Sammy "No Deal" Farha has gone from managing a gift shop in Houston to handling six-figure swings in the "big game," and snagging a pair of
World Series bracelets. His idea of relaxation? Betting thousands in the Bellagio blackjack pit.
It's a Saturday afternoon at Bellago. Inside the Fontana Room - site of many a televised poker tournament - Sammy Farha is trying to win $750,000. But the Texas hold'em table is nowhere in sight. Today he's playing in a winner-take-all freeroll blackjack tournament. Considering that there's nearly a million dollars up for grabs, this is a great opportunity with no downside, and it's easy to figure that Farha's been invited to compete due to his celebrity status as a poker pro. But that is not quite the case. Smiling and chatty, looking sporty in jeans, sneakers, and a white warm-up jacket, the 49-year-old Farha is here under the same circumstances as everyone else: He plays high enough in the pit. This tournament is a bit of a bone, tossed by the casino to make up for the big losses endured by every gambler in attendance. After a couple of rounds, Sammy busts out, shows nary an emotion, and makes it clear that he much prefers playing in the "big game."
Michael Kaplan: Obviously, you're not afraid to risk yellow chips at high-stakes blackjack.
Sammy Farha: I play. I don't like it. But I love the action.
MK: How much do you play for? $10,000 a hand?
SF: Sometimes. I don't want to discuss the amounts. But I'll tell you that after playing blackjack, my poker is affected. I sit down to play, call some $100,000 bets, fall behind by a bunch of money in 10 minutes, and wonder what the hell I am doing. The game of blackjack is so fast that it winds up kicking my ass at the poker table. Then I have to adjust.
MK: But, unlike poker, you don't play blackjack to earn money. You play it to gamble.
SF: That's true. I play it to take the stress away from poker, to relax. Then I sit down and lose a lot of money in half an hour and need to gamble to get it back. But it's never a good idea to press your bets in the pit.
MK: Yeah, but you're known as a guy who likes to take big risks. In light of that, I wonder what would have happened if you had made the blackjack tournament's final table here. Would you have cut a deal?
SF: Nope. Either win it all or get nothing. Look what happened at the 2003
World Series. I never cut a deal there.
MK: You didn't?
SF: No. Chris Moneymaker and I went to heads up. I went to the bathroom, saw Chris in there, and he said, "Sam, let's do some business." I said, "Chris, what kind of business do you want to do?" He said he wanted to negotiate. I told him, "Listen, buddy, I don't know you and I don't want to embarrass you with my offer." He had $5 million or $6 million out of $8.5 million in chips and he wanted to chop it. I'm telling you, Michael, he would have been willing to take less than half.
MK: Considering that he wound up winning, do you view your decision, not to chop, as a mistake?
SF: It's not a mistake. That is me. But I will tell you that if I had made the deal, I would have played differently and won the whole tournament.
MK: How so?
SF: The decisive hand was when I laid down queen-nine, toward the end of the tournament. I flopped top pair, he had a draw and reraised on fourth street. I set him up to do exactly what he did. I was not going to put him all in. He had been lucky throughout the
World Series, he was on a straight or flush draw, and I knew he would go all in if he missed. Then, he did exactly what I wanted. My problem was that I was so tired, I was practically in a coma. I had drunk 20 Bulls and 20 cups of coffee; you can imagine what that does to your brain. When you play cards, you have to go with your gut. I should have immediately said, "Call" - and I would have if we had already agreed to chop. Instead, I took 10 or 15 minutes to decide. I figured I could beat this kid with my remaining $2.5 million; after all, I had already come back from having less than $10,000 at the end of day three. I figured, why gamble? I knew I could catch him in a different situation. But, still, I knew I had him, and it bothered me that I laid it down. Then, four hands later, I flopped top pair again, played it all the way, and lost. Obviously, he was meant to win it.
MK: It's ironic that you played it safe against Moneymaker. After all, in the big game, where the stakes are mind-bendingly high, you're known as a guy who likes to gamble.
