What was your experience playing cards with Director Lu in a game created by the Chauncey& Mafia? Professional players write articles to reveal the secrets!

Translator's Note: This article was originally published in The Sporting News. The author is Stephen Noh, a former professional poker player and current sports reporter. The opinions in the article have nothing to do with the translator and the platform.

Around 2010, I first saw Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue playing poker in Las Vegas. At that time, Lu had just retired from the NBA and had earned $21 million in his 11-year career. I know this because a friend in the poker room at the Bellagio Hotel sent me a text message with Lu’s table number and asked me to hurry over.

I was 26 years old at the time and a low- to mid-stakes professional poker player. That year, I spent about 1,600 hours in a Las Vegas casino and made a modest profit of $60,000. I tied $20,000 in hundred-dollar bills neatly with rubber bands, hand-divided them into stacks of $5,000 each, and stored them in safes at the Bellagio, Wynn, and Venetian hotels. Another $10,000 is hidden in a video box on a bookshelf at home. A few years ago, I came to Las Vegas with $2,500 in my pocket and rented a bedroom for $400 per month. To me at the time, this amount of money was as much as a million dollars.

My job is to go to the casino and wait for people like Lou to visit the poker room. We local pros don't cheat as much as some tourists think, but we do look out for each other and tell each other where the good opportunities are.

I walked up to Dan, who was in charge of matinees in the poker room, and handed him two red $5 chips as a tip.

"Hey, Dan, can you move me to table 29?" I asked.

Dan smiled and put the chips into his pocket. "No problem. You're No. 12 on the waiting list."

I didn't get to play cards with Lou that day. Too many people thought of this idea before me. I later played with him a few times and saw him around the city. I left Las Vegas in 2015, and after accepting a job at The Sporting News in 2021, I stopped playing poker for a living. Lew still lives in Las Vegas and clearly still loves the game of poker.

Lue reportedly participated in an allegedly illegal poker game run by his best friend Chauncey Billups and the Mafia. According to breaking reporter Pablo Torre, Lue was promoted as a "big fish" to attract players to the game.

Here’s what you need to know about “Big Fish”. You don't necessarily become a "big fish" just because you're famous. The average person may not know who Guy Laliberte is, but poker players are familiar with the Cirque du Soleil co-founder—because he lost millions at the poker tables.

Lu is promoted as a "big fish" not because he is a former NBA player. Of course, for Lakers fans, being able to play cards with Kobe's former teammates may be a good talking point in the future. But us locals were willing to play with him mainly because we thought he had money to burn and wasn't a good poker player. To become proficient at poker requires a lifetime of study that few people with other careers have the time to do.

Also, you can never, ever tell a "big fish" that he is a "big fish". Instead, treat him like a guest of honor, laugh at his corny jokes, and lament his bad luck when he loses. If Lue is being promoted as a "big fish," it's likely to be done without his knowledge.

No one wants to be taken advantage of at the poker table. I certainly wasn't going to tell Lou that when he first walked in, everyone in the room was waiting to see how much he was going to lose. If visitors perceive the poker room to be predatory, they will often get up and leave.

This is part of the reason why private poker is attractive to both professional players and "big fish." With Big Fish, you won't see a long list of people waiting to win your money, and your losses won't be as public. And you have more control over your opponent, making sure you're at least having some fun when you lose, rather than facing a young guy wearing a hoodie, headphones, and stinking from being in the same seat all week without taking a shower.

For professional players, you can win money from "big fish" without having to fight with a group of people. But you also face far greater risks: getting robbed, cheated, arrested, not getting the money you earned, or being mentioned as a minor figure in some podcast survey 15 years later. Our job is to evaluate whether the reward is worth the risk, and we're good at it.

The bad news for all of us is that Lou is not a good "big fish." In the few times I played against him, he was actually a pretty good poker player.

Poker is a game of finding the truth amid deception. It also has a wonderful way of revealing a player's true character. No matter how hard you try to hide it, the intense pressure inherent in the game will eventually reveal whether you're a jerk deep down.

No one I know likes James Woods. Ray Liotta would call me an asshole when he lost money—and he often lost. Aurel Hirshizer has always been able to control his emotions accurately.

When I used to go to the poker room, there were a lot of other NBA players who would come. Many of them are addicted to this competition and are willing to spend thousands of dollars to compete with professional players. Russell Westbrook wins a lot of cards with pure aggression. Tim Duncan is a conservative player, a term that refers to a player who plays a boring, cautious and patient style.

Lu is a gentleman. He would come occasionally and act like one of us.

Las Vegas is a strange place for locals. You will meet the most cunning and cunning people you have ever seen in your life, and you will also meet the most trustworthy people.

In this city, reputation means everything. Once, a man whose last name I didn’t even know gave me the $60,000 in chips he got from a big poker win without hesitation for one night.. He was worried that he would lose all his money on the craps table if he went to the club, and his friend vouched for me.

There are also some players who are anti-social greedy people who will use smooth words to borrow money from everyone to satisfy their vicious gambling addiction.

I don’t know Lu well enough to judge what type of person he belongs to. I had never played a high-stakes game enough to join him in a private game. But I have a friend of a friend who was cheated out of six figures in Billups' alleged cheating game. And when you spend the better part of 12 years in a casino, you hear a lot. I've heard that Lou has a good reputation in the poker community, but I can't say the same for Billups.

If you really understand gambling, you will know that reputation is worth more than the maximum bet you can win in a private poker game. Money comes and goes, but word of mouth is like a credit card with an unlimited limit. As long as you have good credit, you are never truly broke no matter what your bank statement says.

Poker is a game of incomplete information. You'll be given some clues and then have to prove your judgment with actions. I didn’t know if Lou was involved in cheating at those games, but I knew which side I would bet on.