a wonderful company after we intelligently spend money to fix it.” Trump said.
This is the third trip to bankruptcy court for the firm’s three Atlantic City casinos. At the time, it listed assets of $2.06 billion and debt of $1.74 billion, as of Dec. 31.
“My previous investment in the company was destroyed by excessive and restrictive debt.” Trump says.
Andy Beal is known the be the player who has the biggest ever poker winning in a single day. In 2004 Beal won $11.7 million from “The Corporation” which included players like Chip Reese, Hamid Dastmalchi, Gus Hansen and Jennifer Harman.
“The Corporation” includes other players like Doyle Brunson, Todd Brunson, Ted Forrest, Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey, Barry Greenstein, Chau Giang and others.
It’s not a hidden fact that many high-roll players have been waiting to play against Beal again.
Beal started his career as a blackjack player. In 2001 Beal began to visit Bellagio to participate in high-stakes games.
By the end of their matches they were playing staggering $100.000/$200.000 Limit Hold’em with more than $20 million on the table.
In 2006 Beal challenged “The Corporation” again and lost about $16.6 million to Phil Ivey in three days.
Source: Pokeri
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