A green felt table of ten. White flood lights reflect off the wall of cash ready for the tournament winner along with the gold bracelet. There's over a million dollars stacked up behind the two armed security guards, a lot of money for most of us for a day of poker, but to these players who make hundreds of thousands of dollar bets on each hand, it's just another day at the office.

Their office is in a casino, their desk a green felt table with ten chairs all facing the dealer. A raise of $200,000 is no more than sending the office boy out for coffee, a million dollar call is tantamount to the boss buying dinner.

Talk about reality TV, this is serious poker with real money at stake. These guys aren't looking for a 5 minute spot on Letterman or a career making fried chicken commercials after the game is over, they're looking for only two things, CASH and RESPECT…and screw the respect if they don't get it after they stuff the cash in an envelope and head to the nearest pot-limit game.

But this was a satellite tournament for the World Poker Tour, the richest ongoing poker tournament ever. And the guy I hung out with, only wanting to be identified as "SAM" was finally in the running to get into the running for the game to get into the running… in other words, he was almost close.

The WSOP which made history year after year as the preeminent poker tournament in the world is now taking a passenger side seat to this new format of television poker. Taking the world of reality TV by being the only real "reality" based TV format. I say this because the players are actually competing for real money, and baby, it's a lot of dough.

There are no scripts or producers to satisfy. In fact as you'll see, in the WPT format the television people do what they're told by the players. The players only agreed to let the television people put in a spy cam in front of their spots to pick up the hole card with the agreement that it would be done on a delayed broadcast format so that there would be no possible way for anyone in the audience or at home to be able to cheat the game, after all there were millions of dollars at stake and these guys weren't exactly the crème of society, they were poker players.

They did this by playing the games and then let the broadcasters add the verbal footage afterwards. They wouldn't include on the television broadcasts any more information about the players that they would agree to. Often leaving out anything more that their name and home town and how much money they were playing with. The fact that the wall of cash used for the prize money is the real thing. After a player is bumped out of the tournament, they proceed to the cash table and is paid their winnings right there. Then they're given a manila envelope to stuff the cash in and a security guard to walk you to either your room, the lock boxes at the cage so you can lock it up until the tournament's over and the real play begins, or out to your car where they give you a 30 second head start on everyone else looking to get that cash.

To get to these tournaments you have to win a preliminary tournament. The buy-in for these tournaments is $10,000. A good chunk of change for most of us, considering at any one of these tournaments there's well over 600 other players looking to end your dreams on the tails of their own. These guys are usually either professional business people that just do this on a whim and don't ever expect to win anything. But the ten grand is just play money to them and it's an adventure few can say they share. Some are professional players that divide their time between playing poker and reading about how to improve their game. If they're lucky they can find a sponsor to put up the $10,000 for a cut of the winnings and if they have any kind of name it's not hard to find the cash, but good luck getting a name for your self.

Outside of the poker world few players are known to anyone else unless they get their faces on one of the television poker shows. But what you see on TV is the last 6 to 10 players of hundreds that didn't make it. If you wonder where the cash prize money comes from now you know. At $10,000 a buy-in, they need only to get 200 to 300 players to raise the millions they give away. Thus the reason the TV producers are eating up this new format in reality-based television. It's not costing them a penny to raise the prize money. They may even sponsor some of the better known players to the buy-in just to make things more enticing. It's more interesting to see Doyle Brunson playing a heads up hand against Amarillo Slim and sells more seats to the viewing audience so if Doyle doesn't feel like playing, it might help to pay him for the incentive, and in the last round of tournaments Doyle made it to the last five players and the ratings were never better.

But this was a rare rainy weekday in Las Vegas. Sam was playing a satellite tournament. These are small tournaments that only require a $1,100 buy-in. The ten players at each table crown one winner that gets the $11,000 cash which they're required to use as the $10,000 buy-in to the WPT tournament, the other $1,000 is traveling expense money. He was a seasoned player that spent most of his time between a small turn-key business and poker. He kept close track of his poker wins and losses and at the end of last year had netted himself around $70,000 from his poker play.

"Not a bad job, an easy job that requires a ton of work. I spend at least 60 to 80 hours a week, I keep close track of that too, how much time I spend each day at the table and I keep it on a computer program so I can compare everything and each year for the last six years and each year I make a little more but spend a lot more time to do it. If it was a 40 hour a week job I would only be making $40,000 a year, but I'm the boss, the president, and the IRS and I always pay my taxes. I make a bad play and I'm fired, but every time so far, as I walk away in disgust, the boss always puts his arm around me and tells me to get back to work."

