Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2005 | 9:08 a.m.
The top 10 finishers, with prize money won, in the World Poker Tour's $10,000 buy-in Doyle Brunson North American Poker Championship that concluded Saturday morning at the Bellagio.
1. Minh Ly, Las Vegas, $1.06 million
2. Dan Harrington, Santa Monica, Calif., $620,730
3. Gavin Smith, Las Vegas, $327,610
4. Don Zewin, Las Vegas, $189,630
5. Jan Sorensen, Denmark, $137,940
6. Tony Grand, Chatsworth, Calif., $96,560
7. Ernie Scherer, West Jordan, Utah, $68,970
8. Danny Shiff, Miami, $55,175
9. Abraham Gray, Lawrenceville, Ga., $48,280
10. Barry Greenstein, Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., $41,380
After midnight at the Bellagio, poker pro Minh Ly was sneaking a smoke on a balcony overlooking the resort's fountain show and the lights of the Strip.
Inside, the final table of the Doyle Brunson North American Poker Championship, the latest stop on the lucrative made-for-TV World Poker Tour, was down to four players from a field of 420.
Ly, who competes regularly in Las Vegas' highest-stakes cash poker games, grimaced and gave a quick assessment of his tournament play.
"Up and down, up and down," he said.
He had no idea those words would be prophetic.
Within minutes, Ly was to become involved in a series of critical hands -- one a near-crippling loss followed by a big rally -- that ultimately put him in position to win the tournament and its top prize of more than $1 million.
For Ly, though, celebration time was still a couple of hours away.
His opponents at the table in the center of the Fontana Lounge were three of poker's toughest and most respected professionals.
To Ly's left was Dan Harrington, the 1995 World Series of Poker champion, whose deliberate style has led his fellow pros to nickname him "Action Dan" -- the same way you might call a huge man Tiny or a fat guy Slim.
Across the table from Ly was Gavin Smith, a Canadian who moved to Las Vegas a year and a half ago to "chase a girl" and play poker. The romance fizzled, but Smith's poker career has thrived -- he won more than $1 million in a World Poker Tour tournament at the Mirage this year.
Between Harrington and Smith was longtime Las Vegas pro Don Zewin, who moved here in 1979 and grinded out a living at the poker tables even during the lean years, when the game's players were graying and the game itself dying.
"Let's gamble," Ly said.
* * *
There's a short answer for anyone wondering if the poker craze has peaked:
Not yet.
Last year's Doyle Brunson championship, one of 16 stops on the World Poker Tour, drew 312 players for a prize pool of about $3 million.
This year's 420 entrants contributed to a prize pool of more than $4 million, an increase of more than 30 percent.
Including two weeks of preliminary tournaments at the Bellagio leading up to the main event -- the whole shebang was officially called Festa al Lago IV -- the total prize pool amounted to $9.5 million, easily exceeding last year's $7 million pot.
"The popularity of no-limit Texas hold 'em (the main game in World Poker Tour events) is still booming," tournament director Jack McClelland said.
About 20 years ago, poker was dying a slow death. It received a boost for a couple of years when California legalized hold 'em and stud poker -- until the 1980s, all legal games in California were draw-based -- but stagnated again until 2003, when televised tournaments and online poker began to drive the current boom.
"Now, it's the in thing to be doing with the in crowd," McClelland said.
Zewin, who finished in fourth place Saturday morning when Harrington made a flush against his pair of 9s, admits to being bewildered -- but pleased -- by the poker craze.
"Everything has changed," said Zewin, 53, a native of Niagara Falls, N.Y. "Nobody could have seen this coming. If somebody said 20 years ago that all this would be happening, you would have thought he was nuts."
* * *
When the Doyle Brunson tournament airs on the Travel Channel next spring, a nationwide audience will watch as Ly poses with his championship gold bracelet and his piles of cash.
What they'll miss is how Ly advanced to the final "TV table" of six players the previous day.
It was in the wee hours of Friday, as they narrowed the field from 10 to the last six at a table in the corner of the Bellagio's main poker room, before an assortment of curious tourists behind the railing -- young guys clutching bottles of beer and glasses of booze, wayward sports bettors, even the odd bride and groom.
Ly's stack of chips took a big hit when 81-year-old Tony Grand went all-in with a hand of ace-8 and Ly called with pocket queens. Ly was a solid favorite, but lost the hand when an ace came on the flop, giving Grand a higher pair.
"He keeps making the same move -- all-in, all-in," Ly said later. "I wait for the right time to call him.
"You gotta gamble, and he gambled," Ly said, using an expletive to describe the ace that hit the board.
Ly stuck around, slowly rebuilding his stack -- up and down, up and down -- until he eliminated Ernie Scherer in seventh place, setting the stage for Friday night's TV table.
Ly got his chips in with a club flush draw against Scherer's two pair and won the hand when a club came on the final card.
"I got lucky," Ly said. "You gotta gamble."
* * *
It was after 1 in the morning Saturday when a parade of shapely young women in black formal gowns marched into the Fontana Lounge, each holding a white cowboy hat overflowing with banded bundles of hundred-dollar bills, looking like some deranged bridal party.
The cash was the tournament's prize money, the hats honoring native Texan and longtime Las Vegas resident Doyle Brunson, the event's namesake.
Gavin Smith had just been eliminated in third place, and his final hand was also weirdly symbolic. He went all-in with a 10 and a deuce, known in poker as a "Doyle Brunson" because Brunson won his World Series of Poker championships in 1976 and 1977 with that very hand.
Harrington KO'd Smith when he made two pair and Smith's 10-2 did not improve. The key hand for Smith had come moments earlier when he went all-in with ace-7 against Ly's king-8. Ly made a pair of kings; Smith's hand did not improve.
"When the time came to put all the money in, I got in there with the better hand ," Smith, originally from Guelph, Ontario, said.
* * *
Ly, 39, of Chinese and Vietnamese heritage, came to Las Vegas from Vietnam almost 20 years ago.
He worked as a cook and a poker dealer, paying his dues at the city's low-limit poker tables. In his first five years in Las Vegas, he barely broke even at poker until something clicked, and he began pulling in profits while advancing to higher-stakes games.
Ly (pronounced Lee) is known as one of poker's true gentlemen, and although his English is fairly limited, his mantra for this tournament -- "you gotta gamble" -- came through loud and clear.
When it was still four-handed, right after his smoke break on the balcony, Ly lost a big pot when his pocket 9s were cracked by Harrington, who made a pair of kings. Minutes later, Ly bounced back when his pocket jacks held up against Harrington's pocket 8s.
Once it was down to the final two players, Ly, trailing and forced to gamble, went all-in with 10-9 and outdrew Harrington's superior starting hand of ace-9, then won another big pot without a showdown when four hearts hit the board.
On the final hand, Ly was an underdog again, with jack-3 against Harrington's ace-5. The flop revealed a 3 to pair Ly and give him the victory in what McClelland called one of the most grueling and competitve final tables in the World Poker Tour's four-year history.
"Minh played an excellent tournament," said Harrington, a former attorney born in Massachusetts in 1945, who now lives in Santa Monica, Calif. "I played OK, but he deserved to win. He played with a lot of aggression."
Sometimes, it seems, Harrington's tactical approach to poker works brilliantly.
Sometimes, his conservative strategy succeeds in extracting chips from opposing players like an efficient machine.
And sometimes ... sometimes, you gotta gamble.
Jeff Haney can be reached at 259-4041 or [email protected].
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