Editor's note: Here are the final days of Andy Beal's latest adventure in Las Vegas, but don't worry, he'll be back at the tables. Check back each week as we post a new day of action. Day 1 | Day 2 | Days 3-5 | Days 6-7
Tuesday, Day 8: The War of Two Furies, or The St. Valentine's Day Massacre
This must be the most exciting poker game ever played, and only three people saw it from start to finish.
Andy Beal started the day with $10 million in chips. Ted Forrest started with $3.8 million, which did not seem like enough. Ted told me he was more comfortable playing Beal on a short bankroll, because the swings in the game were much smaller than in previous matches, but that was 10 days ago. During the previous two days, the game had been much more aggressive, and more volatile.
During the first 20 minutes, Forrest played like he didn't have enough chips. He arrived in a somber mood, without his usual good humor and spirit of fun. He started out playing conservative; it looked like Beal was running over him.
I know Ted will make a stand. It's just a question of when, in what form, and with what result. Just before 10 a.m., he gets the break he needs, hitting a flop of 9-8-6 with 7-5 after Andy had raised preflop. He needed that $700,000 pot. Ten minutes later, he gets another board tailor-made to his cards -- 9h-4h, with which he raised -- and made a flush on the turn. He got three bets in on the turn and won the $1.2 million pot.
Ted took the lead two hands later on the second-biggest pot of the eight days of heads-up matches. With pocket 10s, he three-bet Beal's button raise. The flop came 4c-6c-6d. Forrest bet and Andy, with Ac-3c, called.
The best card in the deck for Ted (and the worst for Andy) would be the 10 of clubs. It would make him a full house, and give Beal the ace-high flush.
The 10 of clubs, indeed, was the turn card. On both the turn and the river, Forrest was able to put in the third bet.
When Andy made the final call in the $1.6 million pot, he asked (knowing the answer), "Did you fill up?"
"Yup," Ted said, showing his pocket 10s. Beal held up his cards for a moment and mucked them.
The two biggest pots in the 2006 Andy Beal games were both taken down by 10s-up full houses, and the turn card both times super-glued the second-best hand to the pot.
It looks like Ted has dodged the bullet and is playing more in the style expected of him -- that is, playing in unexpected ways. There is, however, a difference. He is playing much more aggressively. Both players are raising or folding on their button almost every hand.
By 11 a.m., Forrest has taken the lead for the day. Now it seems he is betting on every flop and Andy is almost always folding. By 11:15, the lead is $1 million and it looks like it will rise. Beal bets the river on a pot and Forrest calls. The pot contains a million dollars and Andy mucks his bluff. I notice that his left hand is shaking.
How big a lead is safe? There are probably more showdowns in less than three hours than in the first two days combined, many of them big pots. Beal retakes the lead at 11:56 a.m. Forrest gets it back at noon.
Beal hangs on by making a straight flush, holding Jc-10c with a board of 8c-9c-6d-Qc-Kc. It is amazing that Ted didn't lose a pot larger than $900,000. He had pocket 6s, and one of them was a club.
Just after 12:30 p.m., Forrest sends Beal careening toward a cliff. He steadily builds on his lead, growing it to $2.5 million by 1 p.m.
I see an ominous sign for Andy. Ted has been playing out of the rack all day, keeping just one stack of chips in front of him. He has now filled two racks and is starting to lay the foundations for a 10-stack chip tower. Between hands, he lays out a triangle of 10 chips, pointed at Beal.
The message needs no elaboration. He wins two more big showdowns and his towers are rising. His lead is $3.5 million and I can't see any sign that it won't continue to grow. Ted seems to sidestep Andy's strong hands, but all the showdowns -- of which there are many, including several with seven-figure pots -- are going Forrest's way.
By 1:22 p.m., the margin is $4 million. To Beal's credit, he has no give-up in him. He keeps trying to fight back. His face is a mask, so there is no window to his emotions, but it feels like he thinks he can turn the match around.
Andy looks desperate, and Forrest must be picking up on it. Beal bet all the way with ace-high and Ted called him all the way with pocket sixes, despite overcards, three clubs, and possible straights, to win a $700,000 pot.
