Calculate the Odds on This One!

I've mentioned, or been asked about, the story that follows enough times in passing or in short form to justify finally giving the full version and being done with it. The biographical material (about which you might not care) aside, you might want to look at it as an exercise in mathematics, as a problem in calculating odds based on incomplete information, and perhaps eventually as a means of looking beyond math and logic to solve certain problems.

I hasten to emphasize that I'm not writing about ignoring math and logic, but rather, being willing to look beyond them when (and only when) the answers they provide appear incomplete. I'm not building a case to ignore probability in favor of whims or gut instincts. I have to be clear about that, because so many poker players seek rationalizations that excuse their whimsical or illogical actions, and I don't want to add to the problem.

There are, though, quite a few players who refuse to consider elements beyond those that can be quantified, and I believe they do so to their detriment.

The next comment will make more sense after you've read the entire tale. In order to cut off the jokes about this story being an unusual "bad-beat" story, I want to make it clear that I consider it exactly the opposite of that … a most unlikely set of circumstances that led to a happy ending.

In any event, the next time you think you've encountered an unlikely series of cards, or an unlikely incident, ask yourself if it's as unlikely as this one!

In 1995, I was living in Atlanta, Georgia, and decided that my attempt to support myself by playing poker while I tried to write The Great American Novel wasn't working (the poker part was going fine, playing in private games against amateurs, but the writing wasn't, and besides, that title was already taken). A few other matters in my life weren't going all that well, either.

"Better Get a T/O, Baby!"

As a result, I decide to take a "time out" from my regular lifestyle, in order to spend a month at a place I'd twice visited to take three-day writing workshops, the Esalen Institute, located in beautiful Big Sur, California.

Esalen is a kind of new age health spa, education/seminar center, and "retreat." It also offers some of the world's finest hot spring baths, the slightly sulfurous water flowing directly from the hillside into the stone tubs that sit about 70 feet above the Pacific Ocean. There are about a dozen different tubs from which one can choose (this isn't an ad: the number of tubs becomes relevant in a moment).

To attend the Institute for a period longer than one of the three- or five-day workshops I was familiar with, you become a "workscholar." At that time, being a workscholar meant you paid $750 for the privilege of working 32 hours a week in one of Esalen's departments (usually the kitchen or laundry) during one's first month, and received (because otherwise this would be a pretty bad deal!) all room and board, as well as a special monthlong workshop.

I'd had my doubts about spending 28 consecutive days at Esalen, because the place (more specifically, the residents), as wonderful as it (they) had been for three-day visits, seemed a little far out (as in hippie-dippy) for a relatively conservative businessman, which is how I still viewed myself at the time.

An Incorrect Assumption

Nonetheless, I found myself having so much fun during the first couple of weeks, in both the kitchen and my workshop, that I decided to stay a second month, and during the second month, the kitchen offered me a long-term deal, whereby I would stay for almost two years with them paying me instead of me paying them, with the same 32-hour workweek, access to even more kinds of workshops, and better housing.

Not having anything or anyone I needed to rush home to, I accepted. It's a great place to have one's midlife crisis.

Six months later, I drove to L.A. to visit a friend, and decided to try my luck at one of L.A.'s famous legal cardrooms. I selected Hollywood Park more or less randomly, and when I arrived, I discovered they were having a limit hold'em tournament that afternoon.

I'd never before played in a poker tournament, but I'd played in many backgammon tournaments, so I was familiar with the "limited downside with high possible upside" concept, and I'd played a lot of hold'em, so I entered. I forget what the buy-in was - I think it was kind of low, something like $40 or $50, with rebuys - but I do remember that there were 91 players, and I finished sixth.

I was pretty excited about making a final table the first time I tried, and when I got back to Esalen, I told the story to anyone willing to endure it … for about a week. After that, my friends had heard the tale, and they'd been good enough sports listening to it once: I wasn't going to put them through it a second time, especially since gambling of any kind is about as far away from the Esalen "spirit" as one could imagine.

OK, the pace picks up from here, I promise!

The Overture Ends, and the Weirdness Begins

Six months later, a friend from my first month, Jim Adair (who had departed at the month's end, the way I had planned to) returned for a one-day visit. After lunch, Jim and I walked down to the tubs to reminisce and catch up.

Dress at Esalen is both casual and required … everywhere except the tubs, which are "clothing optional," meaning that the only way someone will notice you is if you wear a bathing suit. More than 99 percent of the bathers don't.

I quickly and sadly discovered that what others had told me was true. With nudity's "forbidden fruit" aspect gone, the experience wasn't sexually stimulating, or even interesting, with rare exceptions: "Oh, you're not hiding this? Then I guess I'm not interested in looking."

After all, how many freely viewable _____ (fill in the normally cloaked anatomical part of your choice) do you have to see before it gets old?

