POKER BOY

"Just try it," Gary Needham barks at the player to his left, who's tapping his chip stack, pondering whether to call Needham's bet.

It's early Tuesday night at the no-limit Texas Hold'em tournament at Black Bart's Poker Room in Portland. Needham, whose nickname is Soupcan, is rolling a green chip between his brawny fingers and along the ridge of his knuckles, a little trick he learned in Vegas.

Three other players are still in the game. Needham raises $100, two players fold, and the third thinks about his move, drumming his fingers on the table, doing his best to avoid eye contact with his opponent.

"I can see who's wearing the panties in this game," Needham blurts to the dawdler, exploding with laughter. A few players snicker, a few more giggle nervously.

When the dawdler calls the bet, Needham, who is 6-foot-3 and 380 pounds, turns slowly in his seat, his large brown eyes boring down on the player. "Now you've done it," Needham says. "Now you've gone and fucking done it."

The 37-year-old Needham is no Phil Hellmuth or Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, professional poker millionaires who've cashed in on the Texas Hold'em fever that seems to be gripping much of the country and certainly two out of every three college-aged males. He's never had a $7,500,000 payday like Joseph Hachem, the 2005 World Series of Poker winner. He's not even a local poker celebrity like Portlander Annie Duke, whose skills on the felt have landed her endorsement deals and a measure of national celebrity.

Soupcan is however, one of the growing legions of players who spend their days and nights at poker tables, online and off, cobbling together a living from the game. Poker's more than a hobby for these players, more than just a way of bonding with buds on a Friday night. It's a lifestyle, a way of being in the world. Many full-time players have entrepreneurial backgrounds. Many are inveterate risk takers, disdainful of the 9-to-5 life. "No one has a real job here," Needham says. "None of us are grown-ups."

Before learning how to push players around the table, Needham pushed bodies around the football field as an offensive lineman for the Miami Dolphins, Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers, and then as a journeyman player for various teams in the Canadian Football League and the Arena Football League.

A 1986 All-American defensive end at Sunset High School in Beaverton, Needham attended Eastern Washington University, where he switched to offensive guard and tore holes through the defensive line. He played the occasional poker game in college and in the pros, but more socially.

An education major at EWU, Needham planned to coach sports after he graduated. That plan went on hold, however, when the Seattle Seahawks signed him as a walk-on.

After a back injury ended his professional career, Needham had to find another way to make a living to support his wife, who'd been his high-school sweetheart, and their daughter.

Needham coached football for Forest Grove High School for a few years, but he resigned because of conflict with other coaches. "I hated people telling me what to do," he says. "I just hated it."

He put his predatory instincts to work bounty hunting and then running his own automobile repossession company, Return to Lender, and starting a few other small businesses, including contracting work for real-estate developers. Whatever he did, he made sure he was the one calling the shots.

And at night he played poker. It was just a matter of time before he ditched his day jobs and took up cards full-time.

"I tried everything, " he says, "until I figured out poker's what I really love. I couldn't fight it any longer."

An adrenaline junkie who craves action like some 8-year-olds crave sugar, the Vancouver native admits to being "a whore for action."

"I enjoyed the pursuit, the action of bounty hunting, and of tracking deadbeats down," he explains. "I got off on the risk. Repossessing cars gave me the same thrill. Poker's the same, only better."

It's a Wednesday night, and the gypsies are jammed hip-to-hip around a table at Black Bart's throwing down 20-dollar bills, screaming. They're playing Freezeout, a form of Texas Hold'em in which players' cards are dealt face-up. It's primal, with the men leaning in, all pizza breath, cheap cologne and sweat, yelling for an ace, or a spade, or just yelling. When the last card is turned over the winner scoops up the handful of cash like it was so much lint and stuffs it in his pocket.

Black Bart's is a nondescript hulk of a space tucked between a retaining-wall installation shop and a locksmith in an industrial park just off Northeast Halsey Street. Regulars call it simply "the warehouse." It's also Soupcan's "office," where he works playing poker five days a week.

The 2,000-square-foot former automotive repair shop's a far cry from the cube farms many Portlanders find themselves in, scratching to make a dollar. With its concrete floors, bare walls, forest of felt-top tables and folding chairs, the warehouse feels more like a storefront church than a card room.

The king of this castle is Bart Hanson, a former cabbie who has been playing poker for most of his life and, in February, placed ninth in the Euro Finals of Poker. "After studying poker for 20 years," the boyish 42-year-old muses, "I finally figured out that you shouldn't aim to beat the house; you should aim to be the house."

