The art of the deal

Have patience. Know the odds. Watch your cash flow. Fold your losers. Enjoy the rush of success. We’re talking both poker and business, pally.

Hold ’em. Fold ’em. Count your money when the dealin’s done.
Kenny Rogers might just as well have been talking about business.

You’ve got to know when to stay with your marketing plan, know when to reconsider. You’ve got to know when to invest, when to sell, walk away, run.

Poker has become a business in itself – big business. And playing poker is like running a business, whether you’re in for a single hand or you’re using your nest egg to bankroll a full-time career at the tables.

Forbes magazine says 50 million Americans now play the game. Justin Marchand of Card Player magazine says online poker generates annual profits of $2 billion for site operators.

The Web site Pokerpulse.com estimates 1.7 million players played for money online in April and that online players wagered $199.9 million during a recent 24-hour period.

Professional players have become celebrities, branding such products as instructional tapes and how-to books while signing endorsement deals for online casinos.

Figures from the Washington State Gambling Commission testify that the business of poker has increased in Washington. But the two are closer kin than that, aligned in the psyche by more than simple profits.

Frank Moceri of Puyallup started playing poker in 1953 when he reported aboard the USS Cobbler. He later went into the wine business, and is now semi-retired.

Success at business and poker, he says, requires similar talents and skills.

“You’ve got to have patience. You’ve got to know what the odds are. You’ve got to wait for the right hand. You learn that in business: You may not make the deal today, but you can make it tomorrow.”

Eventually, if you’re good, the deal does get made.

“I was trying to sell to a distributor in New York,” Moceri recalls. “When I made it, I felt fantastic. It’s the same thing in poker. Once you get it, you have a great flight home.

“It’s the same kind of rush.”

Just like business.



Bill Meyer of Wauna, who once owned a drug store on Tacoma’s Hilltop, plays Texas Hold ’em on the Internet.

“You’ve got to be a little fearless. You can’t be too timid. It helps to figure odds. You keep learning, learning, learning all the time. It’s communication.”

Like in business.

“You do have to think of it as a business,” said Tom Jones of Milton.

Jones has managed card rooms and has played in private games since the 1960s. Also a former restaurateur and insurance salesman, he continues to play.

“The mental game is like operating a business. It’s like being a carpenter – you can’t go to work if you don’t have any tools. You can’t play poker if you don’t have a bankroll. As a result, you have to think of it as a business.

“You have to maintain cash flow. You have a very strict set of rules.”

Jones said most players will play perhaps half of the hands they’re dealt.

“A professional player will play maybe one of 15. They’ll fold most hands. Most people would be bored out of their minds trying to make a living at playing poker,” he said.

“It becomes a job, and it’s probably harder than a regular job where you get paid every week.

“In poker, you can sometimes go weeks without getting paid. There’s a great deal of stress and pressure.”

“You could say that there are similarities,” said Suzanne Settle, who owns Bear Mountain Tactical Supply and Bear Mountain Tomahawks on Anderson Island.

Similarities, such as “knowing when to stop. You need to say when that’s enough. You just gotta know when this is a good time to fold your cards – like in business when you don’t want to overextend your risks. You can’t bluff all the time.”


Big business

Among many, one South Sound casino also has seen the green.

Jack Newton, general manager at Freddie’s Club in Fife, recalls when the club’s poker room opened three years ago.

It was dark and uncomfortably crowded, even with a small band of players. “We only had half a game,” he said. “One game, half a day. We saw it amplify over the coming months. Now we’ve got three or four games daily. It’s 10 times the revenue from the first month we opened. It’s taken a life of its own.”

Newton was initiated into the world of poker and casinos decades ago in Las Vegas when he worked for the famous Jack Binion at the Horseshoe.

Poker then, he said, “was lower class, back-of-the-room, smoky, six-shooter.“

Now it’s different.

It’s evolved. At Freddie’s, Newton concentrates on providing “good food, good service. We don’t tolerate bad language. I’ll let it go once, but I’ll stop it.”

Newton estimates that 70 percent of his players are “business people, sales managers for car lots, doctors, people who own their own companies. Truck drivers, grandmothers. Poker has caught hold of the general consciousness. It has a way of focusing you in the ‘now.’”

In Las Vegas in the Horseshoe days, the regular players were there to take advantage of the tourists who came through town thinking they knew wired sevens from a can of Shinola.

“The mentality of it has changed,” Newton said. “There are now a lot of people who have read the books and seen it on TV. They study the game and play very well.”

