I happened to be in the Bellagio poker room when the biggest poker game of all times started in 2001. There was a lot of rumor in the poker room but nobody knew much. Obviously a compete stranger was playing the best pros in the world for $10,000 - $20,000 limit hold’em. After a while the word spread that the name of the stranger who challenged the top pros was Andy Beal, a banker and billionaire from Texas.

Every time a new dealer sat down at our table we would get inconsistent news: “Andy is winning”, “Andy is down”, “Andy plays great”, “Andy doesn’t stand a chance”. Over the years Andy Beal would occasionally come back to Vegas and play the group of professionals, called the corporation, for even higher stakes.

In my opinion Andy Beal did a lot of things right.

1. He only played limit hold’em. Just because players like Doyle Brunson and Chip Reese played for years successfully in the highest poker games does not mean they are the best limit hold’em players in the world. Quite frankly I doubt that Doyle and Chip are better than the best mid limit hold’em players in Las Vegas. These pros probably have seen more limit hold’em hands in a year than Doyle and Chip in their whole life. The reason players like Doyle and Chip are so good is that they excel in all games; they are experts in all forms of poker. That’s why the big game at the Bellagio is nearly always mixed games and hold’em is only rarely played. There is no doubt that even a smart guy like Andy Beal could never beat Doyle and Chip in mixed games. He would have had to study and practice for years. But in just one game it might be a different story.

2. Andy Beal only played heads-up. Contrary to what many believe learning to play heads-up is a lot easier than learning how to play in a ring game.

3. By only playing heads-up Andy Beal excluded the threat that the pros would intentionally or unintentionally collude against him. The stakes being as high as Andy Beal wanted to play, the pros were not willing to play alone out of their own bankroll against him. So what happened was that the pros pooled their money forming a common bankroll. This way the risk was reduced for the pros, the individual result was meaningless. They would win or lose only their share of the bankroll. In a ring game Andy Beal would be playing against 5 or 6 pros, not just one.

4. Andy Beal tried to play as high as possible constantly asking to raise the stakes to put pressure on the pros. It’s probably no coincidence that Andy Beal won decisively when the stakes were the highest ($100,000 - $200,000). He had the pros out of their comfort zone.

On the other hand there are two things I think Andy Beal did wrong.

1. He allowed the corporation to choose his opponents and to replace them at anytime. Even if Andy is better than the 10 to 15 players of the corporation as a whole there are always one, two or more players that, for what reason ever, will have a positive result against him. This is a common fact in sports. Even the best team in any discipline will usually have one or another teams that it couldn’t beat with a stick and a gun. This is actually what happened. Andy beat most of the players but lost heavenly against two of them: Todd Brunson and Howard Lederer. Not surprisingly these two played the most against Andy Beal. The Texan would have done better if he had insisted that everyone of the corporation plays the same amount of time against him.

2. It looks like the banker from Dallas played too long at each session. Playing heads-up is mentally a lot more demanding than playing ring games because you are involved in every hand. Staying focused for a long time is difficult. When one of the pros got tired he was replaced and Andy played on, sometimes playing against two or three different opponents in the same session. More often than not Andy was winning at the beginning of the session and losing at the end. Keeping the sessions shorter would without a doubt have helped him especially because the pros are trained to stay focused for a long time playing cards.

Michael Craig has undertaken the task to tell the true account of the biggest poker game in history. Craig has spoken to all participants of the game to tell the story as accurate as possible. He covers what has happened from 2001 to 2004, closing by citing Beal: “I’m not going to be back” (p. 248). Of course it was not all over because Beal did come back. In 2005 Andy wrote a open letter to Doyle Brunson about the terms of a $40 million dollar limit freeze-out and Doyle fired back. Maybe this ‘utlitmate game’ will actually occur and maybe somebody else will actually write the continuation.

The book profits from the fact that Craig is a journalist. It’s well written, appropriately structured and sometimes even thrilling to read. Nonetheless there are two problems the book suffers from. First, the game wasn’t taped and obviously nobody cared to record any hands which means Craig, who wasn’t present, can give only vague characterizations how the players involved played and what happened (e. g. “Jennifer [Harman] was in control from the start. But every time she had the match nearly closed out, Andy Beal would get the lucky card he needed to win a big pot and keep the game alive”, p. 66; “[Gus] Hansen’s aggressive style, however, was not a good match against Beal”, p. 231). Second, the book contains a lot of filler material. Several pages are devoted to every player of the corporation to give his background. When Beal happened to come to Vegas when the World Series of Poker was in progress, Craig of course uses the opportunity to fill some pages with information about the WSOP that is really extraneous to the book itself. If you have never read anything about Howard Lederer, Barry Greenstein, Doyle Brunson or how Chris Moneymaker won the WSOP main event, this might be ok for you otherwise it’s just boring and a waste of space.

You won’t be disappointed by reading this book. Just keep in mind it’s mainly an entertainment book, it will not help you to improve your poker game.

(Tristan Steiger)

Buy the Craig book!