Steve Albini’s Death Leaves 20-Year Poker Home Game on Pause

The loss of life of musician, recording engineer and poker participant Steve Albini hit the music world with a drive like that of the incendiary system geared toward Earth pictured on Massive Black’s 1986 debut album Atomizer. It might have hit one group of Chicago poker gamers the toughest.

Albini, a two-time World Sequence of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner who recorded landmark works by bands like Nirvana and Pixies and who The New York Occasions described as “one of the crucial admired, and most divisive, figures in rock,” was a key determine in a good friend group that bonded, joked and supported each other over the poker desk. For 20 years, they performed in a weekly low-stakes Chicago house sport usually held in Electrical Audio, the two-story recording studio the place Albini recorded hundreds of other, post-punk and industrial albums. Now, the sport is on hiatus after Albini’s loss of life in Might because the group of poker professionals, musicians and audio engineers adapts to a world with out its figurehead.

PokerNews spoke with two of Albini’s closest associates who had been regulars within the sport, Brandon Shack-Harris and Andrew Kosinski, in the course of the 2024 WSOP, a collection they are saying Albini had been excited to play.

Music Icon, Two-Time WSOP Bracelet Winner Steve Albini Passes at 61

Twin Careers & Incomes

Born in California in 1962, Albini moved to the faculty city of Missoula, Montana at a younger age and acquired his first publicity to punk music. It’s also the place he picked up poker, although it wasn’t from the William S. Burroughs-reading leather-based jacket faculty crowd. He realized it from his grandmother.

“My household is a card-playing household,” Albini instructed Bluff journal in 2013. “The video games we performed as a household had been cribbage, pinochle and poker. My father was a bridge grasp who performed match bridge when he was youthful … Principally since a teen, I’ve had a house poker sport or non-public sport the place I may play for amusement.”

Albini saved poker in his again pocket when he moved to Illinois within the Eighties to pursue a journalism diploma from Northwestern College. It was right here that he shaped the pioneering noise rock group Massive Black (and later Shellac), whose abrasive, metallic sound was outlined by Albini’s unconventional guitar enjoying, taboo lyrical themes and shrieking vocals. He garnered a repute within the Chicago underground for his capability to seize a band’s uncooked power and located himself recording now-classic various rock albums like Pixies’ Surfer Rosa (1988) and The Breeders’ Pod (1990). Each had been amongst Kurt Cobain’s all-time favourite albums, which is why he sought Albini to document Nirvana’s 1993 In Utero, a loud departure from the business Nevermind.

In 1997, Albini opened Electrical Audio, the place he recorded lots of of artists — from fringe teams with names paying homage to unmade scholar movies like Guillotine Riot, Faceless Ones and New Brutalism to revered rock legends The Stooges and Low cost Trick and modern indie acts Joanna Newsom and Low.

Poker was important to the success of Electrical Audio and, by extension, to the numerous music careers throughout a dozen subgenres that Albini contributed to. He famously refused royalties and relied on poker to subsidize this artist-first, anti-establishment ethos that cemented him as an underground authority — and as a pariah amongst main document labels. “It’s part of my livelihood,” Albini instructed PokerNews in 2022. The identical 12 months, Albini described poker as “a crucial element of my earnings” in a Home of Poker documentary. “If I didn’t play poker, I would wish to search out another technique to generate that cash.”

The enterprise publication Inc Journal wrote in October that Electrical Audio has struggled with overhead prices within the wake of Albini’s loss of life, noting that “as a result of Albini earned earnings … from the type of card enjoying that gained him two World Sequence of Poker championship bracelets, he may afford to place a few of his engineering charges right into a normal fund that saved Electrical Audio within the black.”

Baseball, Audio Boards & a Excessive College Paper

Like many Chicago youngsters, poker participant and musician Andrew Kosinski was first launched to Albini by Nirvana and as he acquired deeper within the punk underground. “You had been simply compelled to turn out to be conscious of this man that was one of many large figures within the scene there,” Kosinski instructed PokerNews in a June interview.