Hanson took over a private card club headquartered at the warehouse in May, renamed it Black Bart's Poker Room and began holding tournaments targeted to gypsies, the hearing-impaired and other "marginalized" groups. "My life's dream was to own a casino," he says. "This is probably the closest I'll get."

Unlike some of the players at Bart's, for whom poker is a hobby, a friendly way of passing time, Soupcan takes a businesslike approach to the game, recording the hands he's played each day in a journal, which he regularly reviews. Such a practice helps him track the choices he makes and to craft strategies to improve his game.

Keeping the money he makes, however, is a different story. Needham, who is twice divorced, has been known to blow $1,000 a night at various strip joints on drinks and tips.

That's where Jim Wilcox comes in. Soupcan and Wilcox, a thirtysomething disc jockey with an MBA, have an informal partnership, splitting their tournament winnings and sometimes sponsoring other good players, for a cut.

"He's a better player than I am. He's got a real sense of the gladiator about him," says Wilcox, a churchgoing teetotaler who resembles a younger version of actor Anthony LaPaglia. "But he needs a little help managing what he wins. He needs, you know, a little more self-discipline." Wilcox has been making sure Soupcan tucks away at least 25 percent of his winnings into his bankroll.

To supplement his poker income, Needham invests in real estate. As a hedge against a future downturn in the housing market or his own card-playing fortunes, he's also taken real-estate courses and is a test away from receiving his license as a Realtor.

Recently he and Wilcox leased a building in downtown Eugene, which they'll rent out to private groups that want to run their own poker games.

Investing isn't the same as playing, though, and Needham knows he has to have regular action to keep his edge.

"The key to being a solid player," he advises, "is playing daily and having patience. If you want to be good, you can't panic, ever. Being shortstacked in poker is like being down 14 points at the beginning of the last quarter in football. You just have to wait for your opportunities. Some players push all-in because they're afraid of other people. But if you're playing with scared money, you're squirrel meat. You shouldn't even be at the table."

Needham's take? He averages $800 a week."I grind it out a day at a time," he says, noting that so far this year he's up $30,000.

You can smell the testosterone when Gary Needham talks. His appearance alone unnerves some players. In running shorts, a tank top, and a baseball cap, Soupcan looks like a cross between a gangsta bodyguard and some exotic poker buddha. Sometimes you want to rub his belly, sometimes you want to cower. "If you rely on just getting good cards to win, you'll hardly ever get there," he says. "More than anything, your opponents have to fear you."

It's late one evening at Black Bart's, and in this tournament the 80-player field is whittled down to 10. The cards are dealt and Soupcan is sitting on suited connectors, a six and seven of spades.

Everyone folds save two players by the time the bet comes to Needham. He tosses three pink thousand-dollar chips into the pot, representing that he has a strong hand. One player folds, leaving Needham and a college kid wearing a silk shirt, Blazers cap and 3-D sunglasses, and with an iPod cord dangling from one ear.

The flop brings ace of diamonds, 10 of diamonds, and four of clubs-no help-but Needham pushes, shooting three more pinks into the pot with his beefy forefinger. College Boy stares at the chips, then at Needham, cracks his knuckles, clicks his tongue, and then calls.

The last card brings a two of diamonds. Needham has nothing, and he checks. College Boy bets three thousand. Needham immediately raises him to nine thousand, with a speed and aggression that says "I've got you whupped," even though Soupcan has bupkis.

College Boy shakes his head and throws in his hand, turning over an ace of club-a much better hand than Needham's. "I'm sure you had me outkicked," he says.

"Good fold," Needham says, raking in the pot.

"What, you're not going to show your cards?" the college kid whines.

"If you grew some balls, you'd know what I had," Soupcan replies.

It's July 8, and the Texas No-Limit Hold'em Championship of the World Series of Poker is underway. Soupcan is at Binion's, the dusty old casino anchoring Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas, in a tournament with Wilcox.

The two came here to bask in the reflective glow of hoopla surrounding the festivities. Hundreds of reporters and television crews comb the streets hunting down celebrity pokerists like James Woods, Tobey Maguire and Jennifer Tilly for interviews.

More than 300 pros-the top of the class who tour the country playing poker-are here as well, including Phil Ivey, Greg "The Fossilman" Raymer and Johnny Chan, a former WSOP champ perhaps best known for being Matt Damon's opponent in a scene from Rounders, the 1998 cult poker movie. In addition to these pros, there are about 5,300 other players in this year's WSOP championship event who are dreamers, guys and gals in search of the big pot and a bit of glamour.

Neither Needham nor Wilcox, however, will be participating in the WSOP main event. That costs $10,000, a chunk of change Soupcan isn't willing to part with just yet for a shot at the big time. Instead, he focuses on the smaller tournaments that are always taking place in Vegas.