I know this sounds impossible. I didn't believe it, either, despite the advance reports, as this was the one aspect of the Esalen experience I had really been looking forward to when I arrived for my first writing workshop in 1993, but I found that my scouting info about the baths' asexual nature was true (heck, it was my then-serious girlfriend who kept insisting I visit Esalen, without her).

The Nights Can Leave One in a Daze

This doesn't mean that some pretty spectacular things don't go on at the baths, especially at night, but for the view itself, I'll usually take the California coastline.

As I was saying, it was daytime when Jim and I headed to the baths, and we entered the largest tub, which is big enough for eight people who aren't fond of each other, or 16 who are. There was one guy in the tub whom we didn't know from Adam, so we ignored him as we talked about this and that. My 6-month-old story about making the final table came up (OK, I brought it up), and we talked for a few minutes about poker tournaments.

After a while, the third guy in the tub said, "Excuse me, but did you just say 'poker tournament'?"

"Yep," I said.

"Man, those are the last two words I ever expected to hear at this place," said the stranger.

"Why, you play?" I asked.

"I play a little," he responded.

"I only play occasionally since I've lived here," I said, "but I used to make my living playing poker, before I came here."

"Really," said the stranger, the word half a statement and half a question. A trace of a smile emerged - but only a trace. "That's funny," he continued. "I make my living playing poker."

Different Recollections, but the Same Conclusions

(The "stranger" and I disagree in our recollection of the conversation here. He says he took longer before mentioning that he made his living playing poker. He could be right; I might not recall that part of the conversation, because it would have been unremarkable.)

"That's cool," I said, offering up yet another witty, urbane, and sophisticated conversational sally.

"In fact," the stranger continued, "I heard you mention the World Series of Poker. I won it in 1989."

I thought for a moment. I was a home-game player who knew very little about WSOP champions. I'd heard of five, four of whom I could recognize: Johnny Chan (from ESPN WSOP videos), Doyle Brunson (because of his photo and caricature in Super/System), Stu Ungar (because I had played him in backgammon tournaments), and Dan Harrington (because I knew him from the backgammon world and we'd been groomsmen in the same wedding).

The fifth was Phil Hellmuth. I'd heard of him only because Jerry, a player in my regular Atlanta game, had once (fairly near the time I was leaving town) responded to a question about why he couldn't figure out what cards I'd been holding by posing another question of his own: "Who do you think I am, Phil Hellmuth Jr.?"

I didn't know who the heck that was, so I asked, and Jerry told me.

He Sure Wasn't Stu Ungar

This had all flashed through my mind rather quickly, and because the stranger couldn't be Chan, Brunson, Ungar, or Harrington, and because I wouldn't have recognized Hellmuth if my life depended on it, I asked the stranger his name.

"Phil," he said.

This was getting weird. I took a shot.

"Phil Hellmuth?" I asked.

The Phil-stranger nodded his head up and down rather vigorously.

Attempting to bluff knowledge of the poker world that I didn't possess (and in retrospect, probably trying to impress Jim even more than I was Phil), I asked, "Phil Hellmuth, Junior?

Again, the head nod.

"I'm in the hot tubs with Phil Hellmuth Jr.!" I exclaimed, and stood, au naturel, to cross the tub and shake his hand. (As an aside, Phil's failure to flee at this moment is when I learned he was fearless, for reasons I need not detail.)

And Tiger Woods Plays a Little Golf, Too

I turned to Jim and said, more with reverence for someone who could win the WSOP at such a young age than for any other details I knew about Hellmuth, "This guy saying he plays 'a little' poker would be like Michael Jordan saying he plays 'a little' basketball."

This meeting occurred early in the five-day period that Phil was to be at Esalen, it turned out. He was taking a Zen workshop in an effort to cut back, he told me, on explosions of temper that he tended to have at the tables. He hadn't told anyone in the workshop he was a poker player.

If he had, someone probably would have hooked us up, because Esalen residents knew about my gaming history, more from backgammon than from poker, but in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and I was certainly the best poker player at Esalen. Phil had been right: "Poker tournament" quite reasonably could have been the last two words anyone would expect to hear at Esalen.

Hellmuth and I shared several meals the rest of the week (although he never took me up on my offer to use my chef status to get him special meals or seconds), talking not about poker but about life, the universe, and everything. These kinds of philosophical discussions are the staple of Esalen conversation: There's less small talk there than anyplace else I've ever been. If you ask someone, "How's it going?" you need to be prepared for a lengthy answer.

Hipbone Connected to the … Thighbone,

Thighbone Connected to the …

We thus became friends far from the poker tables. This friendship eventually led to the agreement to work together on a book, which in turn led me to follow him to some big tournaments, and in turn led to me use my sports journalism background to write a few articles about final tables at the WSOP on days when Phil had busted out early. I wanted to watch the final tables anyway, and as long as I was there, I figured I might as well record my observations for the book; it didn't take much tweaking to turn them into stand-alone pieces.