When a highschool trainer assigned Kosinski a paper on the ability design of recording studios, he thought to e mail the native recording legend. He was shocked when he acquired a fast reply from Albini. “He was like, ‘That appears like a very good challenge … Come over on Saturday, I will stroll you thru the studio and provide you with a tour.'”

Kosinski did not know the interplay would spawn a decades-spanning friendship. Years later, Electrical Audio launched an internet discussion board for Chicago musicians to debate “audio stuff” and different pursuits. Kosinski and Albini had been each large baseball followers and earlier than lengthy they had been enjoying baseball (and later Whiffle ball) each Tuesday with a bunch that included studio engineer Russ Arbuthnot and Tim Midyett of the choice rock band Silkworm.

One Tuesday night time in January 2004, Arbuthnot known as Kosinski and requested if he wished to play in a poker match on the studio. The $20 match, a two-day restrict/no-limit break up occasion held within the studio lounge space, was Kosinski’s first introduction to poker, however the host was already a seasoned participant. “I used to be the primary bust out,” Kosinski mentioned. “It was only a gathering of all these dorks (and) no person actually knew methods to play. Steve gained, after all. He beat Tim heads-up.”

The group performed just a few extra sporadic studio tournaments earlier than graduating to a weekly Tuesday money sport normally held in Arbuthnot’s condo. Early regulars included Chicago’s Al Stern, Eric “The Bot” Ziegenhagen, Sean Cline and Rob Warmowski (a musician and sound engineer who handed away in 2019). They quickly graduated to blended video games, drawing slips of paper from a hat to decide on what to play. Their favourite sport was Swingo, a shared-card variant of Albini’s invention named after a tune by Chicago punk band Bare Raygun.

The Tuesday Sport moved round Chicago through the years, together with to the defunct Semaphore studio on Chicago Avenue run by regulars Jeremy Lemos and Elliot Dicks. Electrical Audio grew to become the sport’s major location on the top of the Poker Increase, with a dozen-plus audio nerds, baseball fanatics and poker fans commonly crowding over a billiards desk within the studio lounge. On just a few events, they performed within the Heart Discipline of Studio A, the first recording space of the esteemed complicated. “We simply acquired increasingly more critical, and Steve was actually the driving drive … He was completely obsessed.”

Discovering a Mentor

Brandon Shack-Harris realized at an early age to not depend on others. It is a coping mechanism the poker professional and two-time bracelet winner realized as a child when he was estranged from his delivery father and once more as a teen when his mom handed away. He “did not actually have a lot of a relationship” along with his stepfather, who moved him and his stepsisters from California to rural New Mexico.

“There was nothing in New Mexico,” Shack-Harris instructed PokerNews in June. “All the youngsters went to the hills and did medication or no matter, and that was it. And I used to be a momma’s boy. I simply by no means began on any of it … (I started to) curate these environments the place I by no means want(ed) to depend on anyone ever, as a result of they’re simply going to finally die or depart me. So I inundate myself with music, hobbies, sports activities, no matter.”

In his early 20s, Shack-Harris moved to Chicago and had an opportunity encounter with the British band Muse, which was on its technique to changing into one of many largest bands in various rock. The trio’s chief, Matt Bellamy, was impressed with Shack-Harris’ distinctive synthesis of classical music and rock and requested if he was fascinated by changing into Muse’s fourth member.

Months handed and Bellamy by no means adopted up. Then Muse put out its 2006 single “Supermassive Black Gap,” a dance-rock departure from its earlier sound which grew to become the band’s largest hit to this point. Shack-Harris knew they would not be calling.

Although he did not be a part of the largest bands in various rock, he did decide up one of many band’s pastimes that might web him thousands and thousands. One night time at the back of a tour bus, Bellamy taught Shack-Harris methods to play poker. “I wasn’t fascinated by it in any respect, however that was their bonding aesthetic. So I simply figured I would study what they love to do. After which issues fell by with them and I simply began enjoying poker critically.”

