by Scott Ian
I took my coffee into our office and turned on my Mac and the big-screen monitor that my buddy Dixon, a poker-whiz who also played on Ultimate Bet, so kindly gave me for a birthday present so I could multitable in style instead of squinting at a bunch of tiny tables on my laptop. I signed into Ultimate Bet like I had done for the last three years and immediately knew something was very wrong because this window popped open on my screen:
“Um, what the fuck? WHAT THE FUCK?”
Pearl heard me yell and came into the office to see what was happening. I was standing there stunned, just pointing at the screen like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
At first glance I thought the Department of Justice was coming to arrest me. I slowed down and read it carefully and still thought that somehow I was in trouble. Had anyone else got this window? I tried to close the window but couldn’t. I shut down my computer, restarted, and immediately started emailing my fellow poker players.
It wasn’t just me.
The US Department of Justice had seized the dot-com Internet addresses of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Cereus (Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker), among others. The US government had a federal criminal case charging the defendants with violating the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) of 2006 alleging that they engaged in bank fraud and money laundering to process transfers to and from their customers. Here’s a quick layman’s terms history of the UIGEA:
UIGEA is an antigambling law that passed Congress on September 30, 2006. President George W. Bush signed it into law on October 13, 2006. In my not-so-humble opinion the UIGEA is bullshit. The bill was attached to another bill, the Safe Port Act of 2006, which was a counter-terrorism bill that created funding to secure our ports. Everyone wants that, right? Even though the two bills are completely unrelated, the UIGEA was attached without debate. No one read it, no one cared because we want safe ports, and in an eleventh-hour vote before the 2006 election recess Congress pretty much unanimously voted for this bill without ever reading the UIGEA. Hey, they were fighting terrorism and had vacation plans—there’s no time to actually read what they were voting on. Many US senators who voted for this bill didn’t even know the UIGEA was attached. The UIGEA didn’t make anything new illegal. What it did was add a layer of enforcement against individuals and companies processing payments for illegal Internet gambling.
Unregulated Internet gambling had exploded in 2003 because of the “Moneymaker effect.” Back in 2003 Chris Moneymaker (yes, that is his real name), an accountant from Tennessee, qualified for the World Series of Poker Main Event on a then relatively unknown online poker site called PokerStars. He bought into a satellite event, an eighteen-person tournament for $39, and won it. That advanced him into a $600 satellite tournament that had 68 players and awarded World Series of Poker Main Event seats to the top three spots. He won his $10,000 Main Event seat, and to the surprise of everyone, Moneymaker maneuvered his way through a shark-infested field of 839 players to win the Main Event and its $2.5 million first-place prize. It was Moneymaker’s first live poker tournament. The aptly named Moneymaker was an everyman, the kind of guy you’d like to have a beer with, and people related to his story in a huge way. The publicity surrounding his win was massive; he even appeared on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and the coverage on ESPN was relentless because they were dealing with the 2004–2005 NHL lockout and needed programming. Moneymaker’s fairytale story was ratings gold. In the years that followed his win the attendance for the Main Event jumped from 839 in 2003 to 8,773 in 2006. The “Moneymaker effect” led millions of people who thought they could be “just like Chris” to online poker rooms. The poker boom was born.
In the years leading up to the passage of the UIGEA in 2006 online poker operated in a gray area of the law. It was already unlawful to process payments, but the UIGEA created additional punishment for those found guilty of doing so. The online gaming companies that stayed in business in the United States post-UIGEA moved offshore and kept offering real-money play in direct conflict with the new law. They were practically flaunting the fact that they were making billions of dollars. Online poker was all over our TV sets, sponsoring the numerous poker shows that popped up during the poker boom. Even major networks like NBC, who had the annual National Heads Up Poker Championship and Poker After Dark, were reaping the benefits of online poker dollars from all the advertising they would buy on those shows. Every commercial was for an online site. The World Series of Poker was now regular programming on ESPN, attracting tens of thousands of players from all over the world and millions of viewers. There were poker magazines all over the newsstands; poker players like Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey, and Chris Ferguson were like the new rock stars. Everyone wanted to be like and hang with them. Poker was booming; it was a modern-day gold rush and all in the face of the US government, which wasn’t getting their piece of the action. This went on until April 15, 2011, the day that would become known as Black Friday for online poker. The government shut it all down. They didn’t even try to regulate it and tax it, missing out on billions in tax dollars. They just shut it down, making it illegal and impossible for US players to play online and taking away people’s jobs and livelihoods.
