Underground Poker Documentary
Murder, not heart attack. That my grandfather which I thought died of a heart attack, actually died from being shot at an underground poker game for reasons unknown, and that he was an alcoholic. The 2012 documentary Inside: Underground Poker features a cast of colorful characters. I was quickly drawn to the exciting names like Mikey Tats, Brad the Conductor, and John the Banker. Producer Jon Bulette dives into New York City’s underground poker scene and the fascinating impact that illegal gambling has on player’s lives. As his documentary on Toronto's underground poker scene screens at Hot Docs, the director talks about clandestine clubs, living off winnings and the city's surprisingly robust gambling scene.
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This month, via the social sharing platform Reddit, a poker dealer and former player started telling his story. However, this was no ordinary story. Over the past fortnight, Julius - not his real name - has started to reveal all about the illegal underground poker games in New York that he played or dealt in over the past fifteen years.
Feedback from the poker community has been overwhelmingly positive, with hundreds of poker players, dealers, and fans rushing to request more chapters. It’s the latest poker binge and we caught up with the creator.
“I was really nervous when I made the first post,” says Julius, clearly shocked by the popularity of his story-telling. ‘I thought I was going to get a ton of crap for it. I’d been browsing the sub-Reddit on poker for a while and looking through the content I couldn’t find anything that was remotely similar.”
'I’d been browsing the subreddit on poker for a while and looking through the content I couldn’t find anything that was remotely similar.'
Julius is, as you might expect, deeply entrenched in the poker world, and currently resides in Vegas; the ‘gambling capital of the world’. Having left New York some time ago, he feels like he has sufficient distance from the subject matter to tell all about working in underground poker rooms. The kind of places the creators of Rounders visited to research the 1998 movie.
“I work for a few different poker rooms in Vegas and the most common thing people ask me is ‘Where are you from?’ Eighty percent of the time, the next question is ‘Did you play poker in New York?’ When I tell that I played and dealt in underground clubs, they want me to tell them the crazy stories or if I saw cheating.”
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That’s how the Reddit story started. One night, Julius left his last table and got home fuelled with an impulse to write about when he first visited a poker club when he was a 16-year-old. The next thing he knew, it was three hours later, and he’d created the first chapter.
“I have no formal training in writing and I’m sure that’s evident. But I’ve always enjoyed being articulate in my life. I’ve never done anything even remotely similar to this. I have no idea where this came from.”
The impulse has taken him to eight chapters to date, with plenty more to come. The one-time computer programmer, who was born in California but then moved to the East Coast and New York, loved the perks in New York, and money was the root of it.
“I had a pretty good job at a software company but always dealt poker on the side at nights or weekends, because the money was fantastic, and it was cash.”
Julius became drawn into the poker world more and more. It came to a point where he was making a lot more money in the poker games than he was in his regular job.
“I was happier doing it. I love the game and the industry. It brings me a lot of joy.”
That joy runs right through his story, and despite having to change a few names and clubs (‘Out of respect and not to blow a spot’), Julius may have protected people’s names but he lays the tale out there as honestly as it comes. This is the truth of what dealing to poker players or playing poker underground is really like. Julius believes dealing has made him a better player, but that’s not something he thinks applies to everyone.
'I had a pretty good job at a software company but always dealt poker on the side at nights or weekends, because the money was fantastic, and it was cash.'
“My favorite book is the myth of poker talent by Alex Fitzgerald. The best players in the world put in the most time and work the hardest.”
As a dealer, Julius thinks he and his fellow dealers have the opportunity to pick up poker skills to pay the bills. It all comes down to that hard work element.
“We get to observe tens of thousands of hands on a daily basis eight hours a day. If you study the game and pay attention to the hands you’re dealing, you can learn quite a bit.”
Julius believes most dealers have an advantage - but only if they pay attention to players they deal to and embrace the study sign of the game. But he does... so why isn’t he the best poker player in the game?
“I have horrible bankroll management!” he says with a rueful laugh. “I used to play $5/$10 but the game has become extremely nitty. I’ll play $1/$3 in Vegas because it’s so easy. I get the itch for poker two or three times a week, but I deal every other day; I work seven days a week.”