Shack-Harris grew to become a studied on-line blended sport grinder and located himself battling in Razz pots continually in opposition to one particular participant. “I performed with Steve rather a lot on Full Tilt,” Shack-Harris mentioned. “I simply bear in mind his title there.”

“I wasn’t actually into punk music. I hadn’t heard his music earlier than we met … However discovering father figures type of was a big a part of my younger grownup life, I assume. Discovering older male mentors, I suppose, as a result of that simply did not exist for me on the time … Ultimately I simply messaged him and was like, ‘Hey, I see you are in Chicago, are there any stay video games?’ And he was like, ‘Oh yeah, we play on the studio. It is best to come by.'”

Right here Comes Success

As a younger grownup, Shack-Harris discovered the daddy determine he by no means had in Albini, who was 18 years his senior. Albini inspired him as he climbed the Chicago blended sport ranks and was in Las Vegas on the 2014 WSOP when Shack-Harris cashed for $1.4 million and gained his first bracelet. The truth is, it was Albini who pushed him to fireside the celebrated $50,000 Poker Gamers Championship the place he completed second for $937,975.

The profession summer time gave Shack-Harris a shot at Participant of the Yr and he equipped for the WSOP Asia Pacific competition in Australia that fall to chase the title. The lease on his Chicago condo was up and he wanted a short lived place to remain earlier than the journey throughout the Pacific Ocean. “Steve’s like, ‘Dude, simply keep on the studio.'”

“That was like one of the best little interval of my life. Simply residing on the studio, hanging out with my finest good friend.”

Flush with money after his seven-figure summer time, Shack-Harris remembers lining the skinny foam mattress within the studio lodge that was usually reserved for out-of-town musicians with banded stacks of $10,000. “They usually simply had bands coming out and in (of the studio). It was unbelievable. That was like one of the best little interval of my life. Simply residing on the studio, hanging out with my finest good friend.”

The friendship caught the eye of Miikka “Chuck Bass” Anttonen when the retired Finnish poker professional finest identified for his viral autobiographical Two Plus Two thread flew to Chicago in February 2022 to supply a documentary about Albini for Home of Poker. The 2-part program, titled “Shack & Steve,” centered nearly solely on the duo’s bond.

“Their friendship, to me, was really a greater story than Steve being a poker-playing document engineer. I simply kind of linked the dots in my head and discovered, let’s really do a protracted episode about their friendship as an alternative,” Anttonen instructed PokerNews, including that “it is my favourite episode for certain of the complete collection.”

There have been different success tales that emerged from Albini’s orbit. Tech entrepreneur Andrew Mason interned at Electrical Audio and performed in an early studio match earlier than happening to start out Groupon, an internet coupon firm that in 2010 turned down a historic $6 billion buyout supply from Google. Nobody was extra thrilled than Albini. “Steve’s like, ‘That is a fantastic concept!’ He thought that was one of the best factor ever,” Kosinski mentioned. In an e mail to PokerNews, Mason, now CEO of Silicon Valley startup Descript, confirmed he “performed in that sport, like, as soon as possibly” however added that he was “by no means a poker fan.”

“Our sport acquired crammed with a number of profitable, inventive folks. I do not know if their success was attributable to him, however they had been positively given a lift by him in each case,” mentioned Kosinski, who famous that Albini was equally supportive and captivated with his Nitty Kitty novelty poker t-shirt enterprise.

Albini usually believed in his associates greater than himself. “I do not assume he was assured in a number of methods,” Shack-Harris mentioned. “As a result of he would continually be like, ‘I do not know if I ought to promote at markup’ or ‘I should not play this sport.’ However he would simply say ‘fuck it’ and he’d do it … I believe there’s a number of self-belief, however I believe there is sort of a layer of self-doubt as properly.”

