High roller's a bit of a card

Lee Nelson plays the odds during an impromptu game of Texas Holdem at the SkyCity casino. Picture / Paul Estcourt

Lee Nelson, winner of the $1.43 million prize pool at the Aussie Millions Poker Championships, likes to meditate before tournaments. Today he is getting cocky.

The 63-year-old's poker earnings paid his way through medical school. I cleaned the public toilets in Cathedral Square, Christchurch, to finance my degree.

This retired American doctor, who now lives in Auckland, beat 417 rivals for the title of Australasia's leading poker player. He's even written a book, Kill Phil, about the art.

So when we front up at the Poker Zone at SkyCity for a bout of Texas Holdem, he's obviously thinking, "This is like a kid with a plastic bat facing up to Wasim Akram".

Little did he know I had acquired nerves of steel on my grandmother's knee. This was a kindly, knitting Christian woman until the cards came out. Her driving philosophy was that Kenny Rogers was a wimp for even suggesting a player should fold.

So here we were, the high-stakes poker hobbyist and impoverished me and a pack of cards.

I start well, by telling him my dog has ADHD.

"Really?" says Nelson. "A dog with ADHD?"

After hysterical laughter he says, "Oh, you're bluffing".

Nelson laughs a lot, at one stage so hard that he starts choking and I begin to think I may win by default. Nervous laughter, I gloat.

"I laugh all the time. I don't think you'll get any clues from that."

Then he gets quite cocky. Asked if he's ready, or if he needs to go and have a wee meditation, he laughs uproariously and says, "No. I'll be able to handle it."

I look at my cards and ask if he's looked at his. "No," he says.

"Are you lying?"

"Yes."

"You should be a journalist."

The first rule is to shuffle your chips, he says.

"What for?"

"Just because it's cool."

Nelson says about 15 to 20 per cent of the game is down to luck. The rest is skill. You have to be trim and fit and eat only the whites of eggs.

He's full of good tips. "Be careful. Don't show me your cards" was a pearler, as was, "It's very good you didn't put all your money in, because you would have lost it all".

Next up was, "You shouldn't tell somebody you don't like your cards. Unless you're lying. But in this case, I think you're genuine. You don't have much".

But Nelson has some strange techniques. One involves not looking at your cards at all. This is because if you look at them, your opponent might be able to tell from your reaction whether you have a good hand.

He has been described as "enigmatic" and "the toughest player to get a read on".

He wears purple-tinted glasses and a cap. He practises his "poker looks" in front of the mirror. He displays two: the plain old poker face and "indecisiveness".

The poker face makes him look gormless. I wonder if he stands there for hours practising it, and whether his wife laughs at him.

"It's not hours, really. I practise until I feel comfortable I can do it in a stressful environment."

Nelson learned the game from his mum, playing in her social group for a while before graduating to the used car salesmen's group over the road.

He has played against Ben Affleck, who plays online poker on www.pokerstars.com.

Poker, he says, is all about "picking up small bits of information and using them". These, he says, are Paul Ekman's "micro-expressions".

Later, he asks me if any of the cards on the table are good for my hand.

I say "No" and he places a larger bet. The micro-expressions must have given me away.

In the second hand I win the grand sum of $30 with my pair of 4s because he folds.

I tell him I knew to bluff because I saw disappointment in his eyes. Better put in some more hours in front of that mirror, I say. His revenge comes one hand later when I am felled by a pair of jacks, and all the chips have gone from my side of the table to his. I point out that I nearly had a straight.

"Nearly only counts in horseshoes," he says.

He tells me Bobby Neary, the 21-year-old American he beat in the Aussie Millions, didn't cry when he lost.

"He was very stoic about it, for somebody in such pain and suffering."

But "nearly" still managed to earn Neary A$700,000 ($770,000). I was two weeks' salary down, plus overtime.

Nelson thinks it's small fry.

"That was the most fun I think I've ever had," he says.

My grandmother's scorn washes down from the ether.