I sat there dejectedly staring at the Department of Justice message on my screen. In three years I had gone from less than a rank amateur to a sponsored pro. How the hell had I got here? How did I go from luckily beating Sully on VH1 Classic to cashing in the Main Event of the World Series of Poker myself? Let’s go back to 2006.
In the wake of winning the VH1 Classic Rock and Roll Celebrity Poker Tournament, I forgot all about it. As exciting as the whole thing was, I wasn’t a poker player. I didn’t start playing after that win because I was busy writing a record at the time. Months went by, and then the tournament aired on VH1 Classic in March of 2007. I got hit up to do some interviews about winning, and I just played it off as beginner’s luck. Again, I really didn’t care; it was just some innocent fun in Vegas. The week after the tournament aired I got a phone call at home. I wasn’t really paying attention when the woman on the line told me her name and why she was calling. All I heard was something about Aruba. I said, “Excuse me, sorry, I missed what you were saying.”
She repeated, “Hi Scott. My name is Joanne Priam, and I am from Ultimate Bet. I am calling you to help make your arrangements for your trip to Aruba to play in our tournament there September 29 through October 6.”
I muttered something like, “Huh, um, okay, what is this for? A trip to Aruba?” I had no memory of winning anything. I only remembered the big check that went to charity.
Joanne said, “Yes, you won a trip to Aruba and a seat in our $5,000 buy-in tournament.” Things became a bit clearer.
I replied, “Ah, okay. When is it again?” I figured I wouldn’t be able to go—I’m always busy with the band. She told me again when the trip was, and I checked my schedule. I didn’t have anything scheduled for the end of September to the beginning of October—granted, it was six months out. I told Joanne I was free and asked if I could bring Pearl.
She said, “Of course! It’s a trip for two.” Joanne only had good answers.
I asked her to hold on and told Pearl what was happening. “Do you want to go to Aruba for a week and hang out with a bunch of poker players?”
Always game for an adventure, Pearl smiled and said, “Yeah, sounds like fun.” I told Joanne we were in. It’s weird how one innocuous phone call can change your whole life.
Six months later we were on our way to Aruba. I was going to be playing in Ultimate Bet’s big tournament, so I did practice a little bit leading up to the trip. Mostly I watched poker on TV. I was going to be getting lessons and tips from Phil Hellmuth and some of the Ultimate Bet online pros like Gary “debo34” DeBernardi, Mark “PokerHo” Kroon, and Wisco Murray as well. That was the beginning of my real poker education.
I spent a week playing with Phil and the guys, absorbing as much as I could. It
didn’t help that I managed to bust out of the main event in Aruba on day one, set over set, meaning my three jacks lost to the other guy’s three kings. I wasn’t angry about it; there was nothing I could do. I wasn’t folding. Pearl and I got to spend the rest of the week on the beach during the day and raging with our new poker friends at night. RAGING. Party like a rock star? Nope. Party like a poker player. These people partied like band dudes did in the 1980s. And on top of the booze and drugs, they would bet on anything. They would bet on how many ice cubes were going to be in someone’s drink. They would bet on who would get served first at meals. They would play credit card roulette at the end of a meal, where everyone puts their card in a pile and the card that gets picked pays for the whole dinner. This could get very pricey, as these guys were all ordering steaks and bottles of vintage wine and champagne. Then there were the prop (proposition) bets. I don’t know if poker players get bored at the table while they are playing or just crave action so much that they need to find their fix no matter how ridiculous the bet. My new friends told me stories about a $2 million weight loss bet where the guy had to lose 48 pounds in three months. He had to go from 188 pounds to under 140. And he did it, ending up at 138 pounds. A six-figure bet where a guy had to move to casino-free Des Moines, Iowa, for thirty days. He lasted two. A $50,000 bet on whether a guy could stand in the ocean (he could wear a wetsuit) for twenty-four hours. He lasted three hours. How about $10,000 for a strict vegetarian to eat a cheeseburger? He ate it and didn’t even get a stomachache. There was a six-figure bet to see if a guy could live in the bathroom of his room at the Bellagio Hotel for thirty days. He couldn’t leave the bathroom at any time and his access to food, a DVD player, and talking on the phone were strictly limited. The guy was doing so well at living in the bathroom that they settled on ending the bet early for $40,000. Or how about a $300,000 bet on whether a guy could run seventy miles on a treadmill in twenty-four hours? Could you do that? I couldn’t. The guy did it in twenty-three hours and fifteen minutes. These prop bets were a window into the degenerate nature of real gamblers. There was nothing they wouldn’t wager on. I had guys offering me money to shave my goatee. I set a price of $100,000. One guy offered me $99,000, saying, “If you’ll do it for $100,000, you’ll do it for $99,000.” I called his bluff. He smiled and walked away.
