I have three good friends from Great Britain here to play in the Championship: Victoria Coren, Des Wilson, and Anthony Holden. I have many lively and interesting things to tell you about all three, but Tony is the star of this report. (Incidentally, both Wilson and Coren have advanced to 2-A. I think this bodes well for Tony and I making it to 2-B. You know, it’s a good year for writers. Or friends. Or whatever. Last year, Tony, Des, and I all busted on day 1 and between us we didn’t made it to midnight.)
Somehow, Tony and Des have gotten into a row (American translation: pissing contest) about their various proclivities toward picking up a check. It has always been good natured but that may soon be coming to an end.
And I think it’s my fault.
I wrote in Card Player back in 2005 after sharing dinner with Holden and Wilson:
“I just said good night and goodbye to Messrs. Holden and Wilson, who spent two days in a hilarious battle for who would pick up the check. I don't know if they were fighting to pay or avoid paying; I managed to absent myself from those battles, something they will eventually (and unhilariously) realize.”
This kind of thing has its genesis in both Tony’s prior writing any my own writing style. One of the things that came up repeatedly in BIG DEAL was how infrequently Holden had to pay for anything. This was not a defect of character but the generosity the Binions bestowed on writers and the of friends like Eric Drache, who enjoy the finest dining imaginable and make it almost impossible for anyone else to pick up a check.
Then there’s my own writing style, which is to cast myself as the freeloader. Secondarily, I will cast anyone else possible in that role as well. As you notice from that column in CARD PLAYER, it was ME who skipped out on the check, though I suggested both Holden and Wilson may have wished they could do the same.
Our future meetings became punctuated by this humorous jostling over who would pick up the check. Favors granted would be repaid at fine restaurants upon our next meeting, “and this time I won’t excuse myself to the restroom when the check arrives.”
Both Anthony Holden and Des Wilson are generous men, and speaking for myself I think I’m pretty quick to reach for a check. Somehow, our WRITING about each others’ penurious ways – especially those two, who sometimes fight like an old married couple – has become more frequent and a bit meaner.
In Wilson’s laudatory profile of Holden in POKER PRO EUROPE, he tells a story of how we saw him eating at the table while playing at Foxwoods, worried about “the possibility I would be full up and not available to have – and pay for – dinner.” He then says, “This is another infuriating thing about Tony – he has this amazing ability to travel the world, stay in the best places, eat well – and never pay for it.”
In Holden’s blog, on BiggerDeal.com, he salves his wounds as only a writer can: by picking at the festering sores. “So I will now go score a free meal off someone – Des Wilson, I hope, in my new role as the eternally freeloading Anthony Holden ….” He then describes a meal from the night before, noting parenthetically, “Oh, and for the record, Des, dinner was generously paid for by” someone else.
I’m certain Des won’t take this lying down. I suspect the other shoe will drop when he next writes in HIS blog, on DesWilson.com.
But the fact is that Anthony Holden is an extremely clever man. Writers are generally poorly paid and poorly treated, yet he always manages to find the angle to reap not just financial rewards but the perks that go with being a globe-trotting reporter. For example, Tony’s pen was silent on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal that dogged the U.S. military in Iraq. But he just today told me about three trips he took more than a decade ago to the Caribbean on a magazine’s tab to give them “Princess Diana’s guide to the Caribbean,” sampling the gourmet restaurants, luxury suites, and private spas frequented by the former Princess on her trips to the islands.
It’s all about being smart and resourceful, and it extends to the Main Event, which is the point of “Free Anthony Holden”. We both play on Monday, me at the Devil Spot (table 6, seat 6), Tony at table 37, seat 1.
It occurred to me that Tony has played in the Main Event quite a few times. “This makes eight times,” he told me over brunch on Sunday. (A brunch HE paid for, I had better note.)
Because I had followed Holden’s adventures with great interest long before I knew him, I was generally familiar with several of those performances. In fact, the number was exactly what I thought it was.
That’s when it occurred to me: through three different decades and eight appearances in the Main Event, Anthony Holden has never paid the $10,000 entry fee. In both Main Events that bookend his BIG DEAL year, he won his way in through $1,000 single-table satellites. During the period 1989-2004, he came to the Series approximately ten years out of the sixteen. On three occasions, he won $200 super-mega-hyper-duper satellites. “I tried that route in some of the other years and, having failed, did not play the Main Event.” In 2005, he won an entry worth $5,000 and technically put up the other five grand himself; it came entirely from his profits in his first-ever no-limit cash game at the Bellagio. This was explained in BIGGER DEAL, as was his 2006 entry, won in a tournament in which he outlasted, among others, former champions Moneymaker, Raymer, and Hashem. He so impressed PokerStars that it ponied up the 2007 entry – along with, as a member of Team PokerStars, expenses and entries into several EPT events over the last year.
I don’t know how the business of Holden being a freeloader got started – well, I’m actually pretty sure it was started by ME – but wherever it leads, recognize that he is a generous man. Generous with advice. Generous with friendship. And generous with money.
Unless he can outsmart someone with deeper pockets.
