Hold 'Em Tight

"In sales presentations you kinda just develop people skills: 'Are they blowing me off, or are they interested?' You just kind of relate that to poker: 'Is this guy lying, or is he telling me the truth? What's the story, why is he betting what he's betting?'

"The math is always simple," Nassif goes on. "To me reading people is more important. If you can figure out if someone's telling you the truth, you can save money by folding a good hand if you can tell someone has a better hand. If you can pick out a bluff, you can win a big pot by calling their bluff."

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An hour before kickoff time, Nassif and his eight counterparts are taken to a resplendent Rio suite, briefed on etiquette and presented with $10,000 Corum watches, which will eventually have their names and initial final-table chip counts engraved.

As showtime nears, security personnel lead the group through a maze of hallways toward the Amazon Room, where they safely arrive after getting lost only once.

The pregame festivities are as pompous as those that precede a boxing match, but (thankfully) brief. At a few minutes past 2 p.m. Las Vegas time, the first hand is dealt.

The first four hands Nassif quickly folds. Perhaps in an attempt to hide his nervousness, he assumes his signature position — head slumped on right palm, eyes half-closed.

Fifteen minutes in he makes his first bet.

Dealt the A♣K♦, a very strong hand, Nassif raises $700,000 and is called by Jamie Gold, who's in first place, having amassed more than ten times as many chips as Nassif. The flop reveals the 5♠3♠2♣, the first three of five "community" cards the players will use in combination with their hole cards to make the best possible five-card hand.

And just like that, Dan Nassif puts his tournament life on the line, betting everything he's got — the all-in wager that gives this event its No-Limit name.

Gold smoothly calls and shows his hole cards: 2♥2♠. In combination with the board, Gold has drawn three of a kind. Now, Unreal is no Texas Hold 'Em shark, but it's clear that with two community cards remaining to be dealt, Nassif is a massive underdog. The best the home team can hope for is one of the deck's four fours, which would give Nassif a straight.

The dealer reveals the fourth community card, called the "turn": the A♥. Now a four will grant Nassif only a reprieve, in the form of a split pot. Anything else and homeboy's run is over.

As they wait for the dealer to turn over the final card — the "river" — Nassif and Gold stand together and chat. "He apologized for flopping a set," Nassif will later relate. "And then he started chanting for a four so I could stay alive — which is just the kind of person he is."

The river card is the 10♠. Play will continue at the final table for another thirteen hours, but Nassif's tournament is finished.

Exiting the Amazon Room, he fires up a Marlboro and walks to the media room for the obligatory farewell press conference. Unable to locate an ashtray, he hands what's left of his cigarette to a fawning journalist, who smokes the rest.

When the questioning commences, Nassif launches into self-deprecation mode, faulting himself for a slight miscalculation: not going all-in before the flop. He says he's rooting for Gold to win. (Gold will go on to do just that.) "To everyone back home who bought the pay-per-view, I'll give you 25 bucks," Nassif adds.

Then Nassif heads to the cashier to have his winnings wire-transferred to his bank account. Here he encounters a snag: His $1,566,858 has turned into $1,556,858.

That's because Nassif's $10,000 entry fee was paid by PokerStars, and Harrah's, which owns the WSOP, wants no part of it. Instead they're deducting the buy-in from Nassif's winnings.

"As a licensed gaming operator, following the advice of both the Department of Justice and state gaming regulatory agencies, we cannot accept money directly from online sites," Harrah's spokesman Gary Thompson later explains to Unreal. "What happened was, we had been under the impression that Dan Nassif had registered as an individual and paid for his seat himself. When we found out differently, we refunded the money to the entity that registered him and he ended up paying the $10,000."

To which Unreal can only say: Spoken like a poker player.