I hung out with this guy on my days off and he's right, the first day I met him at the Mirage at 11am. and didn't get home until 12:30 am the next day with nothing more than a couple of fifteen minute brakes to eat hot dogs. His game was the No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em table where life gets a little serious.

"You gotta sit down with at least $10,000. Less than that and you're playing scared money and they'll know it. These guys feed off of information like that. They always look at how much you buy in for and judge you by that. When I see a guy buy in for say a thousand or two, I know I can raise him out of a pot any time I want to if he even has a marginal hand, and God forbid if he's bluffing me, I'll have that guy in my back pocket in no time. We (the same every day players.) make our living off these players. I see the same players every day, we all know each other; we know how each one plays so there's not too many surprises. One day I'll beat Phil for $5,000 and a week later he'll have it back, but in between that we'll pick up a couple grand of the suckers money and pay our bills."

He makes a raise as he's talking to me and turns around and his whole demeanor changes. He's stone quiet, often spending a couple of minutes pondering a play while the rest of the table squirms in their seats awaiting his play. "Raise two thousand" and he pushes the four stacks of green checks in and the dealer mucks them in the pot. "Call, all-in" comes from across the table as the Asian kid with the Oakley sun glasses pushes six stacks of greens ($25 checks) to the pot. Sam only looks once at his cards then puts a hundred dollar check on top. He shuffles a small stack of checks as he ponders the move. The cards on the table were 9-10-10 and he only called the bet, the next card was an 8, did he have the J-Q straight? Did he have an 8 for two pair? There were too many possibilities and I couldn't see Sam's cards but he didn't hesitate when the kid said "All In" and pushed the two stacks out to meet the pot. The hand was a done deal so they both threw their cards face up and stood up to see the last card. The kid threw over a 6-7 of spades to make the 6-10 straight, Sam was stunned as he threw over the 10-J off suit revealing the trip tens with the outside chance of a 7 or Queen to fill out a Jack high straight, or at the outside chance another 10, or a Jack would make a full house.

The dealer hesitated to add some drama to the turning of the last card on the river, the Asian kid took off his sunglasses and pounded the table, Sam and I stood motionless staring at the already made straight, "Watch this" Sam said and the dealer turned over the Jack of diamonds for a full boat. "Not a doubt in my mind" Sam told the kid as he pulled the stacks of chips over to his side and sat down to stack his new winnings. The kid had only one thing to say, the same thing they all say when it's over…"Where's the ATM machine?" This was the last line of most of my players also and I had to laugh at the newest cliché to come out of the 21st century Las Vegas.

Sam had his $10,000 buy-in and was congratulated by the poker room manager as he was given the particulars about the WPT tournament. It was to be played at the Bellagio and it started next week and would last a week as the 64 tables were now set to play. If he made it to the last three tables he would win something, at least his buy-in back. If he could make it to the last table he would be assured of at least $100,000. But the competition was tough and getting tougher every year. With the onset of TV getting into the act it seemed that everyone was tuning up their games and getting a lot more aggressive. They were practicing at home and reading plenty of books.

Even Doyle Brunson the Godfather of Hold Em, who wrote the bible on Texas Hold Em admitted he wished he hadn't written the book because now everyone was playing his way and it was tough to read anyone anymore. But now the whole game had changed thanks to the TV format. Now the game was being called "Texas All In" "All they do now is sit around playing real tight until they get a good hand and it's "All In" and they just get it over with like diving off the cliffs and one guy hits water and anyone else gets the rocks, they just sit there for hours, when they get the perfect hand, the great flop, they stand up and face the camera, fix their hair and lick their eyebrows and with a great Hollywood smile real dramatic they say "ALL IN" and the other guy usually beats them and now they shake hands so they look like nice guys for the cameras and the people at home, but in the old days before TV they'd just walk away from the table, no hand shaking or nothing, just a "tough luck" from one guy and a "fuck you" back from the other guy."

What more can I say. As it turned out in the days to come Sam made it to the third round and came away with some of his buy-in. Nothing dramatic "Shit, I could have stayed home and made more money than betting the Spurs" Sam said in a phone conversation. All I could think to say to him for consolation was "Tough luck Sam" and in return, as he hung up the phone I heard him say "Yah, and Fuck you too"...

Ken Pearlman