“It Introduced a Lot of Folks”

Shack-Harris wasn’t the one bracelet winner within the Tuesday Sport. Different regional grinders who joined the sport embrace one-time bracelet winners Jason Gola, Matt Grapenthien and Eric Rodawig and six-time bracelet winner Brian Hastings. “Abruptly it is like, what number of bracelets do we’d like on this $0.25 sport?” Kosinski mentioned.

It additionally attracted gamers on the opposite facet of the world like Australian high-stakes common Martin Bradstreet. “We have got a $50/$100 PLO participant enjoying in our $0.25/$0.50 sport, and Steve is delighted to have him right here as a result of he takes music critically and he is additionally an enormous poker fan,” mentioned Shack-Harris. “It introduced lots of people.”

As the sport grew, so did the friendships of its core members. They determined to strive their luck within the $3/$6 restrict video games an hour south of Chicago at Indiana’s now-closed Majestic Star On line casino. By the point they reached the poker site, Albini was “bouncing” with pleasure “like a bit child when it is Christmas morning.”

“You’ll flip round and he can be gone as a result of he … can be strolling as fastly as attainable (saying), ‘I’ve gotta get to the cardboard room. Gotta get on each checklist,'” Kosinski mentioned.

The crew of house players had been promptly reminded they had been within the presence of a music icon as they handed a blown-up picture of Chicago blues singer Koko Taylor. “He’d be like, ‘Oh, she recorded on the studio.”

The automobile rides themselves supplied glimpses of Albini’s character. Kosinski remembers him “completely fanboying out” one drive in 2009 whereas they listened to the remaster of Liar by The Jesus Lizard, a noise rock album recorded by Albini in 1992. “He was singing alongside and air-drumming, which you by no means actually noticed … Watching him sing alongside to those songs was hilarious.”

“He Would Share With Anyone”

Albini was an avid learner whose data prolonged far past playing cards and music. He constructed furnishings, binged How Issues Are Made and studied a progressive cooking method known as molecular gastronomy.

Albini was equally captivated with sharing his insights. He was an avid poster Two Plus Two poster whose associates had been all the time telling him to cease freely giving blended sport secrets and techniques. “It was one factor that he researched every little thing and he was actually enthusiastic about it, however he was simply as enthusiastic about sharing that data with everyone,” Kosinski mentioned. “That was him. He would share.”

“It was one factor that he researched every little thing and he was actually enthusiastic about it, however he was simply as enthusiastic about sharing that data with everyone.”

When Shellac performed on the 2009 All Tomorrow’s Events (ATP) music competition in New York, Albini hosted an on-site poker sport the place he shared his love of the sport with bands and followers alike. One musician within the sport was Jason Reece of the Texas-based …And You Will Know Us by the Path of Useless, who could not cross on an opportunity to play with Albini — not after his band missed out on recording with him years earlier attributable to scheduling conflicts.

“I used to be simply being a donkey and taking all these indie rockers’ cash,” Reece instructed PokerNews. “I ended up getting a very good amount of cash from all these folks there who barely knew methods to play poker.”

However Albini wasn’t after a smooth sport of inexperienced guitarists, roadies and Shellac “fanboys” to use. “He was dealing the entire time. He did not actually play in opposition to us. I am certain he may take everyone’s cash, understanding now that he was such a very good poker participant. However I really feel like … he acquired extra of a thrill out of seeing folks play.”

An inebriated Reece left the alt-rock poker sport, a two-table affair in a resort convention room, “with a pocket full of cash (that) all fell out” by the point he acquired again to his room. However he nonetheless had the reminiscence of a lifetime. The subsequent morning, Albini instructed Reece’s bandmate, “That man Jason, he is type of an asshole. However he is welcome to my poker desk any time.”

“I took that as an enormous praise,” Reece mentioned. “Coming from Steve, that is the proper factor to say. He is such a spiny, actual curmudgeonly type of man.”

Albini shared greater than his data. For practically three many years, he and his spouse, Heather Whinna, operated the Letters to Santa charity, a nonprofit that raised cash for households in want by live shows and comedy exhibits. Each vacation season, he, Shack-Harris and others drove round Chicago delivering bikes and toys to youngsters whose Christmas want lists would’ve in any other case gone unanswered.