I gave those articles to Linda Johnson, then Card Player's publisher, at the World Series, and as she knew nothing about me other than I was the guy who had bluffed off his chips at the Shooting Star final table a few weeks earlier, she said, not unkindly, "Thanks very much, and I'm sure you understand the World Series is a very busy time for me; I probably won't be able to look at these for a month or so."

Twenty minutes later, Linda came running up to me and asked, "Who are you? Where did you come from? These are great. We'll publish them, and any more you want to write." The rest was history, or at least mythology. But let's backtrack and see just how unlikely this "random" meeting was:

1. Hellmuth, a Palo Alto resident, had to choose to go to Esalen during the two-year period I resided there. It's only two-plus hours from his home; his one and only visit could have come anytime. Call this a 5-to-1 shot.

2. Hellmuth and I had to be at the tubs at the same time. While workshop visitors tend to hit the tubs at least once a day, longer-term residents tend to visit less frequently. I was probably at the tubs only three times that week, for a total of about two hours. Call this a 20-to-1 shot (that low only because the baths tend to be used more during certain hours).

3. We had to pick the same tub, out of the 12 that were available. Sounds like 11-to-1 to me (one in 12 yields odds of 11-to-1).

4. I had to choose to tell the story at the tubs, instead of any number of other places Jim and I spent time. Call this a 4-to-1 shot.

5. I had to make the final table of the first poker tournament I'd ever played in to generate the story, and for that matter, I had to run into a tournament without knowing it was happening: I'd planned just to play some hold'em in the $10-$20 through $20-$40 range. Call this dual scenario a 25-to-1 shot.

6. Jim's return not only had to be his first since the Hollywood Park tournament, but it also had to coincide with Hellmuth's workshop. Call this 100-to-1.

7. Hellmuth had to overhear our low-toned conversation, in a location where he easily could have tuned us out to listen to the waves crashing against the rocks below. Another visitor, such as Phil's wife, Kathy, also could have been present to draw his attention or engage him in conversation. Call this 2-to-1.

8. My friend Jerry had to have mentioned Hellmuth, in a poker game in which we rarely talked about big-time pros, or else his name wouldn't have meant anything to me, and the friendship might never have started, or at least would have been less close. Forget Phil's ego: There are few of us who wouldn't respond positively to a stranger offering such a flurry of praise. We might have become pals even if I hadn't known his name, but it certainly didn't hurt. Call this 15-to-1 (Chan is the only other WSOP champ I'd ever heard mentioned in our game).

If a Causal Chain is Only as Strong

as its Weakest Link …

Multiply those odds out, and we had one chance in 953 million to meet when, where, and how we did.

Admittedly, my estimates of the individual probabilities are subject to debate, and there is also some small chance we might have met at a different time during the week (but small it was; remember, Phil hadn't told anyone he was a poker player, I wasn't in his workshop, and I didn't tell the story any other time that week). On the other hand, some of the odds could be too low, not just too high. Regardless, whatever the final number really should be, it's big. It certainly makes the odds of a runner-runner bad beat seem microscopic by comparison.

This is also a good lesson in how difficult it is for numerous consecutive unlikely events to occur: underdog parlays are hard to hit. Most people reading my list probably didn't guess that the odds multiplied out that high, especially with the least probable event only 100-to-1, the second-least probable a big drop-off at 25-to-1, and a couple of little ones like 4-to-1 and 2-to-1.

Viewed another way, without this 952,922,879-to-1 shot meeting (given how imprecise the individual estimates were, rounding this number to anything in between 50 million and two billion would probably be fair), I would now probably be trading stocks on the floor of the Chicago exchange (and if my results had been similar to the other backgammon friends who went that route, I'd be filthy rich instead of just filthy).

Floor trading had been my original plan for what I was going to do after the "one month" at Esalen. Instead, I'm writing about and playing poker, and making less money but combining two of my long but separate passions. A "random coincidence" led me to a job that usually doesn't feel like work.

Who's to say which road would have been "better," if indeed "better" is even the right concept … but making my living as a writer has been the one consistent vision in a life full of left and right turns. Was this destiny or coincidence?

All I know is that without a meeting that's so mathematically improbable that it approaches zero, my life's road would have headed in a very different direction (although who's to say I wouldn't eventually have chosen to combine my passions, even without this gentle push). The next time you think logic and math explain everything, consider my causality coincidence, or any of the unlikely sequences you've probably experienced yourself, perhaps even without recognizing them for what they were.

Logic and mathematics offer the beginning of understanding, but not the end.

Andrew N.S. ("Andy") Glazer, "The Poker Pundit," is Card Player's tournament editor, writes a weekly gambling column for the Detroit Free Press, and is widely considered to be the world's foremost poker tournament reporter. He serves as a quality control consultant for www.TotalPoker.com, for which he also writes the free biweekly "Wednesday Nite Poker" e-newsletter. Andy welcomes your questions through the "Ask Andy" feature at www.poker.casino.com.