Freddie’s, like other casinos, makes money either from an entry fee, at tournaments, or from a “rake,” in which the house takes a cut of every pot. At Freddie’s, the rake is 10 percent of the total money bet up to a maximum of $3.

But that’s not the only source of income.

“Poker does a number of things,” Newton said. “It brings people to the table, they buy drinks, they buy food.”

They also play table games – blackjack, pai gow, four-card poker and such – before and after playing poker. Newton estimates a “drop” of between $2,500 and $3,000 daily from poker players alone.

“We make money,” he said.

The average player plays for three hours, and Newton says he needs a base of at least 2,000 players to support three tables.

“I have a base of 2,000 people who play at least one time a month,” he said. “It’s not the same people every day. I think you need about 500 people per table to keep a table going all day.”

His games go until closing, which these days means nearly dawn.

“Poker hasn’t come close to reaching its peak,” he said.


One dealer speaks

Michael Palmus of Shelton deals poker at Little Creek Casino.

He has also dealt – and will this year deal – at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. He was the dealer at the final table for the 2003 World Series won by the then-unknown player Chris Moneymaker.

“Just like in business, you have to take a risk in the first place, just to open,” Palmus said. “You’re going to play loose in the beginning to capture chips, and then you’ll have to tighten down. You have to be very mathematically sound for the simple fact that you have to calculate pot odds, and how many cards are left in the deck.

“Is it a calculated risk to put this much money in the pot? Is it in their best interest to buy this stock? Is it going to grow or go down?”

Incidentally, organizers at this year’s World Series – which began Friday and runs through July 15 – anticipate 6,600 players, many of whom will buy in with an entrance fee of $10,000. Dealers will earn upward of $20,000.

After Palmus dealt that final table, $2.5-million winner Moneymaker offered a tip, as winners do.

“He showed me the best possible time that any person could possible have, and I don’t drink or do drugs,” Palmus said. “He spent $25,000.”

Rather than describe that night on the town, Palmus prefers to let imagination rule.

There are, of course, those who see gambling as a sin, a wrecker of lives, another temptation in Satan’s quiver.

“They even say God and the devil played poker,” said Jack Newton.

Business maybe. But poker as religion?

It’ll never happen.

C.R. Roberts: 253-597-8535

c.r.roberts@thenewstribune.com


Poker in print AND on film

Books

“Doyle Brunson’s Super System 2”

by Doyle Brunson

“The Theory of Poker”

by David Sklansky

“Poker, The Real Deal”

by Phil Gordon

“Caro’s Book of Poker Tells”

by Mike Caro

“Poker Aces: The Stars of Tournament Poker”

by Ron Rose

Movies

“Rounders”

with Matt Damon and Edward Norton

“The Cincinnati Kid”

with Steve McQueen and Edward G. Robinson

“Luckytown”

with Kirsten Dunst and James Caan

“Maverick”

with Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster and James Garner

“California Split”

with George Segal and Elliott Gould raking it in


BY THE NUMBERS

The latest figures available from the Washington State Gambling Commission:


PIERCE COUNTY

In the third quarter of 2003, card game operators collected $286,737 in fees from 17 poker tables.

In the fourth quarter of 2003, the same tables collected $402,000.

In the first quarter of 2004, 15 tables collected $632,000.

In the second quarter of 2004, 28 tables collected $804,000.


Statewide

In the third quarter of 2003, 119 tables collected $4.5 million.

In the fourth quarter of 2003, 139 tables collected $5.3 million.

In the first quarter of 2004, 157 tables collected $7 million.

In the second quarter of 2004, 195 tables collected $7.9 million. A DOZEN poker Terms worth knowing


Bad beat: When a lucky draw for an inferior hand beats a predictable winner

Crossroader: Poker player looking for a game or headed for games in different locations, e.g. traveling from Georgia to Alabama to Texas and back again. Nefarious connotation.

Gaft: The game you’re best at

Nickel: A $5 chip

Prop player: Shills who are paid by the house to get a game started. Old Las Vegas term.

Rake: The fee or commission taken by the house

Ring game: Playing for money. A cash game.

Slowplay: (verb) To pass or make a minimal bet with an excellent hand, in expectation of setting a trap. Also: sandbag.

Tell: A mannerism, such as trembling hands or a predictable way of stacking chips, that indicates when a player might be bluffing or might have an excellent hand

Tilt: When a person starts aggressively playing inferior hands and hoping to get lucky.

Toke: A tip for the dealer.

Trips: Three of a kind. Also: a set.

http://www.thenewstribune.com/business - 2005-06-07 04:54:21