The Mariano Rivera of Poker

In poker, Albini proved to be “the final word nearer” by profitable two bracelets in his two WSOP remaining desk appearances regardless of hardly ever enjoying tournaments. “He is the Mariano Rivera of poker,” laughed Kosinski, referencing a legendary retired New York Yankees aid pitcher.

His first bracelet got here in 2018 when he navigated a “ridiculous lineup” at a $1,500 Stud remaining desk that featured heavyweights Chris Ferguson, Frankie O’Dell and Jeff Lisandro. When Albini acquired heads up in opposition to the 2009 WSOP POY, his associates had been on the rail stomping and clapping each time a pot slid Albini’s manner.

“As a result of we might sit and watch (remaining tables on stream) and eat pizza after which play playing cards … The considered being at a remaining desk enjoying these (tops professionals) and doing very properly was insane,” Kosinski mentioned. “And Steve had a fantastic poker face, however he was like, ‘Are you able to consider this shit!?'”

Lisandro finally known as the ground however could not halt the momentum that led Albini to a bracelet win value $105,629. In a winner’s interview with PokerNews, Albini downplayed the Stud expertise he developed over a lifetime and overemphasized the function of luck, whereas giving many of the credit score to his associates: “I owe an terrible lot of my very own growth as a participant to my peer group.”

That peer group was on the rail once more 4 years later when he took down the 2022 $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. for $196,089. Reasonably than clap their palms when Albini gained a pot, they rang a small brass bell. “Ultimately Steve walks over to the rail and takes it and places it on the desk,” Shack-Harris mentioned. “He apologized for us, after which Steve began dinging it when different folks would win a hand.”

The group had a convention of carrying a polar bear costume throughout Stud 8 occasions. “We have all taken turns in it,” Shack-Harris mentioned. Albini gained the H.O.R.S.E occasion throughout an orbit of the lowball variant, so his associates caped him within the furry white caniform costume as he posed for winner’s photographs. There was some debate whether or not Albini ought to don the polar bear costume in the course of the remaining desk. “However we did not wish to supersede the ability of the (Georgia noise rock band) Jackonuts shirt. The Jackonuts shirt was going robust.”

Then there have been the purple balloons. One other operating gag of the group was handing balloons when somebody busted a match, which originated from a house sport birthday custom. Shack-Harris introduced a bundle with him as he railed Albini and so they appeared to sway the playing cards. When the balloons got here unfastened and flew into the rafters, Albini’s chip stack “went straight all the way down to the place he was rapidly the quick stack.”

“It was an actual temper swing,” Shack-Harris mentioned. “(Then) the balloons magically got here again down. And as quickly as they did, it was clean crusing.”

“I’ve acquired all of the items. It is like when you’ve got two halves of a greenback invoice. It is nonetheless a greenback invoice.”

After he defeated heads-up opponent James Morgan, Albini shared an embrace with Shack-Harris that proved harmful. “He drops the bracelet. It shatters … And he is like, ‘Ah, who cares!'” Albini was certainly detached to breaking the coveted piece of WSOP {hardware}. “The bracelet took a spill and a chunk of it broke off,” he instructed PokerNews shortly after. “It does not matter, no person wears them, who cares? I’ve acquired all of the items. It is like when you’ve got two halves of a greenback invoice. It is nonetheless a greenback invoice.” However he had a use in thoughts for his damaged bracelet. He dismantled it additional and gave the golden fragments to his backers, together with letters thanking them for his or her help.

Tuesday’s Gone

Albini died from a coronary heart assault in his Chicago house on Might 7, practically a 12 months to the date of the core group’s final in-person sport, simply days earlier than the discharge of Shellac’s first album in ten years and weeks earlier than the beginning of the 2024 WSOP. I interviewed Shack-Harris and Kosinski in a small storage room inside Horseshoe Las Vegas a hallway’s size away from the place the pair celebrated Albini’s second bracelet victory two years earlier. “He was so excited to return down right here,” mentioned Shack-Harris, who now lives in Las Vegas. “He was going to remain at my place.”

