ESPN Poker Blog

Posted by Steve Rosenbloom

LAS VEGAS -- There's only one way to play this hand: We're putting Jamie Gold on both sides of the mahogany desk at a Hollywood movie studio.

Jamie Gold the erstwhile talent agent comes to Jamie Gold the new producer of reality TV shows to pitch a story about an unknown poker player who had a massive chip lead in the biggest no-limit hold 'em event in the world. He's doing it for his dying dad, a man who adopted him as a child. And his mom, a poker player herself, comes out to see him play as he roars to the most golden of bracelets, leaving the dying man at home to follow the events via computer.

Would that be a story line or what?

But wait. There's more. There's always more in Hollywood.

In the middle of this is Jamie Gold the poker player, the real thing, running over what's left of the field of 8,773 players to take that massive chip lead in the greatest reality show in poker: the World Series main event.

Now it gets interesting. Now the question has guts. Now you wonder if Gold the agent would tell Gold the producer that the story was too Hollywood even for Hollywood.

"There might be a story,'' Gold said, "if I dump at the end because I don't want to be famous.''

Excuse me? "Dump at the end''? Isn't it every player's dream to win this one event?

"I don't want to be famous,'' Gold said while sitting in the Bodog lounge before Day 6 of the event Monday. "I'm not sure if I want to win. And I'm in control of that.''

The stunning epiphany hit the 36-year-old Malibu, Calif., resident earlier that morning.

"I just thought about what would happen if I won,'' Gold said. "Out of the goodness of their heart, a lot of people would feel like they needed to talk to me, they'd want to know what I was doing, cameras would follow me around. I don't want my life on display. I don't have anything to hide. I'm just not that person. I've always been behind other people. I like making other people famous. I'm not comfortable being in the spotlight. I like my private life.

"I also don't want to be responsible for being the ambassador of poker or anything like that. What Greg Raymer does is amazing. Good for him. I'm not looking to quit my job. I like the job I do. I don't need the money. I'm not doing this for the money. I love the competition.''

The money, though. It's $12 million.

"The money will help my father,'' Gold said. "But $6 million will help him, too. I would rather come in second.''

Suddenly, this raises the question of the way he might play his hands. The integrity issue comes into play.

"I haven't decided what I'm doing,'' he said. "If it's inappropriate, I won't do it. I'm just telling you that if I had to plan it out, coming in second would be more satisfying to me.''

But the bracelet represents the greatest accomplishment that this competition offers, a place among the greats.

"I want to win,'' he said. "I don't want to be famous.''

Gold has always wanted to win. And he always has won.

"I was always a few years ahead,'' he said. "I got a 1,300 on the SATs when I was in fifth grade, so I could've gone to college in sixth grade, but I didn't. I was always a little ahead of things, but I didn't want to be uncool. I wanted to hang out with kids my age. I didn't want to be a geek.''

At 16, he was interning at a talent agency in New York. Before he was 21, he was the youngest franchised agent in the industry in Los Angeles. A couple years later, he worked on his own time at Universal Studios to learn the production system. He later founded a management/production entity, and by 1996, he started his own boutique management shop before beginning the Buzznation company that produces reality shows.

Among media types at the Rio Hotel where the World Series is playing out, he is called Jamie "Ari'' Gold, a reference to the brash, fast-talking, potty-mouthed agent character Ari Gold portrayed by Jeremy Piven on HBO's smash series "Entourage.''

They say it jokingly. Turns out, it might be true.

"Entertainment Weekly put out a story that that character was originally called 'Jamie Gold,' but they changed it for legal reasons,'' he said. "I actually went to college with the creator of the show [Doug Ellin], so it's not far-fetched that it would be true. I have no idea. I've never asked him. He and I haven't spoken since college. But people keep telling me that character was written about me.''

True or not, Gold has had a hand in some careers that might rival that of "Entourage'' character Vincent Chase, such as James Gandolfini of "The Sopranos,'' Felicity Huffman of "Desperate Housewives,'' Jimmy Fallon of "Saturday Night Live,'' Lucy Liu of "Charlie's Angels,'' Kristin Davis of "Sex and the City,'' and singer Brandy.

Oh, and Johnny Chan.

Yes that Johnny Chan, the 10-time bracelet winner, last back-to-back champion and the featured player in "Rounders.''

