A LEGEND (IN MY OWN MIND)

A decade or more ago, I played a lot of poker. I also worked in the industry. I held various poker management positions over the last 25 years. From poker tournament director to poker room manager to finally being Director of Poker Operations of a South Florida Casino.

Hollywood Dog Track, actually located in Hallandale Beach, Florida morphed into Mardi Gras Casino. Later, soon after the roof was blown off by Hurricane Irma, it became The Big Easy Casino under new ownership.

To say that we faced competitive disadvantages is a pretty drastic understatement. The building itself is close to a century old and looks and smells every minute of it. It is surrounded by much newer and more appealing competing casinos. In fact, to reach the Big Easy, one must drive past at least one competing casino. This includes the shiny new Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, built in the shape of a guitar. Really, a guitar!

So our main competitor was a deep pocketed and highly motivated beautiful new integrated casino resort. Even worse, since it is run by a sovereign nation, The Hard Rock faces none of the onerous regulations that state-regulated casinos must work within. They can run 24/7. They can offer table games such as blackjack. And they offer shops, restaurants, and concerts in the brand new and beautiful Hard Rock Live.

When I took over the then Big Easy Poker Room at Mardi Gras Casino, it was a 30 table room that rarely used more than five of them. In the three years prior to my arrival the poker room had churned through no less than five managers. Each had failed to overcome the seemingly impossible obstacles and superior competition.

I was particularly well-suited for this seemingly impossible task. I had come from the South Florida casino day-cruise ships. We had run 4 or 5 five-hour games on small cruise ships that sailed three miles offshore and through a loophole of the states anti-gambling statutes.

I was used to starting from scratch. Working on the ships had been a taste of the wild west. Rough seas, sick passengers, brawls, and at least two attempted mutinies were just part of everyday life. I would build up the business in the poker room on ships just to lose everything to a week of bad weather or a slew of awful publicity. Strangely enough, the public would respond negatively to news reports of brawls with a hundred injuries or craps tables falling over on guests during rough seas.

There were days we would sail despite 10-12 foot seas. 300 of the 350 passengers would sit huddled together on the floor, many of them sick and vomiting. Yet the ship would stay out to sea, as long as there were still a few passengers well enough to gamble.

This was aboard various Suncruz vessels that were owned by the mercurial Constantine “Gus” Boulis. Gus was an interesting man to say the least. He possessed an undeniable charm and magnetism. To be honest, Gus was as scammy as the day is long. He had a gift for getting people to lend him money and extend him credit. And he felt no particular interest in paying back loans or paying creditors. I knew the man well. I believe that he simply thought that if someone couldn’t force him to pay, well, he really didn’t owe it to them. It sounds silly, but it is exactly the way the man thinks . . . well, thought. Because as far as I can tell (and court documents indicate) he ran into people who did business in much the same way as he did. With one important difference: guns.

Gus was gunned down gangland style in his Mustang Convertible. The vehicle coming to rest in front of one of his own former Miami Subs restaurants.

According to Broward Sheriff office records, there were close to 4000 potential suspects in the murder of Gus. Of which I was one. The reason being, that like most of the other people on the list, Gus owed me money. I had been fired from Suncruz some months earlier. With good reason I might add. Gus had a nephew who sometimes sailed with the ship. One night he came to the poker room and had himself served a very fancy steak and lobster dinner in front of all the guests. Naturally the guests asked why they couldn’t get steak and lobster (it wasn’t on the ship's menu). I suggested to him, I thought gently, that he might want to have his dinner somewhat less public. He responded with “Fuck you, I will eat wherever I want.” I did think carefully about my reply, but eventually settled on “Well, maybe if you didn’t do so much coke, you wouldn’t be such a fucken idiot.” Oddly enough, he didn't take it in the helpful way I intended. But it was a full week before I was fired. There was a big tournament coming up that only I knew how to run. So they waited until after that.

They owed me $6800 because my compensation was based on a percentage of revenues that exceeded the previous year's numbers. I was not surprised that they didn’t pay me. I was, however, slightly surprised when Gus called personally, trying to rehire me about six months later. My first response was to say that if I was to consider returning, I would first have to be paid the $6800 I was owed. I knew that would never happen and I was already working at the competing SeaEscape casino, a much larger and ancient repurposed Russian transport ship. My new boss on the SeaEscape would be “displeased” if I left. This was a gentleman that would be unwise to “displease”.