On the next hand, Andy holds K-J against Ted's pocket jacks. They both pick up a straight draw after the flop of T-8-9 but Andy wins the $1 million pot with a king on the river. Ted grunts when he sees the hand, showing his jacks before mucking. Forrest usually shows no emotion,
but he seems slightly peeved.
Has Andy returned to his "wild man" style, where he builds pots with little regard for his cards, daring his opponent to stay in to see who catches the river?
By 1:40 p.m., Andy has cut the margin to $3 million and I notice that Ted has dismantled the towers. Ted looks a little angry, and he's throwing his chips into the pot with some force, sometimes spiking his cards on to the felt for emphasis, even when he wins. At the 2 p.m. break, Ted's lead for the day is now $2 million.
As we exit the poker room, Andy looks drained. "It's a real war," he tells me.
But is he enjoying it?
"No," he said. "And that's the sad part. It should be fun. But by the third or fourth day, it's just a grind."
He then reveals that Forrest picked up a tell on him, which is how, Andy thinks, Ted took that big lead. "But I figured it out and got him back."
Before we walk back to continue the game, he stops at the entrance to the poker room. "It begs the question, why do I do it? What else am I going to do? Sit around all day? I guess I feel I have something to prove. To myself -- not to them, and not to anyone else. I feel I have something to prove to myself."
Forrest wins the first hand back from the break, a $900,000 pot, and the next five. But there might be something to Andy's reasoning about Ted's read on him. He bets Forrest out of several pots and draws within $1.2 million of break-even at 2:22 p.m.
Is it possible that Beal has Ted figured out? No one will ever have Forrest really figured out, but Andy is now treating Ted in exactly the same way Ted treated him in their first three matches this year. Andy is the player who is one move ahead. Andy is the one who could be playing any two cards, the beneficiary of any possible flop. Ted is the one backing off, not knowing where he stands in the hand.
That's when Forrest pushes Beal off the cliff. It takes him less than two hours to win nearly $6 million. At 4:12 p.m., he has Beal stuck for exactly $7 million for the day.
Beal has one rack of chips in front of him and I think he is playing to lose that rack so he can leave and give up poker for good. Ted is trying to ease his path to the door, betting every flop and watching as Beal folds hand after hand.
Andy's outer shell looks the same, but after watching him for eight days, I can tell that he is a mess. They are playing 35-45 hands per half hour, and when he isn't racing to get his chips into the pot, his movements are so forced and artificially slow that I think he might never complete a bet. If he thought Forrest had a read on him at 1 p.m., his cards must be face-up by 4 p.m.
Despite Ted's giant lead, however, he is being pushed to the limit, too. During the 4 p.m. deck-change break, he asks me if Beal will be returning on Thursday. He has trouble getting the question out, and he momentarily forgets Andy's last name.
At the 5 p.m. break, Andy tells Deborah Giardina, the poker room manager, that despite cutting his loss by $2 million in the previous hour, "I am so stupid. I am the most stupid person in the world, and you can quote me on that." Then he says that he is on an adrenaline rush and will play until it ends.
It's that intense.
Both sides would agree that luck is a bitch. When nothing was going right and Beal was just barely hanging on, he lost with A-8 to Forrest's 10-2 on a board of 8-5-2-A-2. A few hands later, Andy got stuck with A-9 against Ted's 9-5 with a board of J-9-5, but he caught an ace on the river to win. Both pots were in excess of $1 million.
At 5 p.m., with Andy still behind by nearly $6 million, he starts catching cards. With the wild, reckless, aggressive game of chicken he and Forrest have been playing, the rush brings Ted's lead down like an avalanche. Beal gets a maximum payoff on every great hand and on every draw that hits. He flops quads on one hand and full houses on two others, and gets action all the way. In less than three hours, Andy Beal completely erases the $7 million deficit, restoring his $10 million in chips at 6:58 p.m.
If Forrest was in a somber mood at the start of the day -- and Ted in a somber mood is better company than many poker players in their best mood -- his behavior during the day should be a model for generations of gamblers. His deportment was not significantly different when he was ahead $7 million than when Beal erased that lead. Andy showed him the World's Fair, but he took it in stride.
