YOU'VE PROBABLY SEEN HINTS OF IT ON TV. Maybe on one of the WPT specials, oron Poker After Dark. Antonio Esfandiari and Phil Laak have a very competitive relationship.

In truth, it's actually much deeper than that. They are an old married couple. Theyfinish each other's sentences. They read each other's minds. They even have whatHollywood calls a "meet-cute," an awkward but ultimately charming story about howtheir relationship began.

They also love, above all else, to gamble with each other. Starting in April, assumingyou have accessto the iNHD network, you'll get to see a lot more of it, as they makewild, humiliating, and occasionally painful proposition bets against one another on theirnew show, I Bet You. ALL IN recently caught up with the duo to discussthe show, thestate of the game, and how it feels to be poker celebrities.

ALL IN: Tell us how you met ...Phil Laak: This is what happened. In '99, Istarted playing cards in New York, aroundthe same time he was playing cards in theBay Area. In the summer of 2000, we bothwent to the World Series of Poker for ourfirst time ...Antonio Esfandiari: Let me tell you howwe met. That year at the World Series, Iwasn't doing much poker-I was doingmore magic than anything else. And soI was known as "The Magician." I waswalking by a table, and a friend stoppedme and said, "Antonio, do some magic forus." So I started to do magic. And everyoneat the table was kind of interested. Phil wassitting behind Gus-this is before he wasGusHansen, he was just a normal guy-andwhile I'm doing the magic tricks, I noticethat Phil is not doing what he should:looking away when I talk. He's alwayslooking at my hands and I'm thinking,

This guy is trying to figure me out.PL: I'm trying to get myself behind himand trying to get the best angle ...AE: No, that comes later. So I cut the magicsession short. I don't like it when peopletry and figure out how I do it. About 10minutes later, I'm doing magic for anothergroup of people. All the sudden I see Phil,just standing around, trying to look at myhands, and I think, This frickin' prick. He'sreally trying to heckle me, right? So thegroup breaks, we start chatting, we wentout that night, we started drinking ...PL:Actually, what happened was, I remem-ber distinctly, I was like a magic enthusiastin seventh grade. I remember reading allthe magicians' books that existed in thelibrary of my hometown, learning howthey cut the woman in half with the saw,all the stuff. I read the life works of Houdini.I was always fascinated by magic. So whenI saw him doing his magic, the first words

An Outrageous Interview With Poker'sWackiest Twosome And Newest Reality-TV Stars, Phil Laak & Antonio Esfandiari

I ever said to Antonio-I just thought I wasgoing to compliment him on his magic andpass on my way-I went up to him, aftertwo days of seeing his little improv shows,and I was, like, "Sir, I've watched a lot ofmagic in my time, and that was some ofthe tightest, coolest, close-up magie-Icouldn't figure out most of it. I thought itwas slick, polished." I was just giving hima compliment. And then Antonio, beinghumble, deflected the compliment andsaid "Hey," and we got a beer. One thingled to another ...AE: Yeah. We started drinking ...PL: The next day we were wanderingaround Vegas with a deck of cards ...AE: And that was it.PL: When we were both single guys, it wasfun, because we would drift around withthe deck and have fun meeting people.AE: He would do the talking and the bull-shitting, I would do the magic.PL: That World Series of Poker was theend of a one-year journey to find out if Iwanted to play poker for a living and Irealized-this was in 2000-you couldprobably make money at poker, but notas much as I could probably make on WallStreet. And I was really having a toughtime because I wanted to have fun and Iknew that Wall Street wouldn't be as muchfun. But there's a certain point, wherethe money-fun equation ... Whatever. Iended up drifting off to Wall Street. And,literally, a month later, I started gettingcalls every three days from Antonio saying,"What are you doing joining the real world?You should be in California playing poker,I'm making this much money, this muchmoney." And I tell him, "Look, Antonio,no one makes that kind of money." I wentto every casino in the world, practically ...AE: I had a little nest in San Jose that noone knew about.PL: It was like a little game, I never evenwent to this casino.AE: I told him he had to see for himself.And the first day he plays, he breaks therecord for the biggest win in, like, five years.It's just sick! He comes back and plays thenext day, and he breaks that record! It wasthe sickest.PL: That week, I just won a ton of money.I was very aware that I just got lucky thatweek, but I knew that I was in a gamethat was super-juicy, that the world didn'tknow about it, no pros knew about it,and it had missed me. I had gone to casi-

nos on the east and west coasts, in Europe,and I'd never seen what was happening.This little bubble at Bay 101-the game'sdead now-a spread-limit game wherethere were some sick people. Every timethey bet, they'd bet the max, and if youchecked, they'd bet. That was the algo-rithm they went by. It didn't last long, butthey went through, like, 20 dimes a dayfor six months. So five days later, I lookedat my numbers and realized even if I wasrunning average, I'd be crushing whatevernumbers I could make as a Wall Street guy.AE: So we looked for an apartment.PL: I said, "Antonio, if I choose to moveout here ... "

