Poker aces

Thirteen players try to beat the odds - and each other - in a high-stakes game of Texas Hold 'Em in Whitefish

The kid looked like a surfer dude.

Watch him, others said.

He's a damn good poker player, they said.

He wasn't a lock to win last Sunday's $10,000 Texas Hold 'Em tournament at the Hideout in Whitefish. But Vincent Remmel would likely finish in the top three or four out of the 13 original players, they said.

Remmel is 20 years old. Snowboarded for 11 years. Played poker for a year and a half. Picked up the intricacies really fast.

He knows the cards. He can read the other players. He's disciplined.

But others point to something extra - his youth.

There's a extra bit of fearlessness, of go-for-brokeness that a 20-year-old has that an older man doesn't.

Nothing wild or crazy. Just slightly edgier than the others.

"He definitely pushes the envelope a lot harder,"' said opponent and admirer Gary Chesting of Whitefish.

For example, late in last Sunday's tournament, Remmel and Chesting had the same hole cards - an ace and a five.

Remmel stayed in. Chesting folded.

Remmel won the hand.

And Remmel sort of won the tournament, whose $10,000 prize was among the highest, if not the biggest, poker contest pay-off ever in Flathead County.

Prior to the tournament, Remmel, a cook from Whitefish, and Chesting agreed if they were the last two left, they would evenly split the $10,000 in prize money. But since Remmel had two or three times as many chips as Chesting, they agreed to a 60-40 split. $6,000 to Remmel. $4,000 to Chesting.

Remmel also had a pre-tournament deal with two other players that if one of them won, all three would split the winnings - in this case, $2,000 each.

It took about five months to set up last Sunday's tournament.

A few dozen people played in warm-up tournaments at the Hideout with their own money. First and second places in each game received a certain amount of points. A few extra points could be earned other ways.

Tournament organizers and local businessmen John Golder and Steve Tuhy put up the prize money. They made their profits from the house's cuts of the warm-up cash games that winnowed the players to those in last Sunday's contest.

Sunday's tournament brought in the top 13 point scorers. Each entered with the same amount of chips as points previously won. None of the 13 had to put up any cash Sunday to gamble for the $10,000 prize.

There were 32,500 chips at the two tables, which later shrank to one.

As the highest point-scorer in the warm-up games, Remmel began with the most chips - 3,500. Four players started at the bottom with 2,000 chips apiece.

To the 13 - all men - poker is entertainment, a social activity, an adrenaline injection.

Some are longtime kitchen-table players who switched to card rooms. Some have played for many years. Some just saw the Texas Hold 'Em shows on television, and decided that it looked fun.

"It's a huge rush, but you can't show it," said Virgil Weitzel, 55, a Whitefish homebuilder.

Chesting, a construction subcontractor, said: "Seeing those cards flip over, it's the excitement of not knowing what's gonna flip over next."

"Poker is unique in sports … With poker, 10 people sit at a table. There're two and a half million possible combinations of cards. You can be well prepared and well-conditioned and do all the right things and do everything perfect, and still lose because of the element of luck" Weitzel said.

Here are the basics of Texas Hold 'Em.

Each player gets two cards face down. Then three cards are dealt face up and shared by all players. Then a fourth card is dealt face up and jointly shared. Ditto with a fifth card. Betting takes place after each step.

The best five-card poker hand - using the five shared and two hole cards - wins.

On television and at the kitchen table, players banter and mug a lot. Personality bursts through. Testosterone sometimes overwhelms common sense in both men and women players.

However, tournament-level Texas Hold 'Em is a tightly disciplined game.

And fast.

A hand might take a mostly-silent minute to play.

With each hand, most glance at their cards and fold. Only a sure-fire good hand or a serious bluff stays in.

"What's hard to a beginner is knowing when to fold. Seventy-five percent of the game is folding," Remmel said.

Dealer Wanda Sparks said. "Patience is the key. You have to be able to wait for your moment."

"Weaker players play more often with weaker hands. … You end up folding with a lot of winners. The point is when you play a hand, you play all winners," Chesting said.

Everyone's early strategies were to play only with really good hands, and let the others knock each other out.

Meanwhile, time becomes more and more of a factor - moving too fast to those with smaller piles of chips.

That's because two players ante in before each hand on a rotating basis. Every half hour, the amount grows of what a player has to ante.

At the tournament's beginning, the ante was a token amount. Three hours in, the antes have grown to huge amounts - enough to seriously chew up the smaller piles of chips around the table.

So the men want to play as many hands as possible with the lower antes - when they have time to wait for good hands.

Late in the tournament, when an ante can kill half of a player's pile of chips, he can't wait as long for a good hand.

Meanwhile, everyone's poker faces are on.

No grimacing. No twitching. No smiling. No whistling. No frowning.

A lot of tension ebbs and flows inside each man.

"When someone's betting into you, your heart goes twice as fast, but you try not to show it," Remmel said.

The only physical release is shuffling chips one way another.

Most of the 13 do it one time or another.

One method: One hand subconsciously fondles two adjacent stacks of chips, shuffling them together like cards into one stack. Then that same hand automatically takes the upper chips off the lower ones, and forms two adjacent stacks.

Over and over and over and over.

Cliiiiick. Thok. Cliiiick. Thok. Cliiiick. Thok.

Another method: Holding a stack a few couple above the table and rapidlly dropping chips to form another stack.

Over and over and over and over.

Click-ick-ick-ick-cik.

Click-ick-ick-ick-ick.

Click-ick-ick-ick-ick.

All this rhthymically to the faint classic rock playing the background. Led Zeppelin. Pink Floyd. The Rolling Stones.

All 13 have played against each other weekly, or more frequently.

They know each other's tendencies, each other's quirks. They try to spot patterns in the high-speed, minimalist betting in the early rounds.

"You focus on what everyone is doing, all the little interactions of the game. There's a lot to pay attention to. It's mentally draining," said Marty Grefsrud, a longtime Kalispell resident and construction worker who recently moved to Seattle.

Weitzel said: "I equate card playing to rock climbing. You can't let your attention wander for one second."

And everyone knows that everyone else knows his tendencies.

"People mix up their stuff (aggressiveness, cautiousness and tactics), just like I do," Remmel said.

No beer or booze show up at the tables. Just coffee and bottled water. Everyone wants a clear head.

The game changes when there are seven or eight players left.

Some have lots of chips. Some have a lot less.

Ruthlessness and desperation kick in.

Eliminations come faster. Betting becomes more aggressive.

The big-pile players can wait for great hands, buy out pots, or make huge bets with less fear of losing to an unlucky break.

The small-pile players face more frequent antes that grow bigger and bigger - with no room for error or a bad hand.

If a small-pile player gets a good hand, he goes for broke.

"At this point, anyone gets anything, it's gonna be all in. You just wanna catch that one hand and go all in. When someone makes a big bet and you have a borderline hand, that's when you sweat," said Mike Farley, a retired sheet metal worker from Whitefish.

Small-pile players live on the edge - knowing they will either double their stacks or get knocked out.

Some pull off knuckle-biting escapes from elimination again and again.

But not forever.

Only Jay Ricci, Chesting and Remmel remained. Ricci had the smallest pile of chips.

Then he had none.