Legend Management
Success attracts microphones. Bob gives an interview that explains nothing.
Success in Las Vegas attracts microphones, and the next morning one found Bob in the hallway outside the tournament room.
It was held by a broadcaster with a mustache, glasses and a striped shirt under a dark blazer, who approached at a lean and began asking questions with enormous enthusiasm before the camera was fully set up. How had Bob done it. What was he thinking with the seven-deuce. Where had he come from. Who was he.
Bob stood in his hoodie with his hands at his sides and looked at the man sideways for a long moment. Then he answered, at some length.
Bill watched the whole thing from about fifteen feet away, and he has since reviewed the footage four times. He reports that the interview contained no information. Bob did not explain the hand. He did not explain his strategy, his background or how a man from a town with one poker room had come to be standing in that hallway. He mentioned Rocky Rivers twice and the concept of momentum three times.
The broadcaster loved it. The clip circulated all afternoon. By evening, strangers on the rail were describing Bob as mysterious, and at least one of them used the word enigmatic.
This is what Bill means when he says he watched a myth form in real time. Nothing Bob said was true, because nothing Bob said was about anything. That left everyone who heard it free to fill in the gaps themselves, and they filled them in generously.
No one was prepared for how much worse this could get. Bob, in particular, was prepared for none of it.
All of Chapter 1: The Vegas Trip →