For the record, I did not kill Gus. And I was very sad when he was murdered. He was a scammer but in his own way he was charming and meant well. The man was not afraid of work. Many evenings he would park cars at the Suncruz when things got backed up. Sometimes he would sail and help prepare food in the kitchen, even the time that the windows blew out in the kitchen during heavy seas. I walked into the kitchen to see him happily cooking, standing in thigh deep sea water as it crashed through the missing window behind him each time the boat pitched. Many evenings he would greet the boat when we returned. The casino manager and I, the poker manager, would report to Gus how much money we earned that night. The casino manager would say “we made $33,000 tonight”. Gus would turn to me and say “what did you make?” and I would tell him we made about $1800 which would cause him to shake his head. It became a running joke. I would say “Yeah, he made $33,000 but tomorrow night he might lose and I will make another $1800”. And it was true, the table games would lose sometimes. In poker we earn less, but we never lose. Because in poker the players are playing against each other, not the house. Poker wasn’t a huge earner, but it was steady.

I spent many happy years on the SeaEscape until it ended in a wave of lawsuits and accusations between the owners of the ship and my own bosses, who operated the casino. By court order I was paid for two years as the cases made their way through court, even though all of us were not even permitted to enter the port slip where the boat was located.

Two years later my bosses found a new boat. The somewhat less decrepit St. Tropez. We spent weeks retrofitting the vessel. Yes, I had been paid for two years to do nothing, but they got their money's worth out of me. We worked 18 hour days for 10 weeks or so getting that ship ready to sail. To be honest, I really didn’t want anything to do with it. But they had paid me all that time and I felt an obligation to stay with them. They had always treated me fairly. I stayed almost a year once it was seaworthy.

By this point my girlfriend and I had a baby on the way and I was ready to stay on dry land. I left the St. Tropez, and opened a dealer training school. It didn’t earn a lot of money but it was very gratifying. It felt good to help people and literally change peoples lives for the better. Over the years I have trained hundreds of poker dealers.

But now we had a baby and I had to get back to work. Which leads us full circle back to what was then The Hollywood Dog Track and Mardi Gras Casino.

I had no interest in managing. I just wanted to deal some cards, smile and make some money. Then go home after my shift without another thought. It didn't work out that way. A little over a year later I was offered the director job. It was a risky play as no one had lasted more than 18 months in the job, but the challenge was irresistible.

My girlfriend, who later became my wife, also had many years of experience in the poker world and is still one of the best dealers I have ever seen. She has been the featured dealer on the final table of many televised events.

The two of us put our heads together to try to figure out a way to “put asses in the chairs” of what had always been a third-rate and futile poker room.

This is the part where I have to give credit to my former boss and still friend Mr. Daniel K. Adkins. We tried all different kinds of crazy promotions and tournaments. None of which would have been possible without Dan.

Had I been working for a big company not one of these ideas would ever have gained management approval. But Dan believed in us. Ideas that would have been stuck in middle management anywhere else became reality in our room.

We speeded up the game. Which had become boring and stale as players stalled and performed like players they had seen on TV. We came up with dozens of innovative promotions that did indeed “put asses in chairs”.

Eventually we settled on a consistent set of promotions that kept the room humming. The final piece of the puzzle was a new kind of poker tournament. We couldn’t compete with all the other rooms running tournaments, so I took all the experience I had gained from the boats and created a totally new thing: Free Roll Tournaments.

Basically they were free to enter tournaments. Seven nights a week you could walk into The Big Easy and play a tournament for free. But almost no one did. Almost everyone would purchase chips along the way. This way we could offer guaranteed prize pools up to $10,000.00 while still allowing players to play 500 units for free if they chose to. A room that had no built in constituency and almost no geographic demographic to its own now had legions of devoted regulars.

But most of all it had a “brand”. It was a room where there was a great high hand promotion every day and a free to enter poker tournament every night.

It was August 31 this year when I was informed that I was being “laid off”. I have no hard feelings. It was a great 12 years and business is business.

We “invented” those unique tournaments more than a decade ago. More than 1000 players a week still participate. Even though I invented it, I had never played in one. Until last night.

Like most players, I did spend some money. Exactly $30. Four hours later I came to the final table as the clear chip leader. All of the players at the final table were eager to make “a deal”, or a “chop” of the prize money, as it is commonly called. A deal was not in my best interest. The correct way for me to play it would be to refuse any deals until 4 or 5 players remain and then demand the lion's share of the remaining prize money, which would probably have been about $1000 or more.

But I am the former director. I accepted the first offer proposed which gave me $602 and more importantly first place. I could have squeezed a few more bucks out of the situation, but why? Everybody was happy and it was over. It is a wonder that I was able to fit my ego out of the poker room doors.

I had played in the tournament that had been my own creation exactly one time.

And won it.

I will be traveling soon. And then I will be moving away. It is quite possible that I have set foot in the Big Easy Poker Room for the last time. It has been my home for more than 14 years. The people there have been and will always be family. Yes, I understand that it is what they call Mary Tyler Moore Syndrome. But it is truly how I feel.

I will always miss that place. I will always miss those people.

But I could not have left it in a better way. As a legend in my own mind.