After Andy made quads, he stumbled, trying to make a comment about the hand. "Man, I was glad to see you call that bet or raise that bet or whatever."
"I don't blame you," Ted said.
Just after 7 p.m., Beal actually took the lead, but it was clear the day was over. Both men were so drained that they seemed to lack the strength to make big pots. After a half hour of volleying the same chips across the table, Andy called an end to the day.
He had exactly three more chips than when they started play 10½ hours earlier.
When Ted nodded that they were indeed done for the day, Beal practically leaped across the table to shake his hand. Forrest lunged forward to do the same.
"I feel like I've been in a battle," Ted told his opponent.
"It was like a war all day long," Andy said. "It was unbelievable. Listen, Ted. If I'm ever in a war, I'd want you on the front lines right next to me."
Forrest's phone rang and he answered, listening. "We just finished the last hand two minutes ago. I can't even think about how to explain it."
I can.
A member of the poker room staff came by and asked me how it ended as Beal was racking his chips in a birdcage.
I shrugged. "They broke even."
Andy corrected me: "No, I won $75,000."
Thursday, Day 9: Sweetness in Victory, Nobility in Defeat -- The (Anti-) Climax
Forrest returned to face Beal for a fifth time in nine sessions on Thursday morning. Again, he started at a disadvantage in chips. The entire session was played as if the competitors agreed in advance that the previous day's game was too much. There were only four preflop raises in the first 20 hands, and only one bet was called after the flop during the first half hour.
Beal won the first big pot ($900,000) with A-Q and a queen on the flop. That was how it went all morning. Beal and Forrest danced in slow motion, but when they both had good enough cards to take a hand to the river, Beal had the goods.
At 9:40 a.m., just a half hour into the session, Andy had won $1.8 million. Forrest had less than $2 million of the team's bankroll left with which to mount a comeback. Gus Hansen came by to watch. Both players started raising more, as if Hansen's aura was contagious.
Steve Wynn also stopped by to watch for a half hour and we talked about the many levels of thinking that went into a match of this nature. Andy took off his sunglasses and earphones to chat briefly. The game restarted and Beal won the first two hands.
"You must be good luck for me," Andy said. "I've won two hands in a row."
"You've won two hands in a row before, Andy," Ted joked. "I think you won 10 hands in a row earlier."
By noon, the pros' bankroll is down to 10 bets. Andy Beal picks this time to turn up the heat. Forrest has no choice but to fold marginal hands. After a flop of 9-J-Q, Ted tries to get as much money in the pot as possible with Q-10. Andy, with J-10, has a good enough hand to follow, but he has almost no chance to win until a second jack comes on the river, making trips.
"I almost want to apologize," Andy says as he turns over his cards.
Andy knows it's not over yet. "I hope you don't pull some kind of comeback, Ted."
"You could be happy for me," Forrest suggests.
"I'd be happy for you, but not if you did it against me."
At 12:19 p.m., Forrest is all-in after the flop. He hits an inside straight on the river to survive. He is all-in again two hands later, winning with K-8 against Beal's K-7 after they both hit a king on the flop.
"You just won't let go, will you?" Beal says.
"I'm fighting you tooth and nail, like a bloody tick," Forrest responds.
Indeed, Forrest holds on another 20 hands, until, at 12:31 p.m., Beal's pocket queens prevail over Ted's A-4 after Ted picks up a four on the flop.
As Ted and Andy talked about the conclusion of the game -- and, indeed, whether this was the conclusion of the game -- casino security arrived to take Beal's $13.8 million in chips to the cage. He had too many chips for the available racks, so one of the security guards took the empty racks from the space in front of Forrest.
It was the poker equivalent of a warrior being carried out on his shield.
Only fiction ends unambiguously. The following days were consumed with phone calls, trips between Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Dallas, and discussions about new players, Howard Lederer, higher stakes, lower stakes, playing in Dallas, playing in Los Angeles, new groups, hybrid groups, and the possibility that Beal could now quit poker without regret, having proved to himself that he really could match skills with the best in the world and prevail.
OK, that last subject never came up.
To be continued?
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