I Had the Time of My Life, and I Owe it All to the World Poker Tour!

Well, I gotta tell you, it was unreal. It was absolutely the most exciting thing to happen to me in poker in, well, I can't even remember how long. I am still walking on air. I have been playing poker since 1977, and thought I had seen it all, done it all, and lived it all. Well, I learned otherwise during the recent L.A. Poker Classic at Commerce Casino, where the World Poker Tour's $200,000 freeroll invitational was held, and guess what? I got invited to play! That's right; the WPT asked me to play as one of its entrants! Of course, knowing the caliber of players involved, to me it was like shooting hoops with Michael Jordan, and trust me, I am no Spud Webb!

I always believe in playing to win and having a winning attitude, but I also am a realist, and was looking at this as an opportunity - not to win, but to try to last long enough to learn something. And, learn I did! I have been involved with the WPT since day one, and take care of all of the final-table stats at WPT events. So, by letting me play, the WPT was risking the loss of its statistician for the final table - but they also knew there was a slim chance of that happening! But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.

About two months ago, I got an invitation in the mail from the World Poker Tour to play in this event. It was a $200,000 freeroll that you could not buy in to. That's right, there was no entry fee, and only a few ways that you could get into the event. Some of those ways were to pony up, in advance, the $25,300 buy-in for the final WPT event at Bellagio, be a member of the Poker Hall of Fame, be a world champion (a winner of the main event at the World Series of Poker), be an invited "celebrity," or be given an exemption invitation from one of the charter members of the tour. Well, since it is the WPT's event, it had some exemptions of its own, so both Linda Johnson and I were invited to play. Linda was thrilled to be able to play in the event. I was, well, kind of underwhelmed. It was sorta cool, I thought, but really no big deal. Heck, I have played in a million tourneys before, so what was the big deal of playing in another? But this one was against all of the best players in the world, playing no-limit hold'em, a game I can hardly spell, let alone play! Boy, was I wrong. I had so much fun, I can't begin to tell you, but that won't stop me from trying!

Linda had played in the main event at the WSOP a few years back, so she had some idea of what it would be like to start with $10,000 in tournament chips and play no-limit hold'em with long rounds and plenty of play. Obviously, I had not thought all of this through properly, or I would have been rightfully excited as well. Although this tournament was structured to play pretty fast (it was a freeroll, after all), there was enough play in it that I got to taste some real high-limit action and play among the world's best players and some Hollywood celebrities. I had the chance to play and/or chat with (among others) Mickey Rooney, Dick Van Patten, Lenny Dykstra, Gabe Kaplan, Tim Conway Jr., Tony Lo Bionco, Don Cheadle, Connie Stevens, Willie Garson, Kato Kaelin, Dom Deluise, Lou Diamond Phillips, Meat Loaf, and Norm MacDonald. The WPT's regular announcer, Vince Van Patten, also was there, but he was so busy doing edits and such to the taping from the previous day's event that he got blinded off! Of course, he took that in the good-natured way that one would expect, as he is one classy guy. They all were very cool people, but it was Dom Deluise who impressed me the most. I mustered up my courage during the first break and approached Dom to tell him how much I had enjoyed his "feel good" movies for so many years, and that I really liked the fact that he always played such likeable characters. One sweet man he turned out to be. He was so sincere and genuine that I just wanted to sit and chat. He is every bit as nice in person as he is in the many roles he plays on the big screen.

So, what does all this have to do with poker? Not a whole lot, I guess. It was just such a fun event for me, and I learned so much about no-limit hold'em that I wanted to write about it. In the next column or two, I will write about some of the hands I played (or misplayed), and what I learned from them after discussing my plays with some of my poker mentors. Until then, class dismissed.

As always, please contact me with your poker-related questions and comments. I personally answer all e-mail that I receive. For information about upcoming Card Player Cruises, please see the website at www.cardplayercruises.com.