November/December 2004

All In

The poker craze comes to Hampton Roads

by Michael Jon Khandelwal

He’s ranked among the top 300 poker players in the world this year. He’s been under the bright lights and television cameras of The Travel Channel’s World Poker Tour. He’s played with the best bluffers in the game. He’s also the executive vice-president of Tidewater Fibre Corporation in Chesapeake, his family’s 107-year-old business.

He may want to be called “Michael Recycle Benedetto,” but to those who saw the original broadcast in May and the repeats that followed in the summer and fall, he’s a rising star.

Until a year ago, though, he didn’t know much about the poker world. A friend in Washington, D.C., invited him to a poker tournament at his home. They would play Texas Hold’em, the Cadillac of poker games that has, in the past two years, captured the imagination of would-be gamblers from Las Vegas to Virginia.

“He gave me a book and a website to look at.” says Benedetto, 39. “I played and did nothing. Out of twelve people, I finished fifth or sixth.”

But the play piqued his curiosity and stoked his passion to compete. “I enjoy playing games,” says Benedetto. “I played a lot of sports growing up and enjoy competition. Poker was a way I could learn a game and felt like there was the potential, with enough experience, where I could tilt the odds in my favor.”

Although poker was once seen as a game for the smoky back rooms of bars and seedy, illegal gambling halls, ESPN’s coverage of the World Series of Poker, The Travel Channel’s World Poker Tour, and Bravo’s Celebrity Poker Showdown has given it, especially Texas Hold’em, a new popularity, both nationally and in Hampton Roads.

For the rest of this story, you can order the November/December 2004 issue of Hampton Roads Magazine.