"The smaller tournaments are really where the money is," Soupcan maintains, noting that in tournament poker luck often plays as large a part in victory as skill. "The trick to increasing your odds of winning is picking the right tournaments to play in. You can give me the fish every day of the week," he says, claiming that he makes the final table at 50 percent of the tournaments he does enter.

Although Soupcan doesn't have a seat with the big boys and girls this year, he still has a stake in the main event, as a "poker therapist" to Amit, a twentysomething Indian-American and Bart's regular, whom some refer to as "Sleepy Boy," because he looks like he's always ready to nod off.

Amit won his seat by trouncing a field of 500 in a PartyPoker.com tournament. Needham's charge for providing therapy: 10 percent of Amit's winings.

During a break in the action, Needham receives a phone call from Amit, who's over at Harrah's and is literally in tears because John Juanda, one of the game's savviest pros, just joined his table. Juanda is known for his uncanny ability to read opponents' hands, and for applying unrelenting pressure, raising and re-raising the pot whenever he's in a hand. His bulging Charlie Callas eyes and unblinking stare put many an opponent on edge.

"This kid was spooked," Needham explains. "I mean, he was having a complete nervous collapse. Juanda had wormed his way deep into his head, and he was scared as shit. Had no idea how to play his cards."

Needham says he tried to talk Amit down, to encourage him to stay out of pots Juanda entered, and not to call bets against Juanda unless he had the absolute nuts-in poker parlance, the winning hand.

"Didn't work," Needham says. "The kid came apart."

When it comes to poker, though, Soupcan's more about winning than doing good. Taking home the gold. Crushing the field. Vaporizing the enemy. "I hate losing," he says. "If I finish in second or third in a tournament, I feel embarrassed."

Needham's protégé went out at 576th, 16 places from the money, and Juanda, the pro, came in 31st, taking home $274,090.

In his own tournament, a $200 buy-in, Soupcan joined 100 players but got knocked out before the final table, coming away with nothing. But buddy Wilcox split first place and took $3,800, which he in turn split with Soupcan. Expenses, plus a little beer money.

First thing you notice about poker players is their hands: if they're shaking when they make a bet, how they organize their chips, where they place them in relation to their cards. There's a science to such gestures, with theories interpreting each act.

"Hiding one's hand," means you're trying to deceive other players into thinking you have weaker cards than you actually do.

First thing you notice about Needham's hands, apart from their massive girth, is the splint on his right middle finger.

"War wound," he says. "She misunderstood what I was saying."

"She" is Tammy, a thirtysomething accountant and no slouch when it comes to calculating odds. When they started dating, she was a regular at Bart's with Soupcan in her tight jeans and black T-shirt that reads "Poker Bitch," the scent of Tommy Girl perfume trailing behind her. Her appearances lately have been less frequent.

A few weeks ago, they were having an argument Soupcan has had so many times before, with so many other women. "She wanted me to spend more time with her and less time playing poker," he says.

Needham says Tammy didn't hear the first part of the sentence. "She didn't hear me say, 'Don't be a...,'" he smiles, pausing for effect. "All she heard was 'bitch.'"

That's when she kicked him, and he raised his hand to protect himself. Which explains the splint.

"I've had worse," he says.

"Poker's an addiction. You know that, don't you?" Tammy offered recently, taking a deep drag from her cigarette before playing another hand at Bart's. "Addicts can't help themselves, they can't."

Looking at Soupcan, this mountain of an alpha rounder, watching him hawk a fat gob of Copenhagen chewing tobacco into a Dixie cup, and throw down Henry's ale like water; listening to him recount his exploits on the poker table; how he kicks ass on the football field and at the strip clubs; how, a few years ago, he was convicted of felony assault for beating up three bouncers at Stars Cabaret in Beaverton, breaking one guy's nose and another's leg-hearing and seeing all this, one wouldn't guess he lives with his mother.

He's good at hiding that hand.

He and his mother bought a home in a Vancouver suburb a few years ago, after his father died and his second marriage, to a troubled stripper, fell apart. His 10-year-old daughter from his first marriage, Sydney, lives with them.

When Needham's not grinding out hands at a local casino or Black Bart's, he's hunkered down in his spacious living room, amid the overstuffed chairs and his mother's bric-a-brac, poker journal at his side, dog-eared copies of poker books by Dan Harrington and David Sklansky on the floor, pecking away at the laptop on the coffee table, some sports event or poker tournament on the wide screen, Sydney by his side.

"She doesn't understand the money part," he says, "but she knows her cards pretty well."

