By Jesse May

When can calling someone down be considered something beautiful? When can the weakest play in the poker book, the calling station, become a thing of beauty? It can when the play is put between two of the most artful practicioners of the game. It is when the hand is fought between the poker equivalents of water and oil.



But let me go back for a second, as I considered myself fortunate to even be watching the hand come down. I was a miracle to be awake, for one, because I had been up for thirty straight hours, twenty-three of them in the box, stuck in a two by five foot room with a crud encrusted lip mike wedged in my nose and four and twenty empty Styrofoam cups spilled on the console. There was a gagging in my soul. On a normal day, this would be considered not fun. But on this day I would have paid a wage just to be watching.



This is beyond the new prospect for televised poker. This is the new format for must see TV. This is a twenty-four hour cash game.



A cash game is an animal. It’s a living breathing animal that has a mind of its own, one which goes through the spectrum of the human condition and emotions. Life, death, and chaos in amounts to the extreme. There was the green room and the game. Once upon a time there was a twenty-four hour cash game.



Anybody who’s been playing poker has, sooner or later, played a marathon session. Hopefully, it’s because you’re winning and the game is really good. But nine out of ten times you’re not, and it certainly ain’t. Nine out of ten times you are stuck to the gills and just praying to get even while you dig the hole deeper and deeper. You look around the table through your bleary eyes and try hard to convince yourself that you’re still able to play good poker.



Among a group of weekend plonkers, a twenty-four hour cash game can have all the hilarity of a sitcom. When you take some of the best players in the world, known from everything from winning bracelets to crushing cyberspace to playing Chinese poker on the plane, only one thing is for sure. Turn away if you dare. I’d hate to give too much away, but here’s a brief highlight of the cast of characters and some random memories. It’s over a month later, and that night and day still burn in my brain as bright flashes of a radiant moment.



There was the Devilfish in all his glory, saddled with a cross called the river killer and doing his best to take it like a man. There was Roland de Wolfe, one thousand percent action and eighty-five hours of frazzle. There was the world champion Jamie Gold, who could play before the flop if one of his cards were chervil and the other one mint. There was Jesus Ferguson, who in a cash game looks like an actor in a play, and an understudy at that. There was Todd Brunson, son of the best there ever was, more than a chip off the block and home off the range. The irrepressible Tony G, who knows that the needle hurts much more when it’s stuck in sidearm. And Brian Townsend, who doesn’t have to talk to be the freak show at the table.



There were seven all-ins in the first fifteen hands. The game started like a hundred foot drop and kept on falling. A couple hundred thousand always on the table and most of it in every fourth pot. Six players called eleven hundred before the flop and two of them were in the dark. More table talk than the House of Commons. Every sense of decorum left at the door. Eight handed, seven handed, five handed and back again. And plenty of plays that took your breath away.



Seven quarts of alcohol and the vodka ran out at dawn, plus beer and Red Bull by the lungful. A game that’s 25-50 and features the live 100 straddle, the live 200, the live 400, and an occasional live 800 thrown in. Where jack-three has pot odds pre-flop, and may in fact be the best hand. Plenty of characters sprinkled in from the UK, including cash game rounders with stodgy London vernacular and a 20-year old phenom wearing pink who could barely reach over the table. Cowboy hats, swearing, and laughing on the floor. And a couple of whales who cause pain not dished out since the Middle Ages. I ain’t joking. The Poker Den is about just how crazy poker players really are.



He called four bullets, four pot sized bullets. The reraise before the flop, the bet on the flop, the load on the turn, and the elephant on the river. Kirk Morrison called four bullets, and logic told him to fold on every one. He sat there tortured on four separate streets, and all the information he had available to him told him to ditch the hand. Every piece of cheese that he could sniff up from the moves, the chips and the cards told him to fold except that one niggling doubt. Pure cold instinct, the first impression. Seat of the pants poker. He sat there deciding whether to call his last 26,000 dollars or so on the river, just sitting there and prattling off a ranters monologue, while all the while his antennae were pricked up to his left where the poker god Brian Townsend, sbrugby himself, the man who has won eight figures online and tussled with Farha and Baldwin at the Bellagio, where the one who has the legions of followers and is considered a demigod in all circles of the young and admiring and up and coming poker students, where Brian Townsend sat motionless with a smirk on his face and waited for the axe to fall one way or the other.



“Marty”, called out Kirk Morrison to the floorman and director, “Marty, how quick can you get to me the airport if I go broke?”



“Oh, we’ll get you there pretty quick!” said Mad Marty Wilson, who has never been at a loss for words and could think of more than a few times when he had been in Kirk’s shoes himself. Half your bankroll in the pot and the rest on the table, far from home, and holding one pair that can’t beat what’s on the board.



“Well, fuck it, then,” said Kirk Morrison. “I call.” And I have to tell you, even though I had by that point been awake over thirty-two hours straight and in the box for twenty-three, I was standing on my chair and shouting like a banshee. Well, you would have been too. Kirk Morrison made the call.



Later on, after the game had broke up and we were standing around like people who had just gotten off economy seats from Melbourne and waiting for a cab, Kirk elbowed me in the ribs and smiled. “Whaddid ya think?” He giggled. “Old school poker. There ain’t too many of us left around. Playing by the seat of our pants.” He’s right. And you better believe it’s the perfect talent for a twenty-four hour cash game.