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Message: [QUOTE="Marton Magyar, post: 6376307, member: 490703"] Here's chapter 27, theStarfish's pick: CHAPTER 27 The Corporation vs. Andy Beal If there’s one chapter in poker history that feels more like fiction than reality, it’s this one. Andy Beal, CEO and founder of Beal Bank, was looking for some gambling action in the summer of 2001. Wanting to make it interesting, he sat down at the $800/$1,600 limit hold ’em table at Bellagio. Word spreads quickly about a new whale in Las Vegas. Soon enough, his table filled up. However, instead of being slowly stripped off of his money, Andy Beal hung in there. Meanwhile, he just kept asking, “Does anyone play for higher stakes than this?” The truthful answer was: not really. However, the poker pros didn’t want to let go of their new mark. So they pooled their money. Jennifer Harman, Doyle Brunson, Gus Hansen, Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey, Johnny Chan, and 10 other elite players formed “the Corporation.” The idea was that the pros would take on Andy Beal in a series of limit Texas hold ’em heads-up cash games, operating on one shared bankroll. Alone, none of them could afford the stakes at which Beal wanted to play. And, evidently, given that the pros were sharing the bankroll, Beal wouldn’t play against them in a full ring to avoid collusion on their part. The game started out as expected, with the Corporation booking a couple million in winnings after each session. The first turn came in the game when Andy Beal beat Johnny Chan out of around $5 million. At that point, Doyle Brunson announced that his company of poker pros was officially bust and asked Beal to return to their common home state of Texas. But the billionaire wanted to stay. As might have been predicted, Ted Forrest and John Hennigan took the opportunity and recovered their team’s losses. However, this battle was far from over. During the ensuing years, Andy Beal stopped by to sit down with some of the pros for super-high-stakes heads-up cash games. At other times, members of the Corporation traveled to Texas to face off Beal on his home turf in the VIP room of a gentlemen’s club. The stakes were as high as $100,000/$200,000. At that altitude, even the most seasoned poker pros have trouble breathing. Beal ended up booking a $10 million win in that session. Both sides vowed that the next session would be their last. Finally, the heads-up duel came to an end in February 2006 when Andy Beal took on Phil Ivey in a $30,000/$60,000 limit hold ’em cash game at Wynn Las Vegas. The action raged for three days with Ivey managing to end each day in the black. By the end of the third day, the poker legend had beaten the billionaire banker out of no less than $16.5 million. That was enough for Andy Beal. He put an end to his yearslong rivalry with the team of poker pros. He vowed to never play poker again. The total sum Andy Beal lost to the Corporation over the years is unknown. One thing is for certain: The game ultimately ended the way everyone expected it would at the start, with the professionals besting the daring whale by a considerable margin. However, something else is also undeniable: Andy Beal deserves the utmost respect from the poker community for putting on a show that will be remembered for generations to come. He also outperformed everyone’s expectations of him a number of times along the way. By the way, Andy Beal broke his vow of life-long abstinence from poker. In January 2015, he was back in Bobby’s Room, booking a $5 million losing session against Doyle Brunson’s son, Todd [/QUOTE]

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