"I was playing a lot at the Hustler Casino [in Los Angeles] and I was still an agent,'' Gold said. "I was trying to put a TV show together. Johnny had just been in 'Rounders' and Chris Moneymaker had just won the World Series [main event in 2003] and the whole poker boom happened. He was looking for some kind of entertainment project. So, the guy who was running the Hustler put us together.

"I was a huge fan of his and I'd just started playing no-limit. I said, 'I'll help you in the entertainment world and you have to make me a great poker player.'''

The poker show never caught on. The poker lessons apparently did. Gold, one of a handful of Hollywood personalities who was bought into the main event by the Bodog.net site, won several tournaments around L.A. He said he can't remember winning more than $60,000 in any tournament, and here he is, poised and stacked to cop $12 million.

"Everybody asks me what my strategy is,'' Gold said, "and I have none until I find out who I'm playing with and then I figure out how they're playing and I play opposite of them. My best skill is reading other players.''

Figures that a Hollywood type would excel at people skills at the table. One view of Hollywood is that no one tells the truth, everybody's looking for an edge, so you have to know people, know who the marks are, a game within a game to get a deal done. Sounds like poker, huh?

"You hit it right on the head,'' Gold said. "Everyone in Hollywood is pretty much out to get you. You have to align yourself with people you can trust. I've been fortunate enough to have Johnny Chan mentoring me. He's been a great influence on me, very kind and generous. I have some other poker friends who you probably wouldn't know who have been so kind to me.''

Gold seemingly has played a near-perfect main event so far. He also has played the main event with a motivation from across the country: a father dying of ALS on the East Coast.

"He's not well,'' Gold said of his 76-year-old father. "He can't move in his own body. He can't swallow anymore. He has a breathing machine. This is all for him.

"He adopted me when I was 6 years old. My mother remarried to him. He's my stepfather, but he's my father. He's amazing. He's been so good to me, so kind. Worked his whole life until he got sick. He was about 70 years old and still working as a dental surgeon. Never took a sick day. He was probably sick, but he never let on. I told him maybe it's a good deal that if you can make a deal with God, wouldn't you say, 'Give it all to me at the end?' So, maybe it's not so bad. It's just hard on him and on us now.''

But there is some solace for Gold and his father.

"He can talk and he's 100 percent lucid,'' Gold said. "He has two people full-time helping him click the refresh button all day and all night [as he follows my progress online]. I just want to make him proud.''

Well, then, the story of our hero who craves competition and detests fame thickens. Which will it be for the chip leader: the desire to win the greatest poker competition or the distaste for fame that comes in equally large bundles? Which part of Gold wins out?

"I don't know. I'm not sure,'' he said. "I've thought about one day when I have children, how can I explain to them that I quit? I don't know.''

Sounds like he's creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"Maybe,'' he admitted. "But maybe I'm also making it so that I'm happy either way. I can't lose.

"I'm just being realistic. I understand what will happen to my life. I like my life the way it is, and it won't be the same. I want my life the way it is. I really enjoy my life.''

Gold underscores his dilemma with a story about the limo driver who was taking him from the Wynn property to the Rio holding up that day's newspaper with his picture in it.

But that was only Page 3 of the Las Vegas Review-Journal sports section. Winning the main event would land him Page 1 of Variety and the Hollywood Reporter.

"I don't want it,'' Gold said. "I've seen what it's done to other people. I've worked with actors from James Gandolfini to Felicity Huffman to Lucy Liu.

"Gandolfini wanted nothing to do with fame. If you notice before 'The Sopranos,' he never did a movie that put him in the spotlight. He never did Jay Leno. He never did an interview. He never talked to the press. He didn't want any of it. He couldn't stand it because he knew what would happen to his life.

"He got in an accident in New York City and someone walked over to him and said something like, 'Well, you're Tony Soprano, so you don't need any help.' Craziness. It's insane. People create things about you and your life and follow you.

"I know what fame does to people. It's not that I can't handle it; I don't want it.''

An agent, though, is used to running interference for clients, so Gold would seem to be best-equipped to fend it off.

"Better than most people, but I know what it is, and fame is not what my life is about,'' he said. "That's not why I'm here. Competition is.

"I'm telling you, I want to win. I just don't want to be famous.''

The interview is about to end, and I'm stuck. Gold has only a couple minutes to get to his table and he has a massive stack, one that he would double to more than $14 million by the middle of the afternoon. I'm stuck because I heard his story and don't know whether to wish him good luck or bad.

"No,'' he said, "wish me good luck. I'm just being honest. I want to win.''