Leaders of the Pack

Leaders lead, they don’t follow the pack. Not always by choice, but sometimes by necessity. The path of the common man becomes too cluttered with followers and if you’re following, well then, you’re already behind. An early mentor of mine once said, “Do the opposite of what you think you should be doing and you’ll be closer to the truth.”

Being a leader in the field of your expertise has many drawbacks, but it also has many benefits, not the least of which is the fulfillment of discovery. The drawbacks are that you’re often ridiculed by those who depend on the predictability of what they’ve spent years studying and learning. Too much investment to risk changing direction. But I digress…

The poker movie rounders highlighted two types of players. Worm, the hustler, and Mike McDermott, the opportunistic player who thought he could beat the game straight up. This was reflective of much of the poker world before 1980. I remember some years ago a hustler telling me, “you can’t hustle an honest man.” For a hustle to work you need a mark. The mark was generally someone with an ego that was looking to take advantage. HIs main problem was that he would run into a guy who wasn’t interested in playing the game fairly, his interest was in winning. “So I had a guy looking to beat me, so he deserves what he gets. When you got a mark on the line, we would never dream of playing the game straight up. We never played in games where we didn’t control the outcome. In those days, only a sucker would play in a game where they didn’t know what the last card was going to be.” 

In fact, this is where the term “cold deck” came from. A fixed deck (heartless and emotionless) that is swapped out with a legitimate deck to cheat the unsuspecting mark. Giving him what would seem to him an unbeatable hand (eg quad 4’s) so that he would put all his money in the middle, only to find out that he would be beat by higher quads or a straight flush. “What fun is there in knowing what the outcome is going to be?” I remember asking him. “The whole set up, the exquisiteness of execution…and of course, the money!” There was little incentive to do anything different. The continual problem of course was that the fish would dry up and all that was left in the pond were the sharks. 

Enter stage left some of the first leaders and innovators of the modern day game of poker. Tom Moore, Vic Vickery, Benny Binnon, Johnny Moss, Doyle Brunson and Amirillo “Slim” Preston. To have met and played with a couple of these great legends of the game was my honor. 

Benny’s contribution came in developing Tom and Vic’s idea for a poker competition in Reno and turning into the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. 

Widely regarded as the best player of his time Johnny Moss was elected the best player by his peers in the inaugural event in 1970. He then won it in competition two additional times! Then there was Amarillo Slim, an admitted hustler, who after winning the title in 1972, became the unofficial ambassador of the game! Quite ironically he brought the game into prominence and gave it some legitimacy when he appeared on Johnny Carson’s tonight show 11 different times over the next decade. 

Then there was the leader we call the Godfather of Poker, Mr. Doyle Brunson. He won back to back titles in 1976 and 1977 and then, going against the grain in an unprecedented move that was extremely controversial at the time, published a book on how to play poker! “Super / System” is considered the Bible of poker players. He had gotten the leaders in different specialities of the game to write insider secrets and strategies on how to win. This flew in the face of the old saying “Don’t tap the glass!”  which basically meant, don’t wake up the fish. He was not only waking them up – he was educating them! A move not only unheard of at the time, but rebuked!  These early leaders were instrumental in heading poker out of the smokey back rooms and into the limelight. 

In 1981 NBC broadcast the WSOP for the first time and introduced it into millions of homes. Talk about putting bait on a hook! I have a hunch these leaders knew exactly what they were doing. in 1982 they even introduced the first women’s championship featuring women leaders and pioneers of the game like; Betty Carey (known as the top women cash game player at the time), Marsha Waggoner (a fearless Stud and tournament player who mentored me!), Barbara Enright, and the First Woman of Poker – Linda Johnson. 

Now that poker was starting to become a more strategic and legitimate enterprise and the secret strategies of the pros were revealed, the game became tougher and tougher to beat. “Tight is right!” “Play your cards close to your vest!” “No set, No bet!” were common sayings of the day, so it became tougher and tougher to win a quarter! 

