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pokerticians
The game is the same, its just up on another level.
bob dylan, “po boy”
Poker skill didnt vault Barack Obama into the presidency. No cool-eyed read of a Hillary Clinton tell made it obvious he should reraise her claims to be an agent of change. Nor did he shrewdly calculate the pot odds necessary to call John McCain on his commitment to the Bush economic policies or extending the war in Iraq. At least not literally, he didnt. But when Senator Obama was asked by the Associated Press in 2007 to list a hidden talent, he said, “Im a pretty good poker player.” He seemed to be talking about the tabletop card game, but the evidence also suggests he was right in the much larger sense. As a writer, law professor, and community organizer, Obama was greeted coolly by some of his fellow legislators when, in 1998, he arrived in Spring.eld to take a seat in the Illinois Senate. Spring.eld had long been the province of cynical, corrupt backroom operators, hide bound Republicans and Democrats addicted to partisan gridlock. So how was this ink-stained, highly educated greenhorn supposed to get along with Chicago ward heelers and conservative downstate farmers? By playing poker with them, of course.
“When it turned out that I could sit down at [a bar] and have a beer and watch a game or go out for a round of golf or get a poker game going,” Obama recalled, “I probably confounded some of their expectations.” He was referring to the regular Wednesday night game that he and his fellow freshman senator, Terry Link, a Democrat from suburban Lake County, got going in the basement of Links Spring.eld house. Called the Committee Meeting, its initial core was four players, but it quickly grew to eight regulars, including Republicans and lobbyists, and developed a waiting list. But whatever your af.liation, Link says, “You hung up your guns at the door. Nobody talked about their jobs or politics, and certainly no ‘in.uence was bartered or even discussed. It was boys night outa release from our legislative responsibilities.” The banking lobbyist David Manning recalls, “We all became buddies in the card games, but there never were any favors granted.” Another regular was a lobbyist for the Illinois Manufacturers Association, and the game eventually moved to the associations of.cewhich didnt keep Senator Obama from voting to raise taxes and fees for manufacturers. He says the games were simply “a fun way for people to relax and share stories and give each other a hard time over friendly competition,” adding that they provided “an easy way to get to know other senatorsincluding Republicans.”
Most Committee Meetings began at seven oclock and ran until two in the morning, with the players sustained by pizza, chips, beer, cigars, and good fellowship. Obama wore workout clothes and a baseball cap, but his approach to the cards wasnt casual. He wanted to win. His analytical backgroundpresident of the Harvard Law Review, University of Chicago law professorhelped him hold his own at stud and holdem, though it did him less good in the sillier, luck-based variants other players chose, such as baseball and 7-33.
Link, who probably played more hands with Obama than anyone else in Spring.eld, observed that his lanky table-mate played “calculated” poker, avoiding long-shot draws in favor of patiently waiting for strong starting hands. “Barack wasnt one of those foolish gamblers who just thought all of a sudden that card in the middle [of the deck] was going to show up mysteriously.” He relied on his brain, in other words, instead of his gut or the seat of his pants. “When Barack stayed in, you pretty much .gured hes got a good hand,” recalls Larry Walsh, a conservative corn farmer representing Joliet, who neglected to note that such a rock-solid image made it easier for Obama to bluff. “He had the stone face,” Link recalled.
Yet even as one of the boysbluf.ng, drinking, bumming smokes, laughing at off-color yarnsthere were lines he wouldnt cross. When a married lobbyist arrived at a Spring.eld of.ce game with someone described as “an inebriated woman companion who did not acquit herself in a particularly wholesome fashion,” Obama made it clear he wasnt pleased, though he managed to do it without offending his poker buddies. Link says they all were displeased, and that the lobbyist and his girlfriend were “quickly whisked out of the place.”
Obama also made sure he never played for stakes he couldnt easily afford. Only on a very bad night could one drop a hundred bucks in these games, typical wins and losses being closer to twenty-.ve. Among the regulars, the consensus was that “Obama usually left a winner.” The bottom line politically was that poker helped Obama break the ice with people he needed to work with in the legislature.
“Barry,” as he was called before college, had learned the game from his maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham, a World War II army veteran whose black friends played poker as well. Barry also played with classmates at Punahou High School in Honolulu. His best game, however, was basketball. He wore a Dr. J fro, and his teammates respectfully called him “Barry OBomber.” They won the state championship in 1979, and Obama later told HBOs Bryant Gumbel that, despite the OBomber nickname, “My actual talent was in my .rst step. I could get to the rim on anybody.” His problem as an in-shape, thirty-six-year-old legislator was that very few pols whod been around long enough to run things in Spring.eld could still make it up and down a hard court. His solution was the game in Links basement. To connect with those who didnt play basketball or poker, he also took up golf, a game at which Link says “he wasnt a natural.” But he counted every stroke. “When hed shoot an 11on a hole, Id say, ‘Boss, what did you shoot? and hed say, ‘I had an 11. And thats what hed write on his scorecard. I always respected that.” Determined to write down fewer 11s, Obama took enough lessons to be able to shoot in the low nineties, and he eventually beat Link a few times.
But the freshman legislator seems to have understood that, as a networking tool, poker is the most ef.cient pastime of all. Its tables often serve as less genteel clubs for students, workers, businessmen, and politicians of every rank and persuasion. Instead of walking down fairways forty yards apart from each other, throwing elbows in the paint, or quietly hunting pheasant or muskie, poker buddies are elbow to elbow all night, competing and drinking and talking. The experience can tell them a lot about the other fellows ability to make sound decisions, whether electoral or parliamentary, tactical or strategic. As Abner Mikva, one of the deans of Chicagos legal and political worlds and a longtime Obama adviser, put it simply, “He understands how you network.” The networking paid off when, against all expectations, Obama hammered out a compromise bill called “the .rst signi.cant campaign reform law in Illinois in 25 years” and other bills mandating tax credits for the working poor, the videotaping of police interrogations, and reform of the states antiquated campaign-.nance system.
After being “spanked”his word for losing by 31 percent to