Despite his obvious love for the game, Julius, now nearing 30 years old, has no desire to turn professional in poker. But he does love mixed games and says that mixing it up helped his No-Limit Hold’em game immensely. Some stories will come up in future chapters that explore that... along with police raids, crazy poker hands, and getting out of New York just as Julius’ luck was running out.
“Because I titled it ‘Inside Underground NY Poker’, I guess it’ll end when I made the move to Las Vegas. In my life, that was a new chapter for me, but I’m only up to 2007 right now, so I’ve got some time to go through before I leave.”
Now Vegas-based, Julius’s adventures have continued above board with a dealer’s license. He loves being in the gambling capital of the world. He made the decision to move to Vegas because he’d had enough of dealing underground illegally. It was only a matter of time before something bad happened in New York. But hey, if you’re reading his adventures, you’ll know that danger is on 5th Street waiting for him.
Read it yet? If not, you can find all the chapters right here. Here at PokerNews, we’re hooked.
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Inside Underground NY Poker Excerpt
With Julius' permission, an excerpt of one of his stories. This bit comes from the opening post; Part 1.
“When you rang the bell, they’d ask you who you were, you’d tell them how and who invited you, and in a minute or two you’d be buzzed in through the first steel door. After entering, you’d come to a second steel door with another camera positioned in front, which only opened from the inside.
'you’d come to a second steel door with another camera positioned in front, which only opened from the inside.'
When you finally entered the room, it was gorgeous — clean, large, comfortable, and was equipped with everything you wanted in a club. A full-sized kitchen, multiple clean bathrooms (one even had a shower), a lounge area, a high limit room, waitresses, a bunch of large flat screen TV’s, and a smoking room among other things. The first thing you’d notice was that they had 6 high-quality poker tables paired with executive chairs, not including the one in the high-limit room. This club was spacious.
As you walked in, a valet would ask for your keys and he would go fetch your vehicle and park it in an organized fashion amongst the others. You’d then make your way over to the podium and tell the floor which game you wanted to play — they usually had at least several games going — $1/$3, $2/$5, and $5/$10 NL and higher when it ran, but the much higher games were much more private.
Strapped with $1,000 in cash on me, I request a seat in the $1/$3 game and eventually make my way onto the table. The max buy-in was $500, which I opted for because most stacks at the table were deep. It didn’t really matter anyway — this was my first time playing in an underground poker club and I was nervous as hell.”
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Tonight starting at 8/7c, the Discovery Channel will premiere three new shows in what they’re calling 'All-In, All-Night,' and poker players and fans should find the trio right up their alley of interest.
First up will be the hour-long Hustling the House, a show that will examine how casinos and lotteries use math and science to gain the upper hand. It also shows viewers how they can turn the tables.
That will be followed by Casino Secrets from 9/8c. While not poker-specific, this show will show you the lengths casinos go to in order to keep gamblers doing what they do best — gambling! As the Discover Channel puts is: “From the true odds of roulette, to the inner workings of a slot machine, the truth is about to come about.”
Finally, Underground Poker will premiere at 10/9c. The show stars longtime friends and star poker players Antonio Esfandiari and Phil Laak.
The show, which involved showrunner Jon Bulette, assistant editor Peter Hedberg, and production company Matador Content & Appian Way, is the story about two professional gamblers, Esfandiari and Laak, who travel to different cities — in this particular episode it’s New Orleans — and their focus is to find private, high-stakes, underground poker games.
“Real poker games, none of the poker is staged,' Esfandiari said over a phone interview with PokerNews. 'We’re finding real games and we’re trying to get in them. There’s a little bit of banter between me and Phil, because you know that’s kind of our characters. At the same time we’re trying to get into these games, so we’re meeting interesting people along the way.”
The Origin of Underground Poker
The idea for the aptly named Underground Poker came a few years back thanks to an unlikely meeting with a Hollywood mover and shaker.
“We were on the movie set for Runner Runner to do a cameo, and on the set we met ‘Kingpin,’ who is Jennifer Killoran,” Esfandairi explained. “She was a producer on the movie. She was super cool and we became friends. She took a liking to Phil and I, and she thought we were hilarious. She said, 'You guys need a TV show.' We said we already had one, and she said, ‘Well, you need another one.’ We said that’s great, but nobody ever makes it happen. She said she could make it happen, and next thing you know we have a TV show. I can honestly say it is the vision of one human being that believed in Phil and I.”
