00:00I lost one night 1.37 million. My parents never make this kind of money for all their life.
00:14And then you have the day that I won 1.78 million in eight hours. And then you leave this place
00:20and you think nobody can touch you. You are the best pro poker player in the world.
00:24Now Bobby Baldwin is trying to decide what he's going to do. And let's see. Uh-oh.
00:33He is also going to make a big raise here. $86,000 raise he has in the hole. A pair of nines.
00:41The big game started well before all of our times. I believe it started at the Golden Nugget.
00:48Vegas has obviously changed a lot in the last 40 years. But the game moved to the Mirage.
00:53That was the office. That's literally what they called the Mirage. And then they knocked down the dunes.
00:58They built the Bellagio. And that became the new office. Bobby's Room.
01:03Do you remember the first time you played in Bobby's Room?
01:05I do remember the first time I played in Bobby's Room. I was 21. And it was, uh, it was quite an experience.
01:11You know, whoa. I mean, uh, it's a very interesting place.
01:15You really have a collection of talented players, degenerate gamblers, chiseled old veterans. You have new guys. You have guys like me that are sort of in the middle, I guess, at this point.
01:25But one thing that all these people have in common is some desire to play stakes like this.
01:31I mean, the money that we transfer over there, it's just scary.
01:35It's a tough game. The swings are ridiculous and people win and lose a lot of money.
01:39The games are open to everybody who can afford to play at those stakes. So it doesn't matter who you are. You can play.
01:45A guy walked in. He got, like, Middle Eastern look. And he's shaking. He got chips in his pocket. And he played with them.
01:53And he said, oh, oh, Doyle Bronstone. Oh, I see you on TV. I see you.
01:58So we're looking and he said, hello, how are you? You know, we're trying to be. He said, good, I want to play with you.
02:03Those chips that he played with is $100,000 chips. He had 17 of them.
02:07Two and a half hours later, he left with nothing.
02:09Only because he wanted to play with us. He was one of those chips, you know, from Saudi Arabia or whatever.
02:16How do you deal with the emotional turmoil of those stakes?
02:20That's a good question.
02:23The way I handle big swings is I don't let myself have big swings.
02:28I hurt when I lose 50 cents and that's, it's, uh, it's my job and it's what I do now for a long time.
02:34So you learn how to cope with it.
02:36I have an ongoing joke with Phil Helmuth when he, you know, he has a tirade and he screams and cries and rolls on the floor.
02:42You have a lot of useful stuff to say, don't you?
02:44And I say, Phil, nobody understands but you and me. And that's kind of serious. I'm pretty freaking upset too when I lose.
02:50I don't think anybody in that situation can be robotic. We try, but, you know, we're human.
02:55And so Bobby's room, you know, there's a lot of stuff happened in there that, you know.
03:03I was in a pot one time where there was a fight at the table, which involves someone's stack getting slid into the pot.
03:11Chips were everywhere going in everybody's stack, you know, we're in the middle of this pot.
03:15Like, I wanted to tell the guy, like, listen, pal, I got a straight flush, you know, and it's, it's just like, well, I have to wear the poker face for an hour here.
03:21I mean, it's like, I wound up winning the pot.
03:23It took 45 minutes for everybody to stack their chips up, but then, you know.
03:28But on the other hand, everybody's, you know, good friends.
03:34So I remember, like, I think the New Yorker was doing an article on Bobby's room and he actually pulled me aside and said, are you guys playing for real money?
03:42Because everybody was laughing and having fun and, like, it didn't seem like anybody was taking anything seriously.
03:49I went broke and left the game. He came outside without me saying anything.
03:54And he had what we call a flag chip. It's a $5,000 chip.
04:00He said, uh, looks like you can use this for now.
04:03So, you're not asking.
04:05So that happens more often in poker world than you can possibly imagine.
04:10One flag chip?
04:13Was it more?
04:14Anyone that plays with each other all the time, even if you don't really like them, you know, you see them and it's like, it's just all love.
04:20Because it's like, we do the same stuff all the time together, you know, and it's a bond. It's a deep bond.
04:28We all chose this.
04:30We know what stakes we're playing.
04:31We know the kind of personalities that enter this room.
04:33And there's going to be some shrewd, ruthless, calculated, cold-blooded decision-making in there.
04:38And there's also going to be some very warm feelings, some great times, and the whole thing rolls into one.
04:43And there's also going to be some very warm feelings, some great times, and there's going to be some very warm feelings, and there's going to be some very warm feelings, and there's going to be some very warm feelings, and there's going to be some very warm feelings, and there's going to be some very warm feelings, and there's going to be some very warm feelings, and there's going to be some very warm feelings, and there's going to be some very warm feelings, and there's going to be some very warm feelings, and there's going to be some very warm feelings, and there's going to be some very warm feelings, and there's going to be some very warm feelings, and there's going to be some very warm feelings, and there's going to be some very warm feelings, and there's going to be some very warm feelings, and there's going to be some very warm feelings, and there's going to be some very warm feelings, and there's going to be some very warm feelings, and there's going to be some
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