The Scoop -- David Grey

David Grey was born and raised in New York, and he moved to Las Vegas in 1984 and quickly realized that poker could be a lucrative career. He’s been playing professionally for about two decades, and has competed in the biggest live cash games. He also was a member of the famous “Corporation,” a group of players who put their bankrolls together to play billionaire banker Andy Beal in heads-up games. Grey sat down with Adam and Diego recently and told them the story of how the famous challenge began.

David Grey: Andy Beal was playing $80-$160 hold’em [at Bellagio], and I was sitting in the poker room at an empty table next to him. No one knew who he was, or anything. He seemed like a regular guy, and casually asked, “Does anyone play any higher around here?”

There was a doctor playing at his table, and he pointed at me and said, “That guy over there plays a lot higher.” The doctor then asked me, “Do you want to play a bigger game with this guy?”

I said, “Well, what do you want to play?” He said limit hold’em. I didn’t really like limit hold’em, but I figured I could beat him.

He said, “Do you want to play $1,000-$2,000?” I said OK, because that wasn’t very big to me. I mean, it was a big game, but that was like an everyday game. We’d been playing $1,500-$3,000 at the time.

I was ready to start the game with him, and it just so happened that Chau [Giang] was around, and Jennifer [Harman] happened to wander into the poker room. Andy signed a marker, and they brought over $144,000 in chips. I was thinking that it was pretty strange that a guy would have $144,000 in the cage and be playing in this $80-$160 game; no wonder he wanted to play higher. We started playing, but he had just flown in from Dallas that day. The game got to be about six- or seven-handed, and he quit at about 7 o’clock. He said that he was tired, as he was on Dallas time, but he asked if we could play again tomorrow. He was like a kid in a candy store, asking permission to play!

It was incredibly cute, so I said, “What time do you want to play?”

He said, “How about 2 o’clock, is that good for you?”

I said, “I’ll be there!”

I walked into the Bellagio poker room the next day at 1:15, and there was a seven-handed game with one seat open, and they were playing $2,000-$4,000 instead of $1,000-$2,000. OK, so I got the last seat.

After about an hour or so, Andy looks at Doyle [Brunson] and says, “Do you guys ever play $10,000-$20,000 for fun?”

Now, Doyle is the ultimate high roller, but even he said, “No, we usually don’t do that, Andy.”

We played for a little while longer, and Andy said, “You know, I really feel like playing one-on-one. Does anyone want to play $10,000-$20,000 heads up?”

I said that we’d figure something out, and asked what time he wanted to come tomorrow. He said 12 o’clock. So, we got together and decided that we’d pony up some money together. And he wanted to play a million-dollar freezeout. Six of us put up $150,000 or $170,000 apiece or something like that, and we decided that Chip [Reese] was going to play. So, the next day, Chip and Andy start playing while we all were playing a $2,000-$4,000 mixed game, or something.

Andy and Chip had been playing for a while, when Ted Forrest casually walked in. He is one of the looniest people I’ve ever met in my life; he like sometimes doesn’t even know that the world exists, and sometimes it seems like he’s the smartest person in the world; that’s how different he is. He saw us playing the $2,000-$4,000 game, and then saw them playing $10,000-$20,000. He went to his box, and the next thing you know, he was back with three racks of $5,000 chips. He had a million-and-a-half dollars, and sat down in their game. There was really nothing we could do at that point. We couldn’t really stop them. Ted ended up being the big winner. He won a million and a half, Chip won like $700,000, and Andy lost more than $2 million. So, after the game was over, we had to pull Ted aside and tell him. We said that he couldn’t do that again, but could be in with us if he wanted. So, the next day, Ted was in with us, and there were seven or eight of us in.