Enter stage right – Stuey Unger. A revolutionary from New York who found an exploit in the fact that players were playing too tight. Putting too much value on their cards and not enough on their opponent, the man sitting in front of them. He went out and put his opponents to the test for all their chips and found that they folded too often. He then continued his onslaught by using the chips he gathered, in effect using his own opponents chips against them, to defeat them. Capturing back to back titles in 1981 and 1982, he completed the trip to the WSOP Main Event winners circle in 1997. A feat only duplicated by the late great Johnny Moss. Gabe Kaplan asked him in his interview after the event, “Stu, it’s well known that you haven’t dealt with success very well in the past, do you intend to do things differently this time around?” To which he replied, “I hope so Gabe.” There was no doubt he loved his daughter Stephanie in which he dedicated his win, but he just didn’t love himself enough to lead himself out of the personal despair he suffered for most of his life. This taught me that one can be a leader in one dynamic in life such as their profession, but not another, such as their personal life.

Phil Hellmuth was another leader in the early days of modern poker. His leadership was continuing a dominance of the game that few can debate. His WSOP Main Event title came in 1989 and while he hasn’t duplicated that exact effort, he has the most WSOP titles with 16! A true leader when it comes to greatness of achievement in the game of poker. 

Poker started to wain in the the late 90s when I came on the scene and remained stagnate till an unexpected leader showed up in 2003, embodied in the “everyman” named Chris Moneymaker. With fierce determination and a lack of fear, he knocked out some of the games best, including Johnny Chan and Phil Ivey to go on and turn a $39 satellite win into a 1 Million dollar first place prize. His feat captured by ESPN exploded the world of poker. This coupled with the new online game was like a fish net coming onto a fishing boat whose hulls were already full. This was the tipping point and no matter what followed, poker would never be the same again. 

Many new stars rose during this time, including a short in stature but mammoth in talent, Daniel Negreanu. One of the first and best to make a serious study of the game and invoke an involving strategy that has proven to keep him at the top of the game for a couple of decades. Watching a recent vlog of his he said “Limpin’ is Pimpin'” a new phrase I’ve never heard before. He goes on to talk about his new found strategy that goes against the grain of what most players are doing. “Never open-limp” – again, talking the talk and walking the walk of a true leader. Someone who goes against the grain, looking to exploit the copycats and what everyone else has settled into doing. As much as he is liked or admired, he also suffers the fate of all the leaders that have come before him. Constant criticism and rebuke from those that lack understanding and accepted way of doing things. 

Which brings us to today’s game. Many times I get the question, “how is today’s game different than before, back in the early 2000’s?” The game itself is the same. People with cards sitting across a table trying to defeat the other guy using the cards they’re dealt. What’s evolved is the approach and the strategies. Today’s game has become a computer game based in numbers and math. Pot Odds, E.V., Effective Bet sizing and Solvers. The true leaders are looking to exploit this and move in the direction of making it a people game once again.

I look forward to the new day because I didn’t particularly like this iteration of turning people into numbers. Thinking and calculating for long periods of time before making a decision and taking action. A robotic like action done in an attempt to not give off any emotional or physical “tells.” I imagine the leaders of the game will learn how to exploit the robots, realizing the fact that it’s humans that programed them in the first place! 

How will you plan in the 2020’s? Will you read the books and follow the standards that are already established and known by the masses, or will you have the courage to take the lead in the hand, forge ahead on your own path and do the unconventional things that only leaders have the courage to do? 

There’s many common traits we discover among the leaders I’ve mentioned here. Undeniable they are talented and skilled in their profession. They have a burning desire to succeed and achieve excellence. And of course the main ingredient, courage. Leaders lead us into the unknown. Embracing an adventure that may change the game forever. They move left when everyone else is going right. They buy when others are selling. The sell when others are buying. They talk when someone is listening and they listen when others are talking. What’s their secret? What do they know that the followers don’t?

…To be continued