Big Denny Learns Zen Poker

Everyone has regrets. One of my greatest occurred when I was doing daily tournament write-ups for The Bicycle Casino. In one event, Mel Judah was heads up with Stan Goldstein. Frustrated by a series of last-card drawouts, Judah threw the cards in with a tad more force than necessary, and they came very close to sailing off the table. Now, Mel is a great guy, and I do not wish him any ill, but I will forever regret that those cards didn't fall, because if they had, Judah would have been penalized, Goldstein then would have been playing alone at the table, and I could have written a Pulitzer Prize-winning headline: "Goldstein Plays With Himself!"

Sure, I would have been fired, but it would have been worth it.

Ever since, I have been looking for a way to salvage that line for a column. Then, a while back, I received an E-mail from a gentleman named Larry Phillips to compliment me on my tournament reports. Phillips, who posts frequently on rgp under the name "Wayno," has authored five books, and after a few Internet exchanges, he was kind enough to send me two of them.

One of the books, Hemingway on Writing, consisted of a collection of quotes from the celebrated author on the craft of writing. I wasn't very interested, because I already knew what kind of sentences Hemingway writes: short - very short.

Take his famous novel, The Sun Also Rises. It's a story about a man whose love affair is doomed because a wound he suffered in World War I ended his sex life. Here's the opening passage:

"I served in the war. The Great War. I was wounded. My manhood was shot off. It hurt." (Maybe Hemingway should have titled the book, The Sun Also Rises - But Not Much Else.)

OK, you get the idea. But Wayno's other book sounded more interesting. It had the intriguing title of Zen and the Art of Poker. The aim of the book was to apply the mental disciplines of Zen to the game of poker, allowing a player to achieve a state of tranquility, calmness, and control at all times.

I was a little skeptical when I noticed that one of the endorsements on the back cover came from Phil Hellmuth. But the more I read, the more impressed I became. (Andy Glazer, by the way, had numbered it sixth on his list of recommended poker books. He also told me he's mad at Phillips for beating him to the idea.)

Obviously, the author admits, many Zen tenets conflict with poker. For example, he writes, Zen believes in banishing the ego, and poker players generally believe in the ego. Zen takes a dim view of verbalizing and reasoning, while poker requires empirical reasoning. And Zen embraces poverty, whereas poker players do not (at least not deliberately).

Still, the Zen philosophy - in that it teaches calmness, patience, and stillness - can be useful in poker, Phillips advises. I wondered: Could the book really help tranquilize anyone who gets upset at bad beats - which probably includes every poker player in the world? If so, it might make cardrooms, which usually sound like nurseries full of crying babies, become as peaceful as rose gardens.

I tried to think of who had the worst temper in the world and would thus provide a litmus test for the book's effectiveness. No contest. Big Denny, of course. When he plays poker, he angrily splashes chips, cusses the dealers, throws cards, and sometimes tables. And that's just in his own casino. It's easy to identify a Barstow Card Casino dealer. He has either a bandage on his head or a limb in a cast. So, I decided to see if the book could help Denny rein in his destructive behavior.

Sure enough, as I drove into the parking lot of Big Denny's Card Casino, I could hear him bellowing all the way inside. Two tables and several dealers were lying upside down near the entrance. When I walked in, three floormen were doing their best to prevent him from choking one of his own dealers. After he calmed down to just his everyday rage, I asked if I could talk to him privately.

"Denny," I warned him, "one of these days you're going to kill one of your dealers, providing you don't die first from a stroke. And your attitude isn't helping your game, either. You've got to learn to control yourself, and I have a book here that can help you. It's called Zen and the Art of Poker."

"Never heard of da book," Denny replied, still shaking his fist at the cowering dealer. "I hope it's funnier den dat stupid Read 'em an' Laugh t'ing you wrote."

"No, no," I explained. "This is a serious book. It applies the principles of Zen to poker so that we may achieve mastery over ourselves." I read the opening sentence: "Zen means awakening - awareness; to be awake in the present - in the moment. It comes from the Sanskrit word dhyana (pronounced dee-yahna), meaning 'meditation.' It is a tradition of Buddhism that originated in India, grew in China, and came to fulfillment in Japan."