AE: I was living with a friend of mine atthe time, but Phil said, "If I move outhere, can we get a place together?" Thenext day ...PL: Five miles or lessaway from the game.AE: Five miles or less.And the next daywe go and prepay rent for six months tothis lady ...PL: I told my buddy in the Wall Street world,"I'm taking a sabbaticaL" So I'm on a seven-year sabbatical from the finance world.AE: (laughing) He'swaiting for that call back.PL: (laughing) It's going to be anotherseven years, probably.AE: And that was it.PL: Thank you Antonio ...

AE: Until Jennifer [Tilly, Phil's girlfriend]stole him from me.PL:That was much later. That was afterAntonio never spent quality time withme because he had a girlfriend and I hadto find somebody to ...AE: Remember porch time? We'd turn offthe phones and hang out on the porch?PL:There was a time, actually, in 2000, itwas kind of still busy but I enforced it. EverySunday, from four to five p.m., no phones,hang out, have a barbecue, or whatever.

But those were the olden days, when ...AE: He wasn't a superstar. Now he doesn'thang out with me anymore.PL:That's B.S.!AE: The only time we hang out is whenwe work together.You've answered our second question,"How did you fall in love?"AE: (laughing) It's such a love-hate rela-tionship. By the way, we like to hurt eachother, financially, more than anyone elsein the world.

PL:That recent win over Antonio on PokerAfter Dark, that was the most pleasurablewin I've had in my life. You have to under-stand that if I had lost that final hand, ifAntonio had taken that final match fromme, it wasn't that I wouldn't have won,it's that I would have lost to Antonio.Losing to Antonio is like somebody stick-ing a hot poker through your chest. It'sjust terrible pain. The winning was nice,but defending against losing ...Have you guys always made prop bets?PL: Right away. I remember going to getfish tacos with Antonio at Rubio's, nearour first apartment in San Jose, the guywas just as sick as me. I'd found a fellowdegenerate. We were pa~king and he said,"You can't park here, it's a fire lane." AndI'm, like, the chance of getting a ticket ...it was probably $600 to $100.AE: Seven to one.PL: Seven to one. You're a 'dog to get aticket, but if you do ... You know. Wewere making bets like out of the gate inour relationship, on just anything.AE: We always made bets.PL:And that relationship, that pattern neverleft us, and somebody noticed it outsidethe poker games: You guys are alwaystrying to pick each other off. It's funny, ifyou develop a relationship where you'rebetting a lot, you also develop a strict moralethos. You can't set up the guy.AE: It's up to you to find out what heknows. He can't lie to you. If we have abet developing, it's up to me to find outif he has any information. He doesn'thave to tell me, but if I ask him ...PL: You can't, like ...AE: Hustle.PL: You know, like in the old days, YOU'dmove signs and say, "Oh, I think that sign'swrong. It's, like, 20 miles, not 25 miles."None of that stuff. It's just straight up.What's the biggest stupid bet you guyshave ever made?PL: I don't think we've had a stupid bet ...AE: I'll tell you what the stupidest bet was.PL: Oh my god! That was so bad!AE: At the Commerce [Casino], like fiveyears ago, this guy, let's call him Mr. X.PL: He would play, like, two- or three-daysessionsall the time.AE: He'd sleep at the table. Just take naps.PL:He wasn't the worst player. Some of theplayers were so hopeless compared to him.AE: He goes broke at the table. Phil loanshim money.

