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The Age (Australia)
January 6, 2008
Aussie Millions deals itself in to the big time
Caption: Aussie Millions tournament players (from left) Sunday reporter Reid Sexton, Sara Bilney and Michael Vartan. Sexton did not win.
He's a bit flushed, but Reid Sexton tells it straight about No Limit Texas Hold 'Em poker.
I'M SITTING at a table with eight other players and not one looks a card shark.
In polo shirts, jeans and caps, they are hardly the sinister types you expect to find huddled around a dealer in a casino corner.
But this is poker — no limit Texas hold 'em, to be exact — a game of big stakes and bigger lies that has crawled from smoky back rooms to become a favourite hobby of the world's jetsetters.
Any doubt I have about it hitting the big time vanish like — well, a gambler's lucky streak — when I find myself opposite my old hairdresser, who looks better suited to a catwalk than a card game.
As a guest of Crown Casino — and after grudgingly agreeing to a deal for any winnings to go to charity — I am seated with 536 other players in the casino's cavernous underground poker room for the first Aussie Millions tournament, which runs until January 20.
Each has paid $1100 for a seat — with the top 50 finishers guaranteed a share in more than $500,000 prizemoney.
Maybe that's why the punter on my left swore and stalked away after "busting out".
On my right is Hollywood star Michael Vartan, flown in as part of the casino marketing blitz that has thrust Melbourne from a city with almost no poker scene to the host of the world's sixth-largest poker event.
But it's not hard to see why typical Melburnians are prepared to shell out more than a week's wages to join a high-stakes game.
Anyone who plays will tell you it's the gambling world's great leveller — teenagers can play alongside the elderly and a tournament victory you can get you to Las Vegas for a shot at million-dollar jackpots.
In Australia, poker's popularity exploded when Melburnian Joe Hachem won $7.5 million in one game at Vegas. Casino dealers and supervisors still talk about the "Hachem effect".
My own shot at glory starts well when I back myself to hit a straight on the first hand.
And hit I do, when the five of clubs — the last communal card to be dealt — gives me a seven-high straight and the pot.
As my rivals chat politely my run continues — partly skill, mostly luck — until I'm the table's chip leader.
Time flies in the bowels of the casino, where the amount of hope — or greed — contrasts directly with the levels of natural light, and I realise I have been playing for an hour and barely said a word.
The rattle of thousands of chips and the dealers' repeated instructions have a hypnotic effect, but the reverie is broken every time someone "busts out" for the last time — and lets rip with an expletive.
My own luck leaks away about an hour into the game, when the same hands that gain me the lead start losing it.
For a while, I feel bulletproof, but then my calls get sloppy and instead of cutting my losses I try to buy my way out of trouble — usually a recipe for disaster if you haven't got the cards to back them up.
With about half my original chip stack left I am dealt a king and a three, a hand that becomes a lot better when everyone folds except Michael Vartan. It gets even better when another king comes out, until he puts me all in, meaning I can either cut my losses or fight for money and glory.
Confident my luck is about to change, I choose the latter.
He looks pretty serious — but, then, the man is a paid actor.
When he shows his king and ace the charade is up. I have been given a lesson in one of the game's great truisms — think, but not too much.
© 2008 The Age Company Ltd.
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