Chuck Blount: Games with billionaire banker high on drama

Andy Beal is a private man, but this is known: He's a billionaire banker from Dallas who has a penchant for high-stakes Poker and a belief that he can beat the best in the game.

Because of Beal's immense wealth, no professional has been able to challenge him for the stakes he plays without risking financial ruin.

This led to the formation of "The Corporation," a group of high stakes players including Doyle Brunson, Jennifer Harman, Howard Lederer and Ted Forrest among others that pooled their bankrolls to battle Beal's near-bottomless checkbook in a series of heads-up matches.

The game started in 2001 and has been played in relative secrecy for the past four years with both Beal and "The Corporation" winning sessions worth millions of dollars. The game was the focus of Michael Craig's popular book "The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time."

"Andy is more than capable to take up this challenge," Craig said. "He wants to prove that he can beat these top professionals. He's in it for the rush he gets when he's successful."

In February, Craig helped organize a return of poker's biggest game to the Wynn Las Vegas after a long hiatus. He chronicled more than 4,000 hands of poker between Beal and "The Corporation" trio of Harman, Forrest and Todd Brunson from his position at table three, seat seven.

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His account of the nine-day match, a whopping 20-page article of juicy details, hits newsstands March 20 in Bluff Magazine. It's fascinating reading that gives outsiders the best insight into Beal and what he hopes to accomplish with these matches, while also delivering the pros' methods of attacking him.

When taking in the hand-by-hand account, readers are forced to pick a side in a game that has no real villains.

"As I was writing, I was wondering who people would root for," Craig said. "Andy is the underdog that will take on the haughty, self-important pros, but at the same time, it's the pros that are the working class heroes. They got where they are in the Poker world through skill. Now some billion-dollar playboy comes to town saying he wants to take all their money. Who's the hero here?"

The stakes involved in the game can leave anyone short of Bill Gates speechless.

The blinds were set at $25,000/$50,000, so any time a flop was dealt there was at least enough money in the pot to buy a decent home. The players used $25,000 chips and they played with five racks each for $25 million in action on the table.

The matches were anything but tight. Beal would risk more than $500,000 with garbage hands, while counterparts Forrest and Brunson where apt to do the same. Profit swings were so wild that Harman once added $1 million to her stack in 10 minutes.

"The game essentially became a high-stakes game of chicken," Craig said. "You immediately got a feeling you were involved in something more intense than you could ever get in a normal format."

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The swings in the match resembled a bi-polar stock chart.

In a bit of a spoiler, Beal ended the session in triumphant fashion, taking the final chip from "The Corporation" when his pocket queens held up against Forrest's A-4. Security had to escort Beal to the cashier's cage along with $13.8 million in chips.

It's just another chapter in the richest poker game in the world.