Max Goes to St. Maarten

Well, Max has hit the big time. I became an international journalist after being hired to do daily write-ups for the International Poker Federation's first annual St. Maarten Open in November. I got my airfare, a room at the swanky Maho Beach Resort & Casino, and some spending money, and all I had to do was write, print out and photocopy the daily bulletins, e-mail the reports to newspapers and online sites around the world, help set up the poker tables, clear off the drink glasses and empty the ashtrays, sweep up after the tournament ended, and wash a few dishes in the kitchen.

Hey, who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth?

Of course, I also had to wait hand and foot on my sweetie, but that's nothing new. She didn't trust me to go alone after she heard there was topless sunbathing at the resort, and discovered a map where I had marked the location of all the nude beaches.

Our trip got off to a great start, even before our plane took off. At the airport, my sweetie asked if she could get me a cup of coffee. "How thoughtful of you," I said gratefully. "I'd love some."

"Give me some money, then," she said.

I handed her a dollar.

She looked at it scornfully. "That's a Starbucks they have here," she informed me. "They have a cover charge of more than that just to walk in. Give me a twenty."

Reluctantly, I handed over a bill. Thirty minutes later she returned carrying a gift shop bag. "Where's my coffee?" I inquired.

"You don't expect me to sit on that long flight with nothing to read, do you?" my sweetie said sharply. "Surely you're not going to deny me a People magazine, a National Enquirer, and a Globe?"

"What?!" I screamed. "They have lots of magazines on the plane. Forbes, Scientific American, Mechanics Illustrated … "

"I'm not interested in your nerdy magazines," she shouted. "I have to find out what's new with J. Lo and Ben Affleck."

Before heading for St. Maarten we made a three-day side trip to Florida. One day was spent in Miami with my sweetie's friend Donna and her husband, Paul. Donna is a professional keno machine player and is writing a book about it. She is also a bingo addict who sets the computer up to play bingo for her automatically all night long. Then, when she wakes up, she runs to the computer to see if Santa Claus has left her $100 or so in winnings. It hasn't happened yet, but she hasn't given up.

Then we spent two days in Key West, staying in the home of a poker-playing friend named Mike Bunis. Mike proved to be a marvelous host and guide, but I hate the guy because he has more talent than any one person deserves to have. First of all, he's a great poker player who makes a monthly weeklong trip to play in L.A. and Vegas. Second, he's a professional piano player and singer, and a terrific one at that. He owns commercial property in downtown Key West. And if that isn't enough, he also writes novels. One took first place in a mystery writer's competition, in Florida. In addition, he recently completed a fictional novel about the early days of rock and roll (Cadillac's Comin'), which blew me away.

I had always thought of Key West as a drowsy little strip of land with a few shacks, dive shops, and bars, notable mainly because Hemingway used to hang out and write from there. I was quite surprised to discover its size, history, beauty, and diverse attractions. It also can be quirky. One of the main tourist stops is at a monument marking the southernmost spot in the United States. But nearby residents have been complaining about the bus fumes and hordes of tourists. So, the Key West City Council is looking for another spot to designate as southernmost and then move the monument there. Good idea. Next thing you know, the Eskimos will move the North Pole to divert the tourists.

Anyway, on to St. Maarten, where the International Poker Federation had thoughtfully made arrangements to whisk players through customs and deliver us to our hotel. The Maho Beach Resort was every bit as breathtaking as advertised, and located very close to the airport. How close? Well, it was a little unnerving at first to see passengers on the arriving and departing jets waving at us, but after a while we got used to it.

The hotel's adjoining Casino Royale is the largest casino on the island, and it provided a very spacious room with a high ceiling for the poker tournament. It needed all the space it could get, because most of the players were from Europe, and if there is such a thing as a European who doesn't smoke, I have yet to meet him. Warren Karp, the tournament's co-director, showed me a box of cigarettes from Europe that carried dire warnings that smoking could harm the smoker and everyone around him for up to 20 miles away, and that smoking could cause an agonizing death. For all the good the warnings did. The IPF tried to walk a middle ground by making the tournament nonsmoking and the live games smoking, and forbidding smokers from coming too close to the tournament tables. Right. I spent more time chasing away encroaching smokers than I did taking tournament notes. This conflict between the smokers and nonsmokers at European events, the IPF acknowledges, is an ongoing problem in which it's impossible to make everyone happy.

Another difference between American and European tournaments, I quickly noticed, is that spectators are permitted to crowd around very close to the tables, with some bystanders even moving chairs right behind their friends. Try that at tournaments or live games in America and players would scream for a floorman to chase them away, but here, nobody seemed to mind. Well, I did see one player blow up when a seated spectator offered strategy advice to his buddy, but I guess there are limits, even there.

In general, though, players seemed much more tolerant than their American counterparts. No matter how long a player took to make a decision, nobody ever called for a clock – or a calendar, for that matter. I was also blown away by how young some of the players were in tournaments and in big-limit side games. Would you believe that a $200 pot-limit Omaha event was won by an 18-year-old high school student from Finland?! What do they teach them in that country?

I was pleasantly surprised to see that they used jumbo decks in the tournaments, which made it much easier to follow the action. Being boxed in by spectators, I needed all the help I could get. I didn't know if I was permitted to ask the spectators to move, so I adopted the strategy of "accidentally" bumping adjoining onlookers until they got the hint.

That wasn't the biggest problem with my writing, though. The biggest problem was trying to wrestle the laptop away from my sweetie, who was busy either sending e-mails to her thousands of friends or playing about six online tournaments simultaneously. The result was that I was usually about a week behind with my reports. Oh, she did find the time to play in some of the St. Maarten Open events. She picked up nine grand when she came in second in a no-limit hold'em tournament, which was almost enough to keep her in action for two days at the slot machines.

There is, of course, plenty to see and do on the island, which, interestingly enough, is half Dutch and half French. (The Maho Beach Resort, fortunately, is on the Dutch side, which uses American currency and American electric current.) To get around, you stand anywhere and wave at anything that looks vaguely like transportation. Once you get aboard, it's worth your life as they dodge traffic on the narrow, winding roads, inches away from other vehicles. I read a column in the local newspaper complaining about the drivers' suicidal tendencies. However, they have a long way to go to match the taxi drivers in Costa Rica, who react to stop signs by blowing their horns and stepping on the gas.

Anyway, the trip was a wonderful experience, the tournament was a great success, and the IPF is already planning to add more in other exotic locales. There's plenty more I could write about, but Warren also plans to do a column about St. Maarten, and I don't want to duplicate too much of what I know will be his keen and amusing observations. So, as Porky Pig used to say, "Tha tha tha, that's all, folks."