PL:A thousand. Then he asks to borrowanother thousand. And I loan him thatthousand. And he offers me collateral,like jewelry, and I'm, like, "That's okay."And on the ride home, Antonio says,"Thatguy might not pay you." I say, "No, he's 100percent to pay me back." And Antonio's,like, "100 percent?" And this was the worstbet I've ever made in my life ...AE: He gave me 50-1 that the guy wouldpay him back.PL:The most retarded bet I've ever madein my life. The smartest thing I did ...AE: And I fell for it ...PL: He had six months to pay me back,and, like, four months go by and I realizeI'm going to lose $5,000-the bet was $100to $5,000-and I said, "Antonio, why don'twe make it $2,0007"AE: It was New Year's Eve, and he said,

" At the time it seemed like the most ingenious idea in theworld, that we'd pay the producer of the show money to

"I'm doing my records for '05 or '04 orwhatever." Records my ass. He said, "Canyou let me off for $2,000?" And $2,000was a lot of money for me back then. So Ilet him out.PL: Of course Mr. X stiffed me.AE: He still hasn't gotten paid. Not onlydid he not get paid, but he lost moneyon not getting paid.PL:The moral of the story is, don't loanmoney. Oh, and don't bet on it.Your new TV show, I Bet You, is allabout the two of you making wildproposition bets. What's the funniestbet you guys made?AE: In my opinion, panhandling.PL: I agree. That was the most embarrass-ing. No, second-most embarrassing ...AE: Dancing was probably the funniest toother people.Tell us about the panhandling.AE: It was who could get more money in10 minutes ...PL: ... in a little quadrant on the street.You couldn't leave this little area on theVenice Beach catwalk thing. You both had10 minutes. You could say whatever youwanted, do whatever you wanted. It isincredibly embarrassing going up to some-

body and trying to get 50 cents from them.AE: People shit on you.PL:They look at you ...AE: ... like you're nothing. I have newrespect for bums.PL: I felt so bad. After everyone paid us,right afterwards, the show's producersgave them a buck or two back. Anyonewho gave us 25, 50 cents got a buck ormore. But there was this one skateboardkid, who was completely felted. Youcould tell the guy might have had twobucks to his name. It turns out he had 60cents to his name. And he gave me hisnet worth. He said, "Yo bro, I feel theplight." And I thought, at least theseguys are going to give him his moneyback, but he was like a Marvel comicbook character on a skateboard:Whoosh! Dropped the 60 cents, gone.Evaporated into thin air. I felt so bad.And the dancing?AE: We each had an instructor and had totake a lesson on how to dance, then hadto dance against each other in front of ajudge. And it was so embarrassing! We'reboth the worst dancers in the world.PL:And I did some classical stuff. And Ican't do classical anything.

AE: It was really bad.PL:You'll see it on TV. Some of the betshad humiliation things attached. The rollerderby bet, the loser of that had to take apie in the face. One humiliation bet, theloser had to jump into an ice-cold lake.But the dancing thing, we figured it wasso humiliating in itself, there would beno additional humiliation.AE: My highlight of the show, at the veryend, the last show, our director ...PL: Oh my god. This is so brutal. We weredoing a paintball war, heads up, this andthat, and this guy Thom, he's a great guy,the producer of the show, but he wouldget us up at eight in the morning, andprevent us from playing tournamentsbecause we'd have to be somewhere fora week, and we just kept missing stuff ...I missed, like, the last third of the year fortournaments, and I love tournaments. Idon't know why we thought this wassuch a great idea, but at the time itseemed like the most ingenious idea inthe world, that we'd pay him money tounload bullets, those paint-pellet bullets,into his body at close range, like 15 yards.AE: We offered him two grand, he finallysaysyes. He gets down ...

PL:Ten seconds we were going to get todo it. And these guns were fully automatic.AE: He was trying to get into the bestposition ...PL: Psychologically, he was trying to getready to have literally around 600 bulletsfired into him.AE: He used a garbage bag to put alining around himself.PL:Which, by the way, the instructor toldus, that lining is meaningless! It's like air.AE: So while we were sitting there, wait-ing to do it, I make the biggest mistakeI've ever made. I accidentally let one go.PL: One bu lIet shoots off ...AE: And he's like, "Aaaaaah!"PL: It hits him in the forearm, and it justinstantly turns blue. And it's incrediblypainful to get hit with one of thosethings from 10 yards.

