Poker News

Yosh Nakano

Veteran Bicycle Casino host Yosh Nakano and his California partners think they have a great idea and they’re bringing it to the Internet via a project known as Pokerblue.

One of the differentiating features at Pokerblue will be a whale or high limit room. The identity ofplayers at the table will be known and there will be an “approval process” that Nakano is reluctant to talk about for the time being.

Pokerblue has been up and running for close to two months but the high limit room will not be ready for perhaps another month as Nakano and the other Pokerblue principals involved in the marketing effort put finishing touches on the software.

Much of the initial base of support for Pokerblue comes from “regulars at the Bike,” people who are familiar with games such as the three- and six-hundred mixed games that define much of the club’s high limit play.

“Poker on the Internet is faster than a regular game,” Nakano explains so a two- and four-hundred game should work out to be much like the three and six.”

The 49-year-old Nakano began playing poker when he was 19 and in college. He borrowed a friend’s ID to play poker in the card clubs in Vancouver, Washington.

“I didn’t start out to be a professional poker player but the fact is that poker can become a very compulsive type of activity . . .”

Not that Nakano was complaining as the game became a steadily more important part of his life. “The fact is I expected to do other things but it did not work out that way.” What were the circumstances that pushed him further into the world of poker?

“It was mostly necessity,” he chuckles, “economic necessity. I was in college and could certainly use the money I was winning, but of course I would lose too and when I did I sat back and thought about how to improve my game which generally continued to get better.”

The more he thought about it, considering what good strategy was, what good play was, the more he embraced everything that poker was bringing to his life. Nothing like that adrenaline flow.

“This was in the late 1980s,” he recalls, “and we didn’t have all the books and video tools that the young players today are using to develop so quickly.”

Thinking about that for a moment before going on, “In our day you learned by the seat of your pants.”

So there he was . . . a pre law student at the university of Portland who in his 1980s, early 1990s world had no reason to suspect he would do anything except continue along this path. He had alwaysenjoyed all the law shows, “things like Perry Mason and all those lawyer movies. Before poker came along, law looked like something I would enjoy doing.”

Until he hit the point in time when he discovered that his life was taking an unexpected turn or two. “The fact is,” he says, “I became addicted to poker. Consequently, my grades suffered.”

And Nakano realized that he was no longer all that interested in being a lawyer.

“To make the kind of money as a lawyer that I was making playing poker, I’d have to be about 35 and when you’re 21, the idea of being 35 seems like it is a lifetime away.” More importantly, he simply enjoyed playing poker. End of discussion. When Nakano left school and decided to explore the big wide world of poker, as it was then, he was playing at Lake Tahoe in the summers and in Las Vegas the rest of the year.

This, of course, was before the essence of wide open poker settled over California in 1987 and he suddenly found good reason to spend a lot of time there.

“But when I first moved to Vegas I was, like, a 10- 20 and 15-30 player. A lot of this was at the Stardust. Every time I got pumped up,got a bankroll, I would go and play fifty and a hundred or one- and twohundred.” And when he got broke playing the higher limits, well . . .

“The Stardust was having weekly tournaments and winning money was mostly a matter of just being willing to put in the time. They were based on who won the most money over a week or so. Anyway, I’d build my bankroll back up and just start all over again.” He fell into something of a routine during this period of about three years in the early and mid 1980s.

The Stardust became a sort of home away from home for a lot of players who are still very much in evidence on the poker scene.

Nakano says, “That’s where a lot of us learned to play a lot of different games. The tournaments were actually very grinding. They were a hundred dollar buy-in with a different event every day.

You had to put in a lot of time if you wanted to do reasonably well and some of the people there did not have much besides poker going on in their lives.

“These tournaments,” he grins, “they were even worse than work. You had to come in at 11 in the morning and then come back again at 11 at night, or somethinglike that.” What are the standout moments in Nakano’s poker career?

He thinks about that for several moments, finally giving it a chuckle saying, “They certainly don’t involve tournaments. I’ve got a pretty poor tournament record considering what the people who have been playing as long as I have can talk about. I can last a long time but never seem to quite get over the hump and win one. I’ve made most of my money from side games.”

Some people can boast of an impressive string of tournament finishes, but that’s tough to do, Nakano says. “My experience is that if you’re going to make a decent living then the side games are the place to do it. There is a rhythm and style to tournament action and while I know that suits some people, tournaments are not where I’ve made a living.”

Nakano has from time to time played in Hustler publisher Larry Flynt’s high limit games and he has been part of the staff at some of the better known southern California card rooms - the Bike, the Hustler.

“Over the years,” he says, “I’ve made a lot of money playing poker and if I had just stuck to playing poker I’d probably have been better off, but the thing is, a lot of high limit players, we’re also gamblers.”

The point being, Nakano sighs,. He has lost money at pastimes such as betting sports and playing golf and backgammon. Hindsight being what it is, it would be nice to relive some of those moments and say no when what he actually said was yes. He might not have spent the threehundred thousand that he remembers losing in the restaurant business.

Yes, should have stuck to poker and said no thank you to the glittering appeal of the assorted other ventures that life dropped in his lap. But then he would not have been the gambler he is and let’s face it, he grins, “I was enjoying my life.”

Nakano remembers standing next to (renowned high stakes pro) Chip Reese at an airport baggage carousel somewhere, the two deciding to bet five thousand on whose baggage would come through the chute first.

Why?

He shrugs, “For the fun, for the adrenaline rush. Otherwise you’re just standing there for some long period of time waiting for your barrage and it’s boring. Gamblers, poker players, we like the prospect of action.”

By the way, Nakano lost that bet.

Changing situations also forced him to take a different approach to life. “I’ve got a family now, triplets that are five and a half years old. I can’t afford to indulge in some of the things I used to do. I have to think about their interests.”

Life in the fast lane lost some of its appeal, or perhaps Nakano merely learned more about saying no thanks, which is why we find him paying more attention to solid business prospects, which also brings him back to Pokervblue and all that he believes it can be as a player friendly and user friendly poker site.

Yes, Pokerblue is way up there on his priority list. Internet poker, he says, is creating opportunities that don’t seem to have a lot of gamble to them. It’s just a matter of showing up with a good product. The best-known bricks and mortar operations have done just as well.. For instance, “The Bicycle Casino,” Nakano says,. “has expanded twice in about the last six months to accommodate the influx of new players and new games.”

Some of this enthusiasm is expected to provide early momentum for Pokerblue whose three principals - Nakano, financial consultant Steve Wolff and Frank Hong, a semi-retired technology whiz - are the core of some of the Bike’s high limit action.

They hope to collectively give Pokerblue a healthy dose of the credibility Nakano says is important to a poker site. “The sites that have credibility,” he says, “will continue to grow. What we have to do is provide a product that is both user friendly and player friendly.”

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