Call Me Lumpy: My Leave It to Beaver Days and Other Wild Hollywood Life (32 page)

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Authors: Frank Bank,Gibu Twyman

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BOOK: Call Me Lumpy: My Leave It to Beaver Days and Other Wild Hollywood Life
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Page 159
They had stacks and stacks of cash.
I remember this night so well because it was the first New Year's Eve I didn't spend with my parents.
How's that for a guy who thought he was the hottest item ever to hit Hamilton High?
But it was true.
I may have been a bounder and I was always out runnin' around, but I always spent New Year's Eve with Leonard and Sylvia.
I had made it a tradition. I never went out with the guys or dated on New Year's Eve.
I enjoyed being with my parents.
But I was 22 now.
I was entering a new time of life.
This was my first big night out on New Year's ever.
And I was doin' it right at the chemin de fer table in Lost Wages being Sean Freaking Connery.
I think the three of us guys put up $200 apiece.
That was our grubstake.
The first guy takes the money, sits down and does OK.
Then it's my turn to sit in.
I turn to my two partners.
I adjust my tie.
I go, "Bond. James Bond. International exports."
I am looking ultra-cool.
I am looking so clean, man.
Ah, it was so great.
I am looking straight at the Asian woman, an absolute Thoroughbred of a beauty, who tonight has chosen purple hair and a purple dress with a banded collar for her racing colors.
Right behind her is the prize filly in the place, her daughter. Her daughter comes up in a bright yellow silk dress with bright yellow hair, and her daughter is flat-out gorgeous.
You know what?
She had boobs.
We're talking Asian chick with boobs.
This is an unusual thing.
Mama-san is looking really good and daughter-san is looking extra good. And I am starting to stare at this girl.
Just about then, though, they pass me the shoe containing the cards. I put out $40 or something.
I win the hand.
I could write that same sentence 16 times in a row.
 
Page 160
Because that is what happened to me next at the chemin de fer table.
I held the shoe for 16 straight passes.
Of the 16, I had two natural 9's and three natural 8's. One hand I beat an 8 with a natural 9.
The Asian woman with the purple hair and purple dress and her entirely edible daughter in yellow-on-yellow are betting right with me.
They are hanging on my every move.
I am the center of their universe.
I want to say they were now betting $5,000 a hand on me.
And I made her and her daughter about $100,000.
I made for our group about five grand.
I was so proud.
I felt so cool.
I was James Goddam Bond.
In fact, let Commander Bond beat that16 straight passes.
I'd like to see Q dream up some fountain pen or laser beam or exploding briefcase to help James win 16 straight passes.
It was certainly one of the highlights of my life.
I was sure I was gonna win every time I played the tables in Las Vegas.
Of course, I was a stupid 22-year-old kid.
Little did I know.
I was just learning that the two sentences that built Las Vegas were:
"I feel lucky."
"I got a hunch."
But I was a lucky gambler that night.
Extremely lucky.
And my success that night also probably had much to do with my becoming a professional poker player.
Yep. Something else you didn't know about me, huh?
But it's true.
Starting in the late '80s, and over a period of about five or six years, I was one of the best poker players in the West andundoubtedlyone of the best in the entire country.
Think not?
Well, chew on these numbers for a minute.
In 1990, I entered 73 tournaments and made the final table 65 times.
Sometimes up to 500 people would start in the tournament. The final table is the last 10.
I would say average tournaments were 100 to 200 people. But there were a lot of tournaments that would have 50 tables of 10 each.
I won a lot of money.
A lot.
 
