poker power
Poker? I hardly know her! Casinos around the city are catering to gamblers who know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em and know when to walk away.
TEXT SONYA RINKUS feedback
Like high fashion and golf, poker has begun to establish itself as a hobby of moneyed Moscow. The American import subsumes a culture of playing durak on the kitchen table, but some think it’s a perfect fit, citing a Russian predilection for risk-taking and excess — wasn’t Pushkin an incorrible gambler? — or linking it to the new ideology of the free market economy. After all, historian John Lukacs called poker the embodiment of the capitalist spirit, a game “where free will prevails over philosophies of fate or of chance, where men are considered moral agents.” Grand theories aside, you could just look at it as people have more money, and want to spend it. The name of the game right now, in Moscow as in the rest of the world, is Texas Hold ‘Em. “Rounders,” a 1998 film starring Edward Norton and Matt Damon as underground poker players, helped draw public interest to Hold ‘Em as a game of intellectual warfare and sass-talking, making it a rousing spectator sport. When the Russian Poker Championships kicked off at Korona casino on Oct. 11 with a night of $50 buy-in, no-limit Hold ‘Em, 138 people registered, which was more than the hall could accommodate. Russians and forgeigners vied for a place in the $1,000 buy-in final championship, to be held on Oct. 19. Most of the participants are not “rounders,” or people who make a living playing poker, but businessmen and others playing for leisure. The tournament even featured a night for only women, primarily wives and girlfriends turned on to the game by their male acquaintances. The 2005 Russian Poker Championship was won by Valery Ilikyan, a “cigar-chomping, trash-talking” Armenian businessman, according to The St. Petersburg Times, who walked away with $29,000 that night. He outlasted Russia’s most accomplished professional poker player, Kirill Gerasimov, named the European Poker Awards Player of the Year in 2003, who has revealed in interviews that he “makes most of his income online and in casinos in Moscow.” His protege is former tennis pro Yevgeny Kafelnikov, who calls poker his new game of choice. Poker dilettantes can head out to the casinos any night of the week to have their money fleeced by the likes of Gerasimov and Kafelnikov. Korona Poker Club, established in 1999, is one of the city’s oldest clubs, and offers tables of Hold ‘Em, Omaha, 7-Card Stud and many others non-stop as well as nightly tournaments, starting at 8 p.m. Amateurs can drop by on Monday and Tuesday nights for a free buy-in, “learn how to play” tournament. However, the only real way to cut one’s teeth is by learning with the best of them, which is, unfortunately, very expensive, at least in the beginning stages. Moscow’s highest stakes poker games, which have $700 buy-ins, are played in the VIP rooms of Shangri La every weekend. The neon eyesore on the corner on Pushkin Square, which has 24-hour poker rooms, labels itself “the closest to Las Vegas without leaving Moscow.” But, Novy Arbat most resembles Vegas’ Strip than anywhere else. In addition to Korona, there you’ll find Metelitsa, which offers poker in the main casino (1,450 ruble entrance, unlimited free drinks included) and the subterranean Sportland (300 rubles entrance, redeemable for food and game tokens). Try your hand at Russian Poker, a homegrown, four-person version of the game distinguished in that “a player’s cards can be formed into two combinations which will be paid as two separate games,” according to Korona’s website. Grumblings within the Duma, however, could grind the poker craze to a halt. Yedinaya Rossiya has vocally campaigned to move casinos in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sochi to the outskirts of the city, which would spell the demise of the gambling industry. In that case, Russian poker aficionados can turn to the Internet. There are many online gaming sites, though Malta-based company Red Star Poker, which opened in June of 2005, filled the crucial void of providing instruction and customer service in both Russian and English. Upon downloading the necessary gaming software, one may participate in satellite tournaments with international players. Log on Nov. 5 at 8 p.m. for Red Star Poker’s Crazy Fall Freeroll for $15,000. That’s Saturday night poker night in the comfort of your own house. |
