'Flamingo & Decatur': Former Poker Pro's Play About Vegas Cardplayers Runs in Chicago Theater

6 years ago
'Flamingo & Decatur': Former Poker Pro's Play About Vegas Cardplayers Runs in Chicago Theater
09:30
19 Jan

“Flamingo & Decatur”, a play written by former poker pro Todd Taylor debuted in the Theater Whit in Chicago on January 4th and runs until February 18th.

This black comedy, named after an intersection in Las Vegas where Flamingo Rd. and S Decatur Blv. meet, depicts the life of professional gamblers in Sin City during the 2008 housing crisis.

The writer of the play, Todd Taylor had a lot of first-hand experience to draw inspiration from, since he himself was a professional cardplayer in Vegas at the time. Taylor amassed 5 cashes from the WSOP for a total of $26,107 during his career on the felt - the latest coming from the last World Series, a 766th place finish from the $1,500 NLHE Millionaire Maker which paid him $2,659.

The former poker pro teamed up with director Kevin Christopher Fox and the Block St Theater Company to put on his play on the stage of Theater Whit in Chicago. 


The story is about two poker players in Las Vegas, Jackson (played by Jason M. Shipman) and Ben (Drew Johnson) who decide to claim one the foreclosed houses for themselves during the 2008 mortgage bubble burst, moving in without the knowledge of the bank who seized the property. When their neighbor, Simon finds out about their shenanigans, he blackmails them, threatening to report them to the police if they don’t pay him $500 a month and mow his lawn. In a turn of events, the author decides to mess with the timeline of recent American poker history and have one of his character’s funds frozen by the Department of Justice on an online poker site - a clear allusion the 2011 Black Friday events, despite the story taking place in 2008. 

To make up for the losses, Jackson and Ben rent out one of the rooms in the house for a young female poker player named Nicole. Nicole and Jackson soon take a liking to each other, but when Nicole finds out that her “landlords” don’t actually own the property and demands her money back, ready to leave, things get more complicated.



Chris Jones for the Chicago Tribune gave it 2,5 stars in his review, writing:

“I think the play goes seriously downhill late in Act 2, not that we need an Act 2, as if Taylor has not yet figured out where he wants to go with these characters or what they represent in these strange times, in the weirdest American city of them all. Taylor knows the people he is writing about: He still has to figure out what constitutes the end of their story”.

Nonetheless Jones also praised the production, saying that the writing is often funny and smart, the acting is broad and lively; and  he also teased the audience with what he thought was a brilliant typical bad beat story, told by the character Nicole, that he simply does not want to spoil so he refrains from giving any details about.


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Marton Magyar is a Hungarian online poker player and writer who covers the latest in poker news.Read more

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