AE: Imagine 200 of them. So he paid hisassistant $500 to stand in for him.PL: So we shot his assistant. It was, like,everyone wanted to seesomebody get shot.AE: If you ever want to release anger, orbuilt-up stress ...PL: It's a really weird thing, from like apsychological, primal, post-analysis kindof view, the caveman thing. It's weird. Iwould think, psychologically, that's sickand I would never want to do it. But thenwhen it's actually a guy who put youthrough hell, and you start unloading-and we didn't even get to unload on theguy we wanted to, it was a guy we liked,Chris, he wanted us to do it, because hewas going to get paid for it.AE: So after one goes off, we offer Thom$3,000, then $4,000. Phil's, like, "$5,000!"PL: "$6,000!"AE: I said $7,000. I wanted to pay him$7,000!PL: He wouldn't do it.·AE: (shaking his head in disbelief) Ioffered him $7,000.PL: It was like the Milgram's experiment

[where participants were told to administera series of what appeared to be increas-ingly painful electric shocks to a subject,and nearly two-thirds of the participantscomplied.] And while I was taking respon-sibility for the bullets going into the guy,it felt good. Which was wrong.AE: One fun one: We each had to teach astripper how to play poker. And they playedstrip poker. That was pretty fun.Do you guys see this as an expansion ofyour image as poker players?PL: It's more like actual real life.AE: I think it's just us, you know? There'snothing made up about it. It's what wewould do anyway, just bet on stuff. Andnow we have to look for things to bet on.PL:Those guys would send us to placeswhere we'd never end up naturally.AE: He had to jump in the coldest water .PL: ... up at Big Bear. It was, like, minus .AE: He lost a bet. He had to jump in. Lost a$400 pair of sunglassesand couldn't be both-ered to get them. And it was shallow water.PL: I was so cold I couldn't hold a towelaround my body. I could use my mouth to

say, "Push the towel around me."AE: An Indian guy who works on the lakesaid, "Do not jump in the lake. You're goingto freeze. You're going to die." He'stellingthe producer, "Don't let him jump, becausehe's not going to be able to walk out."It's that cold. And I'm like, "Jump! Jump!"PL: I knew that I could make it. But I knowthis: If I was in there for maybe two minutesI'd have gone into hypothermia. Maybe itwas a stupid thing to do. There were somebets I said no to doing. They were like,take ex-lax pills and see who can hold itthe longest, and I was like, "No way."AE: By the way, I did a bet with a friendof mine and whoever lost had to get theother guy's name tattooed on his body ...PL: Or pay $50,000 to get out.AE: So I was paying $50,000. No way I'mever going to get "Brian Coopersmith"tattooed on my body. But I won that bet.So he has" Antonio Esfandiari" literallytattooed on his body.

PL: I was at the tattoo parlor thinking,These people are just so sick.Which of you guys is stronger?PL: He is.Faster?PL:Thinking or running? I think thinkingme, running, well, I used to run ...AE:We're good at thinking different things.Like social settings, networking, it's me.But numbers, spatial thinking, brains ...PL: He's the best networker of all-time. Imean, the guy is a machine. He lovesrelationships. But if we took an IQ test ...AE: ... he would crush me.PL:That was me, in seventh grade, read-ing all the puzzle books. I was that kid. Ineeded puzzles. If somebody had justtold me, in high school, you could playgames for money, I could have cut outcollege, the whole engineering thing,and gone straight into the degeneratelife. And if we were both to run 10 miles,I think I could beat you in that.AE: Oh yeah. I don't have endurance. But

AE: Once you've started playing poker,you never stop. I don't know anyone whostarted playing poker then said, "Oh no, Idon't want to play anymore."PL:Who do you know that has that firstdrink of alcohol and says, "Oh, I'm nevergoing to have a drink again"? Prohibitiontried to snuff out drinking. But you can'tsnuff out man's desire to play games,entertain, gamble ... it's as much of aright to a person as breathing, or walkingwithout chains on his body.AE: Where there's a will ...PL: Online has taken a hit, but the casinosare pumping with action.AE: There aren't going to be as many TVshows without online advertising, but Ithink that ...PL: Instead of 10 shows, there'll be likethree or four. Who knows? I'm just happythat the casinos are open 24 hours a day,they have eyes in the sky ...AE: security guards ...PL: you have a casino cage, a box, it's

insane. I remember when I was gamblingin New York, four days a week, it wasgamble at your own risk. The police couldraid the club, no eye in the sky, no secu-rity, wow. You come to California, Vegas,it's legal! It's legal!What goals do you have left to achievein the poker world?PL:What I want to do is ...AE: ... have a bracelet. Like his girlfriend.PL:Yes! That would be nice, wouldn't it?AE: I don't set goals. I just play. Whateverhappens, happens, you know? I don'tever think, Oh, I want to win anotherWPT title. I just want to play poker.PL:What I want to do is this: I just wantto play well. Long streams of time, days,months, where I'm playing well. It's notabout winning or losing; I'm very familiarwith the fact that if you play well, thewinning comes after that. If you'realways trying to hunt for the optimalmoment, it feels great, it's like surfing.You learn how to play "Raindrops Keep.

