Poker fanatics can add a new goal to their list – knocking Warren Buffett out of his own high stakes tournament.
With the explosion of this game, players are emerging from every background imaginable, as plenty of smart kids with baseball caps are having success in Las Vegas after honing their skills online. But bankroll isn’t everything in certain circles, as it’s helpful to have connections. Playing with Warren Buffett isn’t open to anyone with a big wallet.
Warren Buffett is a famously world-class bridge player, putting in 12 hours a week at the table, often with Bill Gates, and sponsoring the Buffett Cup, which mimics golf’s Ryder Cup, except with cards. “Every hand fascinates me,” he recently told me, in explaining this obsession. But relatively quietly, over the past seven years he’s emerged as the host of one of the planet’s most exclusive poker games.
While the World Series of Poker Main Event remains the most famous and prestigious tournament, a ten-day-long bacchanal that satisfies ESPN’s late-night programming needs for months, it’s also open to anyone with $10,000 and a dream. The NetJets Poker Invitational, run by Berkshire Hathaway‘s private-jet subsidiary, has a much steeper hurdle: Players must be a NetJets fractional owner (minimum cost: $200,000), with a select few heavy Marquis Jet Card owners sprinkled in.
However enticing the $500,000 prize pool–the big winner has the option of ten hours of time on a Bombardier Global 5000, worth $150,000, and the top ten all get something heady–the true stakes are measured in ego. As at the World Series of Poker, Texas Hold ‘Em is nothing more than a betting and bluffing game, and tournaments like this appeal to the same primal instincts as in an ancient battle royale, combated via brains and daring. Because the player pool is exclusively comprised of people successful for reasons other than cards, bragging rights feel as tangible as a Main Event winner’s bracelet. Plus Buffett lords over all of it, as host, mascot and, most notably, target. Knocking the Oracle of Omaha out of the tournament is the poker equivalent of beating Jack Nicklaus at a charity closest-to-the-hole contest.
Read the rest of the article as the author gets to participate with one of the 240 exclusive seats in the tournament. Any poker game can be exciting, even with small stakes. But the tension and thrill of playing with the big boys has to be pretty cool.
Buffett is known as a great investor, but you have to give him credit for his marketing chops as well. He’s not quite Sir Richard Branson, but this tournament and the publicity is quite a coup for NetJets. I suspect that many people who can afford to join a private jet club will take a closer look at NetJets for a chance to bluff Mr. Buffett, or bully him into folding. Now that would be fun.
