I got a ping on Facebook today from a dealer friend that still works at Bellagio telling me that Andy Beal was back – he played Todd Brunson heads-up, each buying in for $5,000,000. There’s a report up on PokerNews.com about the match.
The days of The Corporation and Beal hacking away at each other at a poker table is one helluva bedtime story kids. Search PokerWorks for Andy Beal and you’ll find a number of reports in The View from the Box. It’s just difficult for most of us to wrap our thoughts around the amounts of money that moved through the game with Beal and The Corporation. Even the game that just went down over the weekend…$5,000,000 buy-in…that’s a freaking astronomical amount of money.
I still chuckle over the fact that everyone in the poker room was scurrying to get a look at the games back in the 2000/2001 and how none of The Corporation wanted any news to leak about it. Yeah, right!
One of the first things I remember learning when I started dealing poker in Montana is that no one wants the world to know what they lose or win in a poker game. That’s understandable. But with the amount of traffic that goes through Bellagio — people from all over the world — and the amount of money that was involved in The Big Game, it’s impossible to keep it quiet. Inquiring minds want to know, right?
I knew way back when that Andy was never going to give up poker, even though everyone said he was done when he left the first time, I knew he would be back. He’ll probably be back in Bellagio today, looking to continue the game with Brunson or with anyone that will sit down with him.
I am always rooting for Andy. Nope, he doesn’t NEED the win for the sake of the money so my reasons for rooting for him are simple. He wants to play and he wants to challenge himself to be the best at what he does, I’d like to see that happen. In my encounters with Andy, I see a real person first and a poker player somewhere down in the layers that make up his personality. In many of those Andy played with when I was dealing, I never saw a real person in any of the layers.
Go Andy!
I also would love to see Andy win, and take it all back to TX and stay gone 10 years.
While interesting, the writing stinks and this would have never slipped past you: “Despite winning a massive $11.7 pot on MAT 13, 2004, Beal ended up quitting the game A lost, “. They need to hire you as editor!
Seems like a million years ago when I dealt those games. Thank you my friend on the editing comment.
I miss the good old blogging and writing days we shared. Of course, I miss you and our shared memories of all the loons we dealt to and with.