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Hold 'em takes hold
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Cards in the air
At the Desert Diamond tournament, players slowly found their way to the nine tables blocked off for tournament play the room buzzed with small talk, mostly about great hands or bad beats.
Then the clock hit 7 p.m., and that sound was quickly replaced with the repetitive clatter of players fondling their chip stacks.
Unlike a smoky, boisterous blackjack table, where everyone roots for each other to take the casino's money, poker is every player for himself. When tournament director Linda Bickford announced "cards in the air" to signify the start of play, the mood swiftly turned into one found at the fiercest of athletic events.
On go the hats, sunglasses and earphones. In goes the chewing tobacco or the free lollipops handed out at the tournament registration desk. Drinks were ordered, massages given.
Five minutes into play, the first victim glumly stands up, pushes in his chair and walks away from his table wondering what might have been.
"You can't do much about it," said Sean Tabbach, who despite being dealt a pair on three consecutive hands to start the tourney was eliminated when he went all in with 9s but saw opponent Rico Acevedo catch three 6s.
Tabbach, 32, has rapidly become a top local player since taking up the game 1 1/2 years ago, winning several tournaments and a spot through a Desert Diamond qualifier into a WPT event last November at the Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut.
But on this night he was no better than Acevedo, 32, a Tucson Police Department officer who in between hands had his head buried in a book titled "How To Hunt Coeus Deer."
'Poker King' Is born
At the Jan. 31 tournament, the highest finish by a player who considers poker a full-time gig was by Efren "Junior" Bonillas, who took 14th but did not cash.
Bonillas, a 24-year-old Tucson native who was prodded into taking up the game by his mother — "she always told me I was good at (bluffing)" — decided last summer to give up his construction job in order to play cards after a month-long run that saw him win four tournaments and nearly cash in one of the richest events in the world.
The former Little League baseball state champion nearly quit poker last spring after a run of bad luck. His girlfriend, Marlena Manriquez, was pregnant with the couple's third child, and bills were starting to mount.
Bonillas made one last stab, cashing in Player's Club points to enter a tournament for free. Casinos have incentive programs in which gamblers accumulate points by playing games at the casino. Points can be redeemed for gifts.
He made the final table, earning $700 for his trouble, and used $250 to enter a satellite tournament at the casino last March that awarded the winner a seat to the World Poker Tour World Championship at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.
Bonillas won that satellite, doing so despite being hung over and tired from a long night partying with family. He credits the presence of his mother, Suzie Rodriguez, for helping him win that tournament, so she accompanied him to the World Championship.
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