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Maryann Guberman has been a writer and editor with many gaming publications, including Sports Form, Card Player, Poker World, Player's Panorama and Systems and Methods. She also has written and edited numerous books on gambling.

Jul 28, 2007

The Poker Road is Paved with (Quick) Sand?

I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell. -- Harry S. Truman

It looks cool, fun, like a great way to see the world on your own schedule, your own time, your own terms. No alarm clock to jolt you into the reality of 9 to 5; sleep till noon nearly everyday. You see these guys and gals on television, your new idols, constantly passing chips (and stacks of Franklins) into the center of the felt-covered table, betting (and sometimes bluffing) that this particular wager means "I can beat the pants (or skirt) off you!"

There'll be no more staring at a flat-screen monitor and hitting a keyboard, no more cold calling on the phone, no more follow-up visits and no more thanking people for their business. No sir, baby, from here on it's floating across the globe like a star, playing no-limit poker tournaments and soaking up the accolades from adoring fans.

So, is this the realization of the American dream or a hollow search for anything but what your parents thought was the right direction?

I had been discussing the game of and its new hold on the American psyche with a friend the evening before Susan Genard's DVD "No Limit: A Search For The American Dream on The Poker Tournament Train " arrived in my mailbox. There was plucky Susan Genard, pursuing a plan of reuniting with ex-husband Tim, their young son Brick in tow, to enter -- and film the experiences of -- six high-stakes poker tournaments via their bicoastal production company.

At least Genard didn't call poker a metaphor for life. She simply called it a tool, a stepping stone, a fund-raising venture that would save her small independent company and finance future films. Along the way, she and Tim would document the entire journey in unrehearsed reality.

A little background reveals that Susan had already bragged to the poker-naive Tim about her tournament prowess, showing him her profile in a poker magazine and recounting the first-place finishes of the past. (Who knows, maybe poker was in her genes, considering her mother, who shows up briefly in the film, is a long-time poker player.) Tim agrees and they set off to do the deed.

We don't see much of Genard's play in the film. Instead we see the behind-the-scenes swings of fortune that reveal the down and dirty, high and low, euphoria and depression of putting your money where your skill is. She bombs out at the start, eventually leaking away some of the seed money in side games, then promises not to do it again (a promise she later breaks.) We feel her elation at getting a lucky seat at a lucky table and hear her bad-beat suck-out stories, and we wait and wonder if she will realize her original goal as she and Tim and the crew travel from one coast to another with the dream stuffed inside a rumpled and overcrowded purse. We see her perky face transform into the tired mask of its former visage after marathon sessions, five to 12 hours of sitting and draining the mind through the intense concentration needed to make quick, positive, decisions.

This is not your (grand)father's poker game. This is Daniel Negreanu talking about ripping your heart out and stomping on it to get your money then going off for a beer with you afterwards. This is Doyle Brunson memories about going broke at least 500 times. This is Amir Vahedi identifying freedom. It's Bobby Baldwin and Barry Greenstein personifying the meaningless of money. It's Miami John Cernuto grousing over losing.

They are all here, some 40 recognizable poker heads, testifying and justifying their chosen lifestyle with its exhilaration and frustration, and Genard got it all on film.

Yes, to some this is the American dream; to others it's not. Poker is a thing that gets under your skin like dirt under a construction workers fingernails with both jobs leading to some kind of internal and external satisfaction. It's a lightening rod that lures you to return like a well-written essay pulls an English professor back to a classroom with both jobs leading to valleys of disappointment and mountains of high.

Genard's "No Limit" doesn't follow a script. It abandons the hyperbole, leaves typical broadcasting color commentary behind and gives you full disclosure about life on the poker tournament trail.

It's way more real that the WPT, the WSP and all the tournaments between.

Hey, when you need a poker fix get a copy of "No Limit" and see what you think about this fascinating subject of professional poker. And no, I'm not going to tell you if the production company scored!