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Esfandiari revealed that the evolution of the show was fairly unique. First it started as a five-minute teaser, which quickly more than doubled to 13 minutes. Before long, the production company decided to put together a full pilot, which was shot in August 2013 in New Orleans.
“The end goal is the show does well, people like it, and we can do more episodes,” said Esfandiari. “So right now it’s just the one show that we shot, and when they air it we’ll see how it goes.”
Underground Poker Club
At that point in the interview, Laak joined the conference call and it immediately became clear why Killoran thought the two deserved a TV show — they had uncanny chemistry.
“Phil, nice of you to join us for your TV show,” Esfandiari said with oozing sarcasm.
“I think it’s your TV show, but close, you’re only one person away,' a hyper-energetic Laak replied humbly. 'I am your costar. You know where all the games are, I just ride your coattails.'
“You know it’s Phil’s show,” Esfandiari tried to clarify.
The two continued to assign credit to the other for the better part of a minute, though neither was willing to accept. It became clear that these two were a team, and one might not survive without the other.
Finding the Right Games
With a premise in mind for the show, it was time to find a game. The producers set their sights on New Orleans and reached out to the local poker community for help, which was documented in a well-written blog by Bill Phillips of Gulf Coast Poker. Even so, Laak and Esfandiari decided to do some legwork.
“We called around to some people and said, ‘Hey look, we wanna come and play, are there any games?’” Esfandiari explained. “They said there were a few games. They had to be ok with being on camera, but we wanted real players, real money, and real games. Not a single hand is staged. Everything is legit.”
Laak seized on that to drive home the point that Underground Poker isn’t your everyday poker show: “Another thing to emphasize is that people shouldn’t tune into this show thinking they’re going to see 30 hands of poker. I think the entire show is 24 minutes, and they only show between two to five hands. It’s not a lot. It’s more about the feeling a pro has as he drifts around a city trying to find home games to play in. The who-do-you-know aspect.”
“Hopefully when the show gets picked up there will be more poker hands in the episodes,” Esfandiari elaborated. “So there isn’t that much poker, it’s more developments going on and what sort of stuff we have to do to get into these games.”
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Eventually the pair did find a game, though they had to start from the bottom and work their way up.
“You can get into any home game nowadays if you bring your own fish — BYOF. But BYOF is a little tough,” Laak explained in a way that only he can. “We went to a game where it was literally $50 or $100 buy-in with $1/$2 blinds. Antonio didn’t want to play it, but I was stoked. I was like whatever, we’ll meet new people. Usually one of those guys are going to be going to a bigger game later that week or something, so I happily played in a super small game. It’s not about the money sometimes.”
The Future of Underground Poker
Right now, Underground Poker is just a single episode, but if reception is strong and the series is picked up by Discovery, both Laak and Esfandiari think there are plenty of creative outlets.
“We could go to any city where there’s private poker games — Atlanta, Charlotte, San Francisco, Vancouver — there are cities all over the world that have poker games, so it could be anywhere,” Esfandiari said.
Laak believed poker fans would be fascinated by the characters, including poker pros they’d inevitably cross paths with at various games. “I don’t think I’ve been to a game in 14 years without at least one pro,” he said. “A good game is usually one fish, or one whale, and eight pros. Maybe two marlin. You never get like eight fish.”
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Laak and Esfandiari may be getting a bit ahead of themselves, but they have high hopes for the future of the show, though they admit it is dependent upon the masses.
“The more viewers we have, the better chance we have of having the show picked up and really creating something new,' Esfandiari concluded. 'You can never judge a series by the first show. You have to develop the characters. If we get the poker community behind us, we’ll have a show on Discovery for sure. Hopefully people will like it and won’t bash it too much. We want minimal bashing.”
Documentary Underground Poker
Both Laak and Esfandiari plan on watching the premiere and live tweeting with fans, so be sure to either set your DVR or tune in at 10 p.m. ET and PT on Wednesday, Sept. 10 for the pilot episode of Underground Poker.
Check out the trailer for Underground Poker below:
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