SF: I built that image for myself. It doesn't matter if I play one hand every hour, people still come in against me. They know that when Sam comes in, he's gambling. They never put me on a hand. That's an advantage I have.
MK: Explain it to me.
SF: People avoid playing against me unless they have a strong starting hand. They know that if they come in against me, it will cost them a lot of money. When I played Ted Forrest in the heads-up tournament on
NBC, I made him play badly. He's an excellent player, one of the best I've played against, but against me, he couldn't play his top game. Whoever plays heads up against me, I make him play badly.
MK: How do you make someone like Ted Forrest play badly?
SF: I make him change his strategy. He thinks, Sammy is a very aggressive player. As a result, he allows me to take cheap flops. I do, and I bust him on the flop. If he's holding two jacks, he might not raise from the button. I hold king-four offsuit, and if a king hits, he goes broke with two jacks. I don't go broke.
MK: But, as you say, Ted Forrest is an excellent player. Isn't he doing the same thing to you? It's no secret that you gain an advantage by taking a player out of his comfort zone.
SF: Because I am so unpredictable, nobody knows what I will do. Ted figures I will be aggressive, so he doesn't want to go crazy with jacks. He doesn't want to get his money in before the flop.
MK: And he assumes that if a king comes on the flop, you will represent a pair.
SF: Yes. And that's when they get lost with me. They never know what I have. When I played the NBC tournament, Phil Hellmuth said, "I've got a read on everyone except Sammy."
MK: I know that you grew up in Lebanon and came to the U.S. in 1977, when you were 20 years old. Where did you learn to play poker?
SF: In Houston, where I live. It was New Year's Eve, 1990, the luckiest night of my life. I was at a party, and someone suggested that we all play poker. I didn't even want to play. I didn't really know how to play. I was managing a gift shop at the time and had maybe $1,000 in my pocket. But I liked playing games. So, I sat down and began figuring things out. I remember one guy who kept trying to bluff me. Finally, I caught him by the balls and wound up winning $2,500 that night. Immediately, I realized that he and the other guys were easy. I learned the game, won money, and put together a bankroll. Right from the start, I treated poker like a shop. I improved very quickly, managed myself great, and never struggled.
MK: Tell me about your first trip to Las Vegas.
SF: I came with a friend of mine and had $2,000 in my pocket. I had been playing poker for a year or two and we stayed at the Golden Nugget. But before we even checked in, I lost $500 playing blackjack. Then we walked across the street to the Horseshoe. We found a pot-limit Omaha game, with $5-$10 blinds, my friend kicked in some money, and I made $3,000 very fast. I won $6,000 that day and said, "This is it. I want to be a poker player."
MK: You're best known as a guy who plays cash games, which makes me wonder how important the World Series is to you.
SF: Until the late 1990s, I went to the
World Series and played cash games rather than the main event. Tournaments are very expensive, and I thought that $10,000 was a lot to risk on a long shot. Now, though, the money is great, and there are a lot of bad players. For $10,000, I can win $5 million? Beautiful.
MK: These days, viewers of
High Stakes Poker see you as a total cool cat, unflappable, sucking on your lucky unlit cigarette, going with the flow and always willing to gamble. What was your table image like back in, say, the mid-1990s?
SF: People thought I was an Arab sheik. I built the image of being a multimillionaire. People thought I was in the oil business. They didn't know that all of the money I had was the money in front of me.
MK: That must have gotten you a lot of respect.
SF: I got more respect when I won the pot-limit Omaha tournament at the 1996
World Series. I was here for the cash games and didn't want to play. But there was nothing going on, a friend talked me into entering, he took a piece of me, and I won. At the final table, he wanted me to make a deal, and even then, when the money was huge for me, I said, "Guy, I don't make deals. I play to win." And I did. The prize was $150,000.
MK: This year you won another Omaha tournament, which makes two
WSOP bracelets for you. But, just so you know, Mike Matusow once told me that it's a fluke until you win four.
