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| Jesse May |
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| Jesse May,
multiple author in the gambling field and sometimes dubded the "voice of
poker", writes a bi-weekly column. |
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Most people know Jesse as "the voice of poker"
from his colourful commentary in CH4's late Night Poker. Jesse is also the
author of the widely respected novel, Shut Up And Deal, which looks deep into
the poker playing life. Its the hard faced 21st Century
Cincinnati Kid.
Jesse
is also the creator of The Gambler's Guide to
the World, an insiders look at the action and games around the
world. |
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Email : Jesse
May
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First I heard of Ted Forrest was as a freak.
Ted Forrest, poker player, the freak. As in, "You know what that freak Ted
Forrest did? Listen to this hand he played…" The stories were always about
limit poker, oftentimes Razz, and people would tell them like they were
describing a train wreck. "You're not gonna believe this… and then he hits
a jack, and then he check raises this guy!" Or, "…and then he turns up a
king and a three! He started with king, nine, three! Against an ace!" People
were always mad when they were playing this guy. He was driving them crazy.
In the beginning nobody ever accused Ted Forrest of playing good limit
poker. Back in the early nineties he just sat there in the chair wearing a long
haired hippie smile and boyish looks, sipping diet Pepsis and orange juice.
Smiling, calling, raising, and winning. Winning, winning, winning.
A
lot of people think successful limit poker players, really good limit poker
players, are uncreative. They claim that they are staid, patient, rockish
grinders with nothing better to do than freeze their faces in a cool rider mask
for eleven hours straight and watch other people go on tilt. That style might
get you far, it might get you steady money every hour and every year, punching
the poker room like a time clock with tips deducted and standard deviation as a
lord above all. But I'm talking about winning piles of money, stacks you can't
see over, and when I've seen Ted Forrest play limit poker, when I've seen him
playing almost every hand that gets dealt to him, when he is running over the
table, nobody has any idea what is going on in that head. Don't tell me it's
simple, don't tell me it's all been thought of, that there's no more to learn,
like now we have the book and that's the bible as well and the only real game
is no-limit, because that's where a man can think. Open up your mind and smell
the beauty, just because you don't see it don't mean it ain't there. Ted
Forrest is one weird freak, but don't think he hasn't done his homework.
Ted is also a consistent sports betting winner. He's no fool, he gets
value with his bets.
I don't know Ted Forrest very well. Haven't talked
with him much, haven't played with him often. But as far as I can tell, about
eight to ten years ago Ted Forrest got into running poker simulations through a
computer. He got together with the Eight or Better Kid, that maniacal pudge
faced infuriatingly always right paranoid control freak from the Midwest USA,
and they started running simulations that nobody had thought of. Weird
simulations, flexible maybes, particular situations with certain kinds of
players involving percentages of things that might possibly be happening. I
don't know what I'm talking about. But I seen what it did to them. I seen
strange looks on their faces and strange glints in their eyes. They don't play
like everybody else, and I seen them spin people round and round and round. And
the Eight or Better Kid is one of the other all time biggest winners in the
game of limit poker. As in he ain't giving it back. As in the house gets very
little, while he scours the graveyard shift looking for bleeding bums who give
him their money.
I'm no genius. My poker skill could fit in a mushroom
cap. The limits to my talent became painfully obvious while watching the
development of the poker star known far and wide as Johnny World, that
Philadelphia talking, wise headed, fast moving bundle of limitless talent who
told me he'd gladly pay a hundred grand not to have seen all the episodes to
the Sopranos again, so he could watch them fresh. Funny, the man's life is his
own TV movie, coming into the world as a pool player and turning genius at
whatever he puts his mind to, when he ain't on the pis. I played with him the
second time he ever played poker, between stints at the crap table when he
didn't know an ace from his ass, shooting his load at three-handed Hold'em. It
took Johnny World about three weeks before he could play better than me, soon
after he could turn me like a top. Within a year he was space age, a limit
poker playing guru, hard to even follow in a conversation.
Nowadays Ted
Forrest is establishment. Now that he's won his World Series bracelets, now
that he plays with Jerry Buss, now that he lives in Las Vegas, now that
everybody's looked around and tried to find where the money went and realized,
"Oh yeah, Ted won it all." Now Ted's a great player. After years of
marginalizing him first as a freak, then as a lucky asshole, and finally as a
rich guy, now they're all starting to talk about him again as a great player
who's won more money in limit poker cash games than anybody else. Well, I got
news for you. He didn't win all that money with ace-king.
The world runs
around saying that there ain't much skill to limit poker. No, it ain't magic.
But people assume that they know everything, that science is absolute, and
limit poker is something to be dismissed. Or that it's no more than 2+2. But
what if the books on limit poker are about as scientifically complete as
astronomy in the sixteenth century? You try and say the earth is revolving
around the sun, you're gonna get yourself thrown in jail. And Forrest, man,
that's one heretic. He is one long haired, hippie looking, freaky playing, mild
mannered guy who's won a whole lot of money, and sometimes, if you're lucky, he
just might give you a glimpse into that head of his. Check out the High Hand of
the Week he wrote one time for Phil Hellmuth's website. It's a thing of
beauty.
With all due respect to the book writing level headed
mathematicians who have embedded their stamps on poker and contributed to the
bones of the science of the game I love, I don't see any of them inventing
relativity. Actually, I see them calling Einstein a heretic. I see them putting
Copernicus in prison.
Don't you know physics still has no unified
theory? Don't you know there's still no explanation for the order of the
universe? We're still grasping at straws, writing books and hollering loudly.
Don't throw the heretics in jail. Maybe they got something. |
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