Denny looked blank, so I tried to offer examples by reading from the book. "Look," I said, "one of the first things you are told to do is to detach your ego."

Denny gave me a strange look. "Detach my eagle? Does it look like I got a eagle attached to me, Maxey?"

"No, Denny, ego. That means pride, vanity, conceit. It means you should act humble and not get into ego wars with players." I flipped through the book to Page 71. "Look, Denny, this chapter explains it. It's called 'Bumper Cars and the Head Butting of Rams: The Art of Conflict Avoidance.' It says that playing poker is like driving bumper cars at an amusement park. You should steer around them instead of looking for confrontations. It's like young rams butting heads on a mountaintop. The wise old ram detours and walks right through the territory they were fighting over. So, you quietly pick up small pots and avoid dangerous head banging with back-and-forth betting. Get it now?"

"Yeah, Maxey, dat sounds good. I'm gonna be da wise old ram an' stop buttin' heads wit' dese guys."

"Good luck, Denny, you can do it," I said encouragingly, never for a second believing it. Sure enough, less than five minutes later, a loud "bonk" reverberated through the casino. I rushed up to his table and was dismayed to see a player dressed in overalls stretched out on the floor, a nasty red bruise spreading on his forehead. "Denny!" I screamed. "Did you head butt this poor farmer?"

"Of course not, Maxey," he protested, the picture of innocence. "He check-raised me an' beat my kings full wit' aces full. I tried ta reach over da table an' shake hands wit' him like a gentleman, an my head musta touched his, accidental-like."

"Wise old owl, huh?" I muttered. "Denny, this book can't help you unless you do what it says. You can't keep abusing the other players, because that's self-defeating. Look what it says here in the chapter called 'Respect Your Opponents.' It quotes a proverb: 'If you seek vengeance, dig two graves.' The author says that if you want to be in harmony with yourself, the whole table should be in harmony. So, just be considerate. If you beat someone, be courteous. Don't lord it over him. Can you promise to at least try to do this one thing?"

Denny gave me his sacred word of honor. This time I stood behind him to offer moral support - and keep an eye on him. As play continued, he was keeping his word to be courteous and pleasant, though obviously with some effort. Finally, a big hand developed. With a board of A-9-9-2, Denny, who had made deuces full on the turn, got into a full-scale raising war with a player who, unknown to him, had flopped aces full and slow-played them. The river brought Big Denny a one-outer deuce. After another round of multiple raises, he proudly turned over his quads and hauled in the pot of the night.

"Be gracious, Denny, be gracious," I urgently whispered in his ear.

For once, Big Denny was true to his word. "Ya played dat hand perfectly," he told his fuming opponent. "I got very lucky to draw out on ya like dat."

The player was not appeased. "Lucky?" he stormed. "I call it stupid. Only an idiot would have chased with deuces on a flop like that. Who taught you how to play - Dirty Wally?"

I could see the red rising up the back of Big Denny's neck like lava in a volcano. "Dat does it!" he bellowed. Reaching across the table, he enveloped his hapless opponent's neck in his massive hand and began beating him over the head with the Zen poker book, then began tearing out the pages one by one and stuffing them down the guy's throat.

"Detach my eagle?" he screamed, totally out of control. "I'll detach your eagle!"

It took the Barstow Card Casino's entire security force 15 minutes to subdue him with clubs, stun guns, and tranquilizer injections. Finally, the Valium and Thorazine accomplished what Zen and the Art of Poker could not.

"Dat was unconscionable an' antisocial of me," a thoroughly medicated Big Denny said as he smiled down on the player who was now being loaded onto a stretcher. "For dat behavior lapse, I hereby assesses myself a five-minute penalty."

I did not care to stick around until the drugs wore off. Picking up what was left of the book, I beat a hasty retreat.

Well, Wayno, it was a noble experiment. Maybe next time I'll try it out on someone a trifle less belligerent. Mike Tyson, perhaps. In the meantime, I'd appreciate it if you could send me replacements for the first 29 pages that ended up in that guy's mouth.