SF: I've got an answer to that: It depends on how many tournaments you play each year. This year I came to the
World Series fresh from a European vacation. I got knocked out of the first tournament I entered, got knocked out of the second, and won the third. I know I can win more.
MK: Speaking of Matusow, have you gotten into sports betting along the way?
SF: I've made only a couple of sports bets in my life. One time, I was playing in a card game and was down like 10 grand, and the guy next to me said, "The best way for you to get your money back is to bet $10,000 on today's game." I didn't even know what team I was betting on or what color uniform its players wore. But the funny thing is that a friend of mine had a bet on the other side. He heard what I was doing and immediately called the bookie to reverse his bet, because he thought I was lucky. And my team wound up winning. So, I got my $10,000 back.
MK: When did you find out about the big game?
SF: A couple of years after I started coming to Vegas. A friend told me that I should watch the game. He said that chips were flying all over the place. I said, "Buddy, I don't need to see the chips. I don't have that kind of money to afford it. It might be tempting for me to sit down with my bankroll, and I will go broke. One day I will have the bankroll, and I will play in it."
MK: And now you do. What's your take on the big game?
SF: The big game is great. I love playing with those guys. But let me tell you something, Michael. The big game is not always the best game.
MK: Because there are so many good players in it?
SF: Something else. It's because they play no-limit and pot-limit, but they have a cap. The maximum you can lose in a single hand is $100,000. So, it becomes like limit. You put in $20,000 before the flop, then you flop a wrap or the flush, and it becomes like a coin flip.
MK: Why cap it?
SF: The rule was made a long time ago. And it's for this reason: If I know you're aggressive, and I know you have unlimited money, I want to put you on a leash. Otherwise, someone could play pocket aces before the flop and lose $10 million to a super-rich guy. So, while the cap means that you can lose only $100,000, it also means that you can't protect your hand.
MK: So you prefer unbridled no-limit?
SF: I prefer pot-limit. It limits what you can lose, but you can still protect your hand, and you can see a lot more flops. And my game of choice is Omaha, not hold'em.
MK: How come?
SF: Omaha's got a lot more action. In hold'em, it's always one player against another player, one hand against another hand. In Omaha, there are a lot more possibilities, the cards have different values, you see more flops, and you get four or five players in. So, your $100 brings $500. I have a reputation for gambling; I get involved in every hand, and people pay me off. If I play 10 hands against you and catch one, I will get all of the money you have in front of you. That is what makes me more dangerous than any other player. Come in against me, and I will force you to gamble.
MK: In terms of the big game, who would you characterize as best and worst?
SF: Ehhhh … (laughing)
MK: Was that kind of a goofy question?
SF: It's kind of goofy. I play two-day sessions. One day, I win a lot, and one day, I lose a lot. But you can imagine what happens when it is $100,000 per hand. Ten hands, one way or the other, is $1 million.
MK: I know that you have major swings. Yet, from what I've seen, you take the negatives pretty well. What do you do when things go badly at big-game stakes?
SF: Take a break, relax, freshen up, think about what I did wrong. Ultimately, though, I always believe that it will turn around. But I play faster and gamble more when I run bad; I get people to pay me off. Last year, for example, I had a bad year. The year started badly for me, and I lost a lot of money. But, I kept playing. You have to know that poker is a lot of ups and downs. In the big game, though, running bad can kill a player. And I play with my own money. So, if I lose a lot, I have to take it. After a big loss, I remind myself that I started with nothing and that a lot of people would love to have what is left in my pocket.
MK: And you have no deals with websites or sponsors to offset the losses. How come?
SF: It would be a smart thing to do, but all those [people behind the sites] use poker players. The [site owners] make a lot of money, and they don't pay the players enough. I would rather keep my name to myself and do what I want to do.
MK: Sounds like the American dream to me.
SF: This is the American dream. I've had opportunities in poker that I never would have had back home in Lebanon. Here in America, you find opportunities, recognize luck, and take advantage. But you must remember that luck doesn't knock on your door. You need to recognize it and take the risk. Don't take any risks, and you won't be able to make it.