Pearl and me in Aruba with Phil Hellmuth, waiting for the vintage Dom to chill. Courtesy Scott Ian.
My mentors! Left to right: Mark “PokerHo” Kroon, Will Griffiths, Phil Hellmuth, me, and Gary “debo34” DeBernardi. Courtesy Scott Ian.
Who can keep at least one hand out of the water the longest for $10,000? My money is on Joanne! Left to right: Phil Hellmuth, me, Liv Boeree, Joanne Priam, Adam Levy, and PokerHo in Aruba. Courtesy Scott Ian.
I had a great week hanging out in the poker world for the first time. The energy was fantastic, and I made some interesting new friends. A few weeks after Aruba I got another call, this time from their head of marketing, a tall bald English gentleman named Will Griffiths. I had met Will in Aruba, and we hit it off immediately. We caught up, and then Will said, “So mate, we’d like to sign you up as one of our pro players.”
This seemed ridiculous to me, so I said, “Me? I’m terrible at poker.”
Will said dryly, “We’re not signing you for your poker prowess, mate. It’s because of who you are and your potential to bring in a lot of new players. We can run tournaments and advertise that people can play with you and chat with you and they get a bonus if they knock you out.”
This I understood. “Ah, okay, I get it,” I said. “I am definitely interested. But if I do this, I want poker lessons. I want to really learn how to play and not just be some donkey celebrity.” (Donkey was a derogatory term in the poker world for a shit player.)
Will said they could make that a part of my deal. “Who do you want to take lessons from?” he asked.
I was friends with Phil Hellmuth and thought we’d be a good match, but Phil lived up in Northern California and it’d be tough to make that work. I had met Annie Duke, a poker pro and one of Ultimate Bet’s real sponsored professionals in Aruba. Annie was cool, and her math-based approach to poker was right up my alley, as I’ve always had a math brain and she lived in Los Angeles. I knew that Annie had given lessons to Ben Affleck, and he went on to win the California State Poker Championship in 2004. I told Will, “I want lessons with Annie.”
Will said, “No worries, mate. Consider it done.”
I got all signed up with Ultimate Bet (I’m going to abbreviate it UB) and started playing online as much as I could. I loved playing—it was a lot of fun to meet people online and chat with them at the tables. The players on UB seemed happy that I was a part of the site and that I was into poker. I’m sure they also liked that I wasn’t very good and easy to play against. I was getting an education on UB’s dime. I was playing with their money. Essentially it was no-risk gambling, which made it easier for me to learn how to play, knowing I wasn’t risking my mortgage.
Once I started my lessons with Annie it all changed. One of the first things I learned was that poker is not gambling. If you learn the math, there is a mathematical edge, and over time you will win more than you lose. Why do you think you see the same pros winning all the time? It is a game of skill. My lessons with Annie combined with my grinding hours online developing my game turned me into a poker player, and I started to see the results. I was starting to win. I took to no-limit hold ’em, and I committed. As they say, I was all in. I was as focused and determined with the same intense drive to succeed at poker as I was about making my band succeed in the early days of Anthrax, the same force of will to make things happen and accept nothing but success. The odds of starting a band and making it in the music business are astronomical—I’ll let Annie Duke figure those out. Accomplishing that insane task gave me the, for lack of a better word, balls to know that I could be a successful poker player.