Page 161
I don't think I'm going to tell you exactly how much because I've already worked that out with the IRS and I don't want to have to go into it again with them.
But let's just say ''a lot" means six-figure type of "lots."
I loved making the money, of course, but in a way it truly was beside the main point of playing poker.
The money was the way you kept score.
Fine.
But the main point of playing poker was the challenge the game offers.
The excitement.
The scene.
The action.
Remember those words I've used to describe much of the rest of my life?
They applied big-time to the world of competitive poker.
I was always striving to improve myself.
And I found out a truly fascinating thing about the game.
I could tell more about a person's character from playing poker than almost any other thing in life.
I found out that the guys that would cheat at cards would cheat at life.
I found out that guys who used to win all the money in the card games were more successful in other parts of life.
They were brighter. They used their heads.
I found out the guys who had real courage and the guys who were chicken.
I could sit there and be friends with a guy for two years and go out with him sociallyhim and his wife and his family. But I could find out more about his real character in one night of playing cards with him.
Whether he was stupid or whether he was wise. Or whether he was honest, whether he was dishonest. Whether he had courage or whether he was a coward. Or whether he had brains or was a total fool.
What interests me about poker is that it's a lesson in how to play people.
It's learning how to play the whole world.
To be good at poker you must have three things:
(1) To be good at mathematics. You must remember cards that have been played and laws of statistical probability.
(2) To know the strategy. The classic hands to hold, the classic hands to fold in the classic situations.
(3) To know psychology. This is the most important aspect of all. You must be able to read the people in the gametheir strengths and weaknesses of character. You must be able to understand and conceal your own strengths and weaknesses.
And then one of the other things that really turned me on about poker
 
Page 162
after I started playing, was the colorful people that I met.
As you know by now, I love characters.
You don't meet guys like Wild Bill every day.
But I did, nearly every day, in poker.
Cigarette Mary.
Visor Mary.
Denny the Dog.
Then there was Buddha. He had a big old shaved head, was a huge Seahawks fan and raised on everything.
There was Eskimo John.
And The Rabbi, whose actual name was David Rabbi and was kind of a sleaze.
Then we had Table-Top Tom.
And we had Hans the Tuna, one of the greatest tournament players ever. He was steady, he could read people very well and was excellent at managing his money.
We played with people so colorful they'd have made Damon Runyon sit up in his box.
I'm tellin' ya, the people you played with, was the game. I loved it.
These people were the characters' characters.
Playing against them just fed right back into my joy and fun in observing people.
And then the cherry on top of all this wonderful dessert-tray of zany humanity was easily the most amazing and interesting person I got to observe playing poker.
Rebecca.
My wife of 15 years.
That's right. We got to do this together.
We were living in Rancho Mirage when we dived headfirst into the world of poker.
I dived first. I got into poker by just starting to observe the way people played in casinos.
And then I got OK.
And then I started entering some small tournaments. I just went in and signed up. That was it,
And after about six months, I got really good.
And then after about a year, I think I got great.
I played a lot of tournaments in Las Vegas. Then at the card clubs in Los Angeles, at the Bicycle Club and the Commerce Club.
I started playing at the first Indian reservation in California that allowed Eve poker. It was in Indio.
And the coolest thing of all, Rebecca joined in. And she started getting
 
Page 163
really good at tournaments, too.
One year, there were four major tournaments in Indio. They lasted two days. Rebecca and I won all four of 'em.
She won two and I won two. It was in 1990.
When other players saw us in a tournament, they knew they were up against competition,
When the tournament started, they said, "Well, we know a couple people who'll be at the last table."
And that was a given.
On those occasions when we faced each other at the final table, it was tough competition.
Down and dirty.
Am I willing to beat her butt?
Oh, most definitely.
You bet.
Is she willing to beat my butt?
She loves it. Loves it.
She tries to fake me out of my sneakers.
She's good at it, too.
She knows me, knows my personality and my thinking so well, she can play me.
She's got me good a couple of times. You bet she did.
In fact, Becka's got the biggest trophy in the family. Six feet tall or something.
She won that one at Indio. I think it was a $25,000 tournament.
It was called "Stairway to the Stars."
We were playing Texas Hold 'Em.
We'd enter everything from $10 and $25 tournaments to $5,000 tournaments.
A $25 tournament means you've got a $25 buy-in, but you could win $1,000.
Most of the local, week-night tournaments that we used to play in, it was anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000 to the winner.
Not monster-high stakes.
We're not talking Sting money changing hands here.
We're not talking actual James Bond "Casino Royale" stakes on a nightly basis.
But still, significant sums could be won.
And it was fun.
That was one of our social activities. We met a lot of wonderful people over the years.
Becka and I are soulmates.
I have been so lucky to have found her.

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