Mike Sexton for the Poker Hall of Fame
The finalists for the 2009 Poker Hall of Fame were announced a week ago. The nine finalists are:
- Barry Greenstein
- Dan Harrington
- Phil Ivey
- Tom McEvoy
- Men Nguyen
- Scotty Nguyen
- Daniel Negreanu
- Erik Seidel
- Mike Sexton
I know the number of people in the poker world hoping Mike Sexton is voted into the Hall of Fame is not small. I’m hoping he gets in too.
On last year’s Party Poker Million cruise, Sexton won me over as a fan.
On our first night on the ship, the CardPlayer Cruises staff opened up a bunch of cash game tables. The games were played in Euros which was a bit of a problem for me since I didn’t bring any Euros on board (stupid). The staff announced that they would sell €500 for something like $800. This was a pretty big rip off because at the time, €500 was only worth about $675.
However, this was remedied by their promise to return your $800 in full if you gave them the €500 back by the end of the cruise. Okay, fair enough, I figured. I forked over $800 so I could have Euros to play in a €1/€2 cash game.
Anyway, over the duration of the trip I lost all of my Euros in cash games and by spending them at various ports on souvenirs. At the farewell party, I remembered the Euro exchange I had made with the CardPlayer Cruises staff and figured I should try to find someone who could loan me €500 in exchange for dollars. Since €500 was worth about $675, to me this was basically like getting a free $125 if I could complete the transaction.
So I started asking around to see if anyone wanted to trade me €500 for $675, with the caveat being that I’ll “be right back” after they give me their €500 so I could go claim my dollars (despite having just cashed for $160,000 on the cruise’s tournament, I was cash broke). The problem I encountered was that there weren’t many Americans on board, so although guys like Johannes Strassmann and Mike McDonald had plenty of Euros on them, they (understandably) didn’t want to trade them to me for dollars.
Right about when I decided to just forget about it, Tony “Bond18″ Dunst leaned in as if he was letting me in on the details of a heist he had planned, “hey… you know who I heard has a lot of Euros? Mike Sexton!”
Hmm… interesting suggestion, Tony.
I looked at Sexton who was having a conversation with tournament director Matt Savage. I started weighing whether or not it would be worth asking him to loan me the €500 for a few minutes. I figured it probably wouldn’t be much skin off his back, but was it really worth $125 to me to potentially inconvenience him or put myself in an awkward social situation with one of the game’s better-known figures?
Eh… what the hell, I thought. I knew I wasn’t a complete stranger to him since he watched the final table closely and came up to be afterward saying that he thought I played great (which was really nice of him).
“Hey Mike… I’m really sorry to bother, but I heard a rumor that you’ve got a fair amount of Euros on you. Long story short, I need €500 to reclaim some US Dollars from the staff. Would you be willing to trade me that in exchange for dollars? I believe the current exchange rate right now would make it worth $675. I can bring you the dollars in just a couple minutes.”
Even though I kind of got the sense that he didn’t completely understand my request, he didn’t hesitate to pull out his wallet. What I saw at that point was the holy grail of what I had been searching for that afternoon: an American with a wallet loaded in Euros. He must have had €10,000 in that thing. “Damn Tony,” I thought, “you weren’t kidding!”
Mike smiled and handed me €500 and turned back to continue his conversation with Savage. I hastily made my way over to the cashier cage and retrieved my $800. During this process, I learned that €500 was actually worth a little more than I thought, $685. I certainly didn’t want to rip off Mike in this situation especially since he was helping me make a buck.
I walked back to him and handed him $700. He glanced at it and said, “okay, so I owe you a quarter, right?” I was completely taken by surprise that not only did he remember the small details of the dilemma I had hurriedly related to him, but that he was also willing to make change for me. I had expected him to just smile and pocket the cash, which would have certainly been well within a normal social range had he done so. After all, it wasn’t his job to make change for me or anything.
“Actually I was a little mistaken on the exchange rate, €500 is worth closer to $700 than I thought, so just keep it. Thanks for helping me out!” He responded in that same upbeat tone of voice we’ve all heard dozens of times on WPT broadcasts, “okay sure! No problem Cory!”
Gee, what a swell guy, I thought as I walked away.
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