I’m a poker pro! You can tell by how well I am tossing those chips. Courtesy Scott Ian.
I dove in and became a fixture on the site. I played constantly, sometimes as much as eighty hours a week when I was on tour. I was literally playing on stage during sound checks. I’d be playing guitar with one hand and raising/folding with the other. I’ll bet $100,000 that I’m the only person who has done that kind of multitasking. Sometimes I’d give my guitar tech instructions on hands to play if I knew I wouldn’t be able to play for a few minutes. I was playing in the dressing room all day long. I was playing on the bus Wi-Fi on our overnight drives. I was playing in the recording studio while we were making The Damned Things album Ironiclast and the Anthrax album Worship Music. If you read the lyrics to The Damned Things’ song “A Great Reckoning,” you’ll hear Keith sing some of my poker-inspired words: “King gets his aces cracked…” And the Anthrax songs “The Devil You Know” and “Crawl” are all about the emotional roller coaster of playing no-limit hold ’em. I was always playing.
Grinding away! Courtesy Scott Ian.
UB had their big weekly $200,000 guaranteed tournament every Sunday. Guaranteed meant that no matter how many people entered the tourney, they would pay out $200,000 in prize money. It cost $200 to buy in to the tourney, and most of the time there were over a thousand entries, so UB didn’t need to overlay to cover it. I played that tourney every Sunday. As one of the pros, I had a bounty on me, so if you knocked me out of the tourney, you’d get your buy-in back. Players were happy to have me at their table so they could try to bust me and receive their reward. I found that it would make players play looser against me, and I used that to my advantage, knowing their range of hands would be bigger than normal. More times than not, if I would get all my chips in, I would have the better starting hand, and then I would just hope it would hold up. When you have the stronger starting hand and you lose to a weaker starting hand, that is called a bad beat. Here’s an example:
Cracked! One of the many joys of poker. Courtesy Scott Ian.
At the start
of this hand, preflop I am an 87.6 percent favorite to win the hand. Then the player I am against flops a straight and cracks my aces. That is a bad beat. Worse (because the odds would be even lower for him to win it) would be if he didn’t flop the straight and made it on the river, the last card dealt where his only out (card that makes his hand a winner) would be the card he needed to make the straight. Either way, this scenario is known as a suck-out. Bad beats are a part of the game, and when you’re playing so many hands online (online moves much faster than playing live poker) you’re going to have your share of them. I learned early on to not dwell on these seemingly bad-luck or “cooler” hands and just move forward.
Throughout 2008 I learned everything I could about hold ’em. I had my lessons with Annie, I was reading poker books, and I was playing constantly, absorbing everything I could and putting my knowledge into action and learning from my mistakes. Poker had become my priority. I was starting to win money consistently in the sit-and-go tournaments I played. I was starting to finish higher in the big Sunday tournament, cashing it (the top 10 percent got paid, so if there were 1,200 entries, usually around the top 120 got paid) pretty regularly. Then in March 2009 things got real.
I wasn’t even supposed to play the $200,000 tourney on Sunday, March 29, 2009. I was supposed to be in Scottsdale, Arizona, for my aunt and uncle’s surprise anniversary party. I was feeling sick on Friday, feverish like a flu was coming on, so Pearl and I decided to wait and see how I felt the next day and then we’d decide whether we were going to drive to Scottsdale for the party. I woke up Saturday feeling even worse, so we had to cancel our trip. On Sunday morning I was still sick, with a 102-degree fever with chills, achy—the whole shit-show. The Sunday $200,000 was starting, and I decided that, as I was just laying on the couch and all I had to do was push some computer keys to play, I would buy in and play the tournament. I figured I would bust out quickly, as I was feeling so crappy and my decision-making skills would be dulled. Eight hours later I was at the final table with a big stack of chips and gunning for the win. My adrenaline was running so strong that any vestige of flu was pushed to the side as I vied for the tournament victory. It got down to heads-up, and I won it. I stood up from the couch in silence. Pearl asked me if I was okay, and I told her, “I just won. I just won it. Holy crap, I did it.” I had outlasted 1,007 runners (players) to win my first big tournament. I cashed for $44,000 and change, and I sat back down as the flu came crashing back in as my adrenaline surge waned.