Lyle Berman is a legend when it comes to the business of poker. He was inducted into the Binion's Poker Hall of Fame in 2002, and he is currently chairman of the board for the World Poker Tour. Berman was also named Gaming Executive of the Year in 1996. Berman can more than hold his own at the poker tables, as well. He holds three World Series of Poker bracelets, and he has more than $1.5 million in career tournament winnings. Card Player caught up with Berman in Bobby's Room at Bellagio during a break in the action.
Note: Other poker players were in the room at the time of this interview, which explains the brief apperance of a third voice in the dialogue.
Ryan Lucchesi: How much do your business skills help your poker skills, and vice versa?
Lyle Berman: I often say that one of the biggest things people learn from poker is that there are ramifications to your decisions. Every decision you make has ramifications in business, the problem is that sometimes from the time I make a decision until I know the reality could be two or three years. Poker reinforces that virtually every decision matters, and you get the results in five seconds. They kind of both complement each other … as well as the social interactions with people. I’ve heard that there are courses now, not on how to play poker to win, but on the similarities between business and what poker can teach you; it is becoming mainstream in that regard.
RL: Do you think that the other poker games will become as popular on television as hold’em? Do you think that we’ll see them more?
LB: We’re going to see more of them, but right now the only time we see things other than hold’em is during the World Series. Certainly, it would be interesting if the big game were televised, but hold’em is such a … you know the saying, five minutes to learn and a lifetime to master. I think hold’em is going to hold [its top spot] for a while. I don’t think the others will become as popular.
RL: Do you think the WPT will ever feature other poker games?
LB: I think so, yes. We’re not married to hold’em, and we’ll get other games, eventually.
RL: How much do you think that the success of amateur players like Chris Moneymaker, or, going back a little further to Hal Fowler, coupled with the emergence of online poker has fostered the rags-to-riches possibility that poker provides?
LB: First off, it’s true, and we all know that one of us can’t study to become a pro football player or become wonderful in golf. But it’s absolutely true that you have the rags-to-riches stories, and you’ll keep having them. I can take a kid in college today, and in one month he’ll have played more tournaments on the Internet than Mr. Doyle Brunson, the Godfather of Poker, has played in his life. More hands than [Doyle’s] played in his life [the kid] can play in 30-60 days on the Internet.
Doyle Brunson: Maybe not the hands, but for sure more tournaments.
LB: And then you couple on the fact that you now can play with the satellite system, where you can play online and win a seat for $3, or come here and win a couple of parlay seats. It’s going to happen all of the time, its great for poker, and we promote it when it does happen. Whenever somebody at the final table at one of our tournaments came through the satellites or the Internet, we broadcast that, because it is the American dream. But it’s true, and it’s not an illusion; it absolutely can happen. Then you have the case where Daniel Negreanu was taking a player under his wing, you have the WPT Boot Camp where you truly do learn how to play.
It’s really hard to be a professional poker player and play for a living. I can’t think of a worse way to try to make a living than playing poker tournaments, because even if you’re great, you fail most of the time. I go to work every day, make decisions and direct people, and when I go home at night I have a positive self-image that I accomplished something. Most of the time when you play a poker tournament, you have a horrible self-image. Even if you’re a big winner most of the time, you fail. So, it’s a tough way to make a living. I can take anybody with reasonable intelligence who wants to learn to play poker in tournaments well enough to compete. Because the luck factor in tournaments is substantial, you can do it, and that’s again what makes it such a great game. You can compete against a pro and you can’t do that in any other sport.
RL: Do you think that poker represents the ultimate level playing field?
LB: I think there are many other areas where that is true, but I’ve often said that you should write an article just about how everybody gets along at a poker table. Arabs and Jews and blacks, everybody, we all get along, because it is a level playing field, and the deck knows no color. There’s no prejudice in poker, there just isn’t; it’s your cards and your money, and it’s an open playing field. It’s a classic case of an area where there is no prejudice, and everybody thinks they have an equal shot, and everybody gets along.
RL: Do you think that poker is capable of creating strong bonds between people as close as family and friends to complete strangers?
LB: Sure, because, again, when you think about it, I have spent more time with people at the poker table than any other walk of my life. I mean, I have some of my best friends at home that I have known since childhood, but I haven’t spent anywhere close to the amount of quality time [with then] that I have with people here. Your best friends, once you’ve grown up and have kids, you go out for dinner and say, “How are the kids,” and you see each other at Christmas and maybe at a funeral. Here, we spend 12 hours a day talking, bulls---ing … I think the most amazing thing that people can see when they see the high-stakes game on television — and not so much on the WPT, because it’s more tense — but on the high-stakes game they’re all friends, and they bulls--- and they laugh and tell jokes. People don’t realize how informal it is, even though you’re playing for millions of dollars. And, of course, poker players have a very unique skill in that they can check-raise for hundreds of thousands of dollars in a poker game and then go out to dinner and think nothing of it. Nothing is taken personally, most of the time. Its business, it’s playing poker, and at the end of the day, it’s survival of the fittest.
