Posted by Junelli 1:41 PM
Beal's Story: The Professor, Banker, & Suicide King
By Gene Bromberg

A look at Michael Craig's rendering of the tale of the poker games between the Corporation and Andy Beal, billionaire and big-game hunter.

The Professor, The Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside The Richest Poker Game Of All Time by Michael Craig. Warner Books, June 2005.
During the first season of the World Poker Tour attentive viewers might have noticed hints that suggested tournament poker wasn't the only form of the game that had made a quantum leap forward. John Hennigan, in the very first WPT broadcast, was quoted in a graphic as saying, "Well, tomorrow's another day" after he reportedly lost $1 million in a poker game. Later in the year another graphic showed that Jennifer Harman had won a $2 million pot at the Bellagio -- the biggest single pot in poker history. And at the WPT Championship we learned that Ted Forrest had won AND lost over $1 million in a session of poker.

These were staggering sums, even compared to the $2.5 million paid out to Chris Moneymaker for winning the 2003 World Series of Poker. Moneymaker had to survive four days and 838 opponents to earn his fortune; Harman won hers in a single pot. The quick factoids broadcast on the WPT hardly answered the obvious question: Who are these people playing for such stratospheric stakes, and what sort of "game" involves risking millions of dollars on the turn of a card?

The answers to those questions can be found in The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King, by Michael Craig. The book is about the richest poker game of all time, but it's not just the incredible sums involved that make this one of the most compelling books ever written about poker. Craig's book examines the lives and motivations of the best high-stakes poker players in the world, and how a unique individual craving a unique poker experience spurred these poker titans to join forces.

The individual in question is Andy Beal, a publicity-shy billionaire who made his money in banking and real estate. Beal first visited the Bellagio poker room in February 2001, when he was in town on business and had some time on his hands. He played some mid-limit Texas Holdem poker, then moved up to a $400/$800 table, where one of his opponents was Todd Brunson, the son of Doyle Brunson and a top money player himself. Beal and Brunson eventually played heads-up, and that’s when Beal revealed himself as more than just a “live one” with extra-deep pockets.

“I want to play higher,” Andy told Todd.

“Okay,” Todd said, “I’ll play you higher.”

“No, not this time. I’d like to come back and play a lot higher, like $10,000-$20,000.”

Those were even bigger stakes than the top pros played at the Bellagio’s Table One, where the best cash players in the world sat down every night to win and lose fortunes. Beal sat down with Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese, John Hennigan, Jennifer Harman, Chau Giang, and Todd Brunson -- and won $100,000. But playing a full ring game didn’t excite Beal the way playing a single opponent did, and when he returned a month later Beal announced he only wanted to play heads-up, for the biggest stakes in history. With every top player anxious to sit down with Beal there was only one way to give the billionaire the game he wanted while cutting all the pros in on the action. Doyle Brunson arranged for all the top players to take a piece of each other’s action and play Beal one at a time. This pooled their bankrolls, eliminated any competition for Beal’s attention, and gave a wealthy amateur the gamble he was looking for.

The rest of the book is about the huge heads-up matches Beal played on-and-off over three years against the best limit Texas Holdem players in the world, the stakes escalating as the game went on, and how the inevitable swings affected both the billionaire and the “Corporation” facing him. When Beal decided he wanted to devise a way to beat the best poker players in the world, he didn’t sit down with a bunch of poker books and study up. After all, the players he faced had written those books. Beal had made his fortune investing in properties and portfolios others thought unprofitable, and this ability to trust his judgment even if it flew in the face of convention gave him the confidence take on the best poker players in the world at their own game. I won’t spoil the fun by revealing the devices (both conceptual and mechanical) Beal came up with to combat the pros’ superior skill and experience, but let it suffice to say Beal filled his poker arsenal with some unusual weapons.

In a game that lasted three years, individual hands are of little consequence, and to his enormous credit Craig does not fill the pages with hand histories and bad beat stories. Instead Craig does some serious reporting and shows us what the lives of big cash-game players (including Harman, Forrest, Barry Greenstein, and Howard Lederer, the “Professor” from the title) are like, and what happens when these gamblers play for stakes even THEY find scary. It is remarkable to read about these players battling Beal with millions on the line … at the same time they were playing events in the 2004 World Series of Poker. Tournaments brought these players fame, money and much-coveted bracelets, but the REAL action happened away from the cameras, as they risked their bankrolls and reputations against a solitary determined opponent.

Whether Beal will again test himself against the best players in the world is up in the air. After some uncomplimentary (and inaccurate) articles about the big game, Beal challenged Doyle Brunson in a letter published in Card Player Magazine to a match in Dallas. Brunson replied in a letter of his own that they would be interested in playing again, but not under the conditions Beal set out. Since then the two sides have gone back and forth over locations, stakes, and player rosters, so it's far from certain that the game (an $80 million freeze-out) will ever come to pass. If it does, poker fans can hope that Michael Craig is there again to report on the richest game in history.

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