The Buddha Saga

I know my stories sometimes sound unreal, but every so often I encounter a scenario that makes my most fevered concoctions pale in comparison. Take the case of a young man who had attained legendary status in Southern California casinos for two reasons:

1. By all accounts he was the biggest player in the state.

2. By all accounts he was probably the most dealer-abusive.

I had gotten to know him through his high-stakes poker and pai gow activities, and one day he invited me to write a story about him. He is known to one and all by his nickname of "Buddha" (he spells it "Budda," but let's stick to the traditional spelling), and if you ever met him, one look at his close-shaved head and 6-foot-2-inch extra-ample frame would tell you where the nickname came from.

Buddha, 27 at the time, was notorious for constantly berating dealers, convinced that they were the sole reason for whatever misfortune befell him at the table. He would start with the f-word and escalate from there. He made John Bonetti look like a choirboy and Big Denny look like Dudley Do-Right. He had various barbs he enjoyed throwing at dealers, such as offering them a free ride to Hawaii on his private jet – without gas. "I'm very popular," he said to me once, "though maybe not in a good way."

So, who is this guy? A big tournament player nobody ever heard of? Hardly. He played in exactly one tournament, a lowball event at The Bicycle Casino, and according to Tournament Director Denny Williams, he played every hand and set a record by getting knocked out in under five minutes. In any event, if he tried to play in tournaments regularly, his liberal use of the f-word would get him penalized out of action in 10 minutes. Of course, there are limits, and he more than once was sent home when he really got out of line … but he was always back in action the next day.

How come? Well, the size of his bankroll didn't hurt. In the interview, he told me he was worth more than $20 million and his parents had upward of $60 or $70 million more, and he was a regular patron and a game-builder who sat in the biggest games the casinos offered. As for his dealer baiting, he explained that 90 percent of the dealers who know him had become accustomed to his behavior and let it roll off their backs. They knew that if they just stayed cool and didn't react, they were likely to get tossed a toke of maybe $100 at the end of their shift in the box. Other casino employees attested to his generosity during the year, and especially at holiday time.

"I have a split personality," he admitted. "At the table, I'm a demon. Away from it, I've often helped out dealers who might need $400 to cover their pai gow banks. It's not the money," he analyzed himself, "it's the defeat. I just can't stand losing, whether it's $25 a hand or $25,000."

One night I watched as he banked a private pai gow game and dropped $150,000. That's more money than a typical railbird will see in 100 lifetimes. Any normal player who lost that much would slash his wrists, but 150K was just chump change to someone with his stash. Another time, we stopped by the Golden Nugget in Vegas, where I saw him drop $13,000 in five hands of pai gow without blinking.

Buddha said he was the sole heir to his grandfather's fortune. His parents, he told me, came from South America, where they were invested heavily in commercial and industrial real estate. An only child, he said he was a lot closer to his mother than his father, who was very authoritarian and didn't hesitate to administer beatings. Maybe, he shrugs, that's where his own anger toward dealers comes from. "I was a rebellious teenager, and my father was very cruel to me."

Away from the tables he was soft-spoken and polite, intelligent, and well-informed, and had a nice sense of humor. Asked about his gaming background, he explained that he got into poker when a friend, here for a Bike tournament, invited him to play in a $20-$40 stud eight-or-better game. "I thought it would be a fun game. It took me a good $20,000 to learn it. I didn't know what an 8-low was. I just thought if you had a pair, it was good. Then, I began playing mixed games, and the amount of money I lost was unbearable." He finally began getting the hang of poker when a player (and World Series of Poker bracelet holder) by the name of Joe Wynn took him under his wing and tutored him.

Before that, another friend taught him pan 9. "I wish I would have lost at first and never come back. Instead, I ended up winning $700 playing $20 a hand. I did very well at first and made money in 1996. But in 1997 I lost more than a million dollars playing pai gow and pan 9. Luckily, it was a good stock market year, which made up for the losses. In 1998 and '99 I took off. 2000 was my best year yet, when I won more than $2 million. 2001 was a superb year, too, a bit over a million."

About 15 percent of his gambling time was spent playing poker, and Buddha jumped into the biggest game he could find. But that was nothing compared to his pai gow action. His preference was banking, where he had the advantage (offset by being charged $25 for every $1,000 bet by the in-house "corporation" and also by paying the collections of those playing against him). The house takes a drop, and the corporations he played against consist of groups of investors who hire five or six people to play for something like $15 an hour. If the corporation is playing six spots at $6,000 a spot, that's $36,000 that Buddha risked on each hand. His biggest win to date in a session, he said, was $849,000; his biggest loss: $620,000. That's why he had to continually explain to the Department of Justice, which monitors such things, how he could afford to bet $30,000 or so a hand.

From time to time, Buddha would take his big bankroll to the Hustler Casino or to Hawaiian Gardens, but the bulk of his time was spent at the Bike, which he considered his "home."

But only a relatively small part of his assets, he said, was risked on gambling. He claimed he had numerous investments here and overseas, in such things as industrial real estate, car washes, a disco, extensive stock portfolios, and so on. "I'm hardly a sick or addicted gambler. I've gone as much as four months without playing poker," he insisted.

Still, along with heavy sports betting (as much as $75,000 or $80,000 a game), he did love the tables. He said he really liked poker more than the Asian games because he felt he had more control. Triple-draw lowball was his game at the time, which he felt he could be very good at if he devoted more study to it.

But he didn't think he would ever mellow in his attitude toward dealers. His rationalization: "When you have a stake of $20,000 a hand, you have to give a damn and take some responsibility. I don't believe it when a dealer says he has no control over the cards. He shuffles. He cuts. He absolutely has control … at least to some extent."

That's Buddha. And – oh, yes – he really is a real person!

If that sounds hard to believe, you ain't heard nothin' yet. And just to keep you in suspense (and double my writers fee), I think I'll make this thing a two-parter. Don't go away.