When Needham's out getting his poker fix, his mom takes care of his daughter. When he's not fist-deep into a game online trying to add to the $5,000 or so he's built up at his Fulltilt.com account, he's usually coaching Sydney's Hot Shot basketball team, teaching them the fundamentals of the pick-and-roll, how to be good team players.

After Sydney finishes school, Soupcan's plan is to move to Las Vegas, where he can play higher-stakes games on a regular basis.

"You can't get better unless you play better players," he reasons. "And sometimes you get to a point in life when you've just got to throw your dick into the ring and see what happens. Poker never really ends."

texas hold'em 101

Players are dealt two face-down cards, which they must play in combination with five face-up "community" cards. The best five-card poker hand out of those seven wins the round.

A button or marker is used to show which player is the "dealer" for the round. This is called the "dealer button."

Forced bets called blinds are used, instead of antes.

For each hand, the person to the left of the dealer posts a bet called the small blind, which is equal to half of the minimum bet, and the person to the left of the small blind posts the big blind, which is equal to the minimum bet. In tournament poker, the amount of the blinds increases at regular intervals, usually every 20 to 30 minutes.

So, for example, blinds starting at $50 to $100 will double to $100 to $200 at the next interval. This doubling continues throughout the tournament, gradually forcing players with smaller chip stacks to take bigger risks.

After two cards are dealt to each player face down, the person to the left of the big blind begins the first round of betting. Players have the option of calling, raising, betting, or folding.

Following the first round of betting, the first three community cards, called "the flop," are dealt face-up. After the flop, the small blind begins the betting round.

After the second betting round, the fourth community card is dealt. This is known as "the turn," or "fourth street." Again, the third betting round begins with the small blind.

Following the third betting round, the last community card is dealt. This is known as "the river," or "fifth street." After the last round of betting, players turn over their "hole cards." The highest hand made with any combination of a player's hole cards and the five community cards wins the pot.

After the hand, the dealer button is passed clockwise to the next player.

In No Limit Texas Hold'em, players can bet and raise any amount, and at any time, a player can go "all-in," risking his entire stack of chips.

Tournament poker, the kind popularized in television shows such as the World Poker Tour and played by Soupcan and his cohorts, is a little different from an ordinary "cash" game." In tournament poker, players buy in for a set amount, and then compete against one another. Once a player loses all of his chips, he is knocked out of the tournament. The last person remaining wins most of the money from the buy-ins, with lesser amounts going to runners-up. The payout structure depends on the total number of players entered in a tournament.

poker-english crash course

Much of the table banter at poker games sounds like an exotic dialect of high-school locker-roomese. Consider: "This dickwad in first position who's been on the heater all night limps in, comes over the top of me after an all-rag flop, check raises on fourth street, and then rivers me in the ass, drawing his third hook to snap my bitches." The speaker's describing a lucky draw by a hot player to three jacks, but for newbies he may as well be offering coded coordinates for a Marine attack on insurgents in Fallujah.

oregon law

In Oregon, card games are legal, as long the house doesn't profit. Bart Hanson of Black Bart's, and a Portland mayoral candidate in the last election, earns his money from the refreshments he sells-he also tacks on a $5 required donation. "Everything's on the up-and-up here," Hanson swears. "I want to stay within the law and run a large house game."

According to Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney Wayne Pearson, his office has prosecuted only two gambling-related cases in the past two years: one involving a group of people gambling on a MAX platform and the other concerning antique slot machines.

Social gambling, however, is becoming a hot-button issue in Oregon, as cities such as Keizer, Salem and Albany have recently grappled with proposals to allow it in places other than a private residence. Some 15 Oregon cities-including Portland-currently allow expanded social gaming, meaning gaming in a tavern or social club, so long as those places secure permits and adhere to local regulations. Portland, for example, requires a $500 social-gaming permit for bars or social clubs that want to offer Hold'em tournaments, and bets are capped at a dollar and winnings to a dollar per person, effectively eliminating betting. However, Anne Holm, Portland's regulatory program administrator, says the city has issued no such permits because owners have been careful enough to frame the description of their tournaments so they do not fit the definition of a social game.

Soupcan's largest single payday for tournament poker is $18,000.

In the 2004 Portland mayoral race, Black Bart's owner Bart Hanson received 854 votes, or .64 percent of the vote.

Soupcan's nickname? Many years ago, someone coined this term to describe the shape and size of his manhood. Yuck!

Wilcox calls Needham "King of the Fishes," for his ability to dominate newer players and to exploit weaknesses players don't even know they have.

Want to arm wrestle Soupcan? Try to steal his girlfriend? Sign up for a tournament at Black Bart's, 9400 NE Halsey St., www.blackbartspoker.com .

WWeek 2015