Poker News

Time is running out.

Five minutes. Play begins in five minutes.

Bradenton's Dennis Colletti Jr. has paid $10,000 for a seat at the World Series of Poker, and he's struggling to find it in a sweaty, jammed Las Vegas casino.

Four minutes. The tournament starts in four minutes.

Colletti, 36, grew up playing poker with his father, Dennis Sr., in suburban St. Louis.

"I've never played with anyone better," Colletti says about his father, a flamboyant owner of a trucking company and avid poker player. "He wears more jewelry than women who work at Tiffany's. And he's not afraid to play poker with anybody."

Neither is Dennis Jr., who in a matter of minutes is about to match luck and wits with more than 2,000 card sharks competing for the title of world's best.

If only he can find his table.

Three minutes. Cards are dealt in three minutes.

Colletti always has fared well in basement games with his buddies, some of whom had finished in the money at other popular big-money Vegas tournaments that have sprouted during the recent poker boom. Noting his friends' success, Colletti figured he might get lucky, too.

Now he's in the ultimate card game - $5 million and instant celebrity going to the winner. But where the heck is he supposed to be sitting?

Two minutes. We start in two minutes.

Now Colletti is starting to sweat. As vice president of Sarasota-based Azinger Golf Group, Colletti knows all about high-pressure situations. But this is a different deal. There are almost as many ESPN klieg lights and cameras as there are players packing Binion's Horseshoe Casino, a downtown Vegas landmark. Spectators are lined up outside, standing on their tiptoes and peering through smoked-glass windows.

Table after table is filled with players, some of them celebrities such as actors Tobey Maguire and James Woods. Everyone seems to have found their seat. Everyone, that is, except Colletti.

One minute. The main event starts in one minute.

Finally, Colletti spots his table. But, strangely, all the seats are filled. He checks his chair number. He checks it again. Sure enough, someone is sitting in his seat. But on closer inspection, that's not just anyone ccupying his chair.

No, it's none other than Doyle Brunson, the legendary Texas road gambler, two-time World Series winner and author of dozens of how-to poker books. The 70-year-old Brunson, the Babe Ruth of poker, has plopped in Colletti's chair to chat with a fellow pro.

The cards haven't been dealt, and already Colletti faces a nerve-wracking play.

"It's not like you tell Doyle Brunson to get out of your chair," says Colletti.

Eventually, Brunson departs for his own table. But there would be more brushes with fame for Colletti. Lots of them.

Colletti, wearing a wide-brimmed, Indiana Jones-styled hat, finds himself sitting at a featured table on the opening day. Sitting directly to Colletti's right is a well-known pro, Daniel Negreanu.

With the cameras rolling, Colletti jokes and sings and raises and folds as he outlasts Negreanu, who eventually goes bust and is eliminated. Much of the footage from the opening two days of the tournament, which was held in late May, featured Colletti and aired two weeks ago on ESPN.

By the fourth day, Colletti is still going strong. He's become a favorite of the show's producers and is shuffled from an outer table to center stage. This time, he's sitting between Chris "Jesus" Ferguson and Erik Seidel, two more poker superstars.

The most recent footage from the tournament aired Tuesday, and one segment quickly panned from Ferguson to Seidel. Sure enough, there was Colletti, sunglasses perched atop his hat, sitting in between.

Colletti, who finished 185th and earned $10,000, has become something of a poker celebrity. During a recent trip to St. Louis, he went to a casino poker room, "and the first thing someone says to me is, 'Where's your hat?' "

ESPN's next installment of the World Series airs at 9 p.m. on Tuesday.

"You might be seeing more of me," Colletti says, explaining that, during one hand, neither he nor Ferguson looked at their down cards, raising and re-raising their bets despite having no clue what they were holding.

"I figured my hand was just as good as his," says Colletti, who has a lot of his father in him. "Yeah, I guess I'm a character."

As for who had the better hand, well, we won't ruin the surprise here. ESPN just might show it Tuesday. Colletti, The Character, against "Jesus."

Categories: Poker Stories & News