" There are times when I'm driving, and I'm, like, Wo~ Phil,be very careful today, because things are so good. I'm, like,

a short distance ...You guys are oddly evenly matched.PL:There were some days when hewould crush me ...AE: But it finished up almost even atthe end.PL: I was crushing him at the beginning,then he was crushing me, and I was, like,Oh my god, it's going to end with himhaving the best of me. Then, the lastcouple of shows, there was one two-dayperiod where I just won every bet. Whichis, like, impossible. It's like winning 12sessions in a row of No-Limit Hold 'Em. Itdoesn't happen. But some stuff thatdoesn't happen, happens. Betting withyour friends. It's fun.AE: We're not friends. We're acquaintances.PL: Let's get that straight right now.Where do you see poker headed?AE: Well, ever since Bill Frist came intothe picture ...PL:The thing that Antonio saysa lot, andit's true, is that if someone learns thegame, it's hard to let it go.

Falling On My Head," and if you don'tchoke, and freeze up because it feelsgood, if you can stay in the moment,you're falling in synch with nature andit's just beautiful. So that's all I want outof poker. To be in synch with it. I want tohit it. Be in flow with it.Do you guys feel like you have a specialrelationship with the WPT?AE: Yeah. We were there from the earlygoing, both won titles back to back, actu-ally. So we both have this friendship withmost of the WPT. Mike [Sexton] is agenuinely cool guy.PL: I speak for myself, and Antonio aswell, but I am very, very happy to be anambassador to poker. It's pretty arbitrary,I think that it's sort of roughly true thatit's pretty arbitrary who the poker starsare. Not completely arbitrary-you'realways going to have the guys werearound forever-but the guys under 40years old, who happened to win whenthe TV stuff got started, you almost have

other people look at you, and the possi-bility that, like Keanu Reeves in the movieConstantine, Phil has a guardian spiritthat helps him to elicit horrible calls fromhis opponents. We've included the (greatlyabbreviated) answer here for two reasons:to present the reader with the mentalimage of Antonio rolling his eyes forvirtually the entire time; and to allow the

be very careful today, because things areso good. You know how it is. If there is agod, or an infinite radiance, or howeverit's all designed, it's always like a trick door.Something bad is around the corner whenthings are really good. Things are so goodthat when I'm in a completely normalenvironment, I'm, like, Thisis where terror-ists come running into the casino and try

to want to ... I think ...AE: I think he doesn't know what he'stalking about. He likes to ramble.If you could teach a college class, whatwould it be?AE: How to have the most amazing night-life experience. How to party correctly.And how to talk to women.PL: Mine would be this: I'd take a distilla-tion of all that I've learned about para-normal sciences ...[Interviewer's Note: Laak's answer turnedout to be an eight-minute long and verypassionate, if meandering, monologuethat touches on the latest Princetonresearchin engineering anomalies, an 11th-gradeexperiment using dowsing rods to searchfor water and energy fields, the idea thatyour body's magnetic waves change when

inclusion of Phil's concluding sentence,the most unlikely stringing together ofwords this interviewer has ever hearduttered from the mouth of a poker player:PL: ... There's a lot of stuff we don't under-stand about the fact that we are electric,alive, magnetic bio-units that can trans-port ourselves through this physical world.AE: So that's what he's teaching? JesusChrist. I've got to go to sleep.How surprised are you guys by whereyou are in life?AE: It'ssosick.I don't know how it happened.PL: I'm totally stunned. There are timeswhen I'm driving, and I'm, like, Wow, Phil,

and hold up everyone, or, This is wherethe car,all of the sudden, gets side-swipedby another car. I've been on high alert,trying not to let that misstep happen.You've taken precautions?AE: Not really.PL: I still cruise along on my motorcycle.But I'm extra careful. Cl

Jonathan Grotenstein is a writer living inLos Angeles. He is the co-author of All In:The (Almost) Entirely True History Of TheWorld Series Of Poker, and has collabo-rated on books with Phil Gordon andScott Fischman.