Albini wasn’t the one one wanting ahead to the World Sequence. Shack-Harris was “dialed in” and able to grind the complete summer time, however that was earlier than dropping his finest good friend and mentor. “(I) wasn’t certain I used to be going to play something in any respect.” Regardless of a light-weight schedule of blended occasions, Shack-Harris made three remaining tables and cashed for over $234,000. He completed third in the identical $1,500 Seven Card Stud occasion Albini gained six years prior and paid tribute by carrying the identical black Cocaine Piss t-shirt Albini had worn. House gamer Jason Gola additionally repped the obscure Belgian punk band when he and Shack-Harris ran deep in a $1,500 Razz occasion. Gola completed thirteenth, whereas Shack-Harris completed runner-up to Scott Seiver, narrowly lacking out on a 3rd bracelet.

The Tuesday Sport was such a continuing that it continued at the same time as gamers dropped out or moved throughout the nation. In the course of the pandemic, they transitioned to an internet sport and mentioned palms over Discord. But it surely’s laborious to image the sport persevering with with out Albini. “It is very unusual to me to consider enjoying this sport with out him as a result of he was such an enormous a part of it,” Kosinski mentioned.

The group performed collectively at Albini’s memorial service in July, a four-day tribute in Zion, Illinois that includes musical performances, poignant elegies and a money sport operating within the resort eating room. Half the buy-in went to Letters for Santa, however most gamers donated the complete quantity. “It was a reasonably good mixture of all of the totally different worlds,” Kosinski mentioned. Finland’s Anttonen, who additionally labored on a yet-to-be-published mini-documentary about Letters to Santa, was amongst these on the memorial, alongside celebrities like musician Ty Segall and comic Fred Armisen. “The vibe was actually particular,” mentioned Anttonen, who famous that he has admired Albini’s music since his teenagers.

Across the time the Tuesday Sport shaped, Albini started a longstanding working relationship with the Japanese post-rock band MONO. Not like the abrasive nature of a lot of Albini’s recorded output, MONO’s orchestral sound is cinematic, uplifting and transcendent. But like most of Albini’s recording output, MONO is heavy.

The band recorded its 2004 album Strolling Cloud and Deep Crimson Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Solar Shined at Electrical Audio and a number of other extra as much as this 12 months’s Oath, which was launched in June. The titular observe to MONO’s remaining collaboration with Albini is a five-minute crescendo that builds to a wall of sound mix of guitars, strings, horns, and naked, dry drums that solely Albini may’ve recorded. The band filmed a music video for the observe whereas recording at Electrical Audio, the place a photograph of that first poker match nonetheless hangs, on the identical shiny wood flooring that supported routine poker video games for twenty years, in opposition to the identical adobe brick partitions that housed Shack-Harris one memorable and profitable summer time. To not point out the place hundreds of information had been recorded.

“(For) all of us, particularly these of us in Chicago, he was actually like the middle; he was the solar to that world of that model of music,” Kosinski mentioned. “So many individuals that I’ve grown up with previously 20 years, half of their CDs had been recorded by him. So it is type of like he was simply naturally there.”

“So many individuals that I’ve grown up with previously 20 years, half of their CDs had been recorded by him. So it is type of like he was simply naturally there.”

At Albini’s memorial service this summer time, Chicago officers introduced the road passing Electrical Audio can be renamed “Steve Albini Method,” an honorary gesture that the town formally unveiled on Nov. 25. Kim Deal, previously of Pixies and The Breeders, paid tribute on the unveiling to her longtime good friend and collaborator. “He was a flawed human,” Deal mentioned. “He would contradict himself in two sentences. However at his core he understood the worth of every particular person.” Kosinski additionally has plans to honor his late good friend. He hopes to get the Tuesday Sport group collectively for a Swingo match the place the winner receives a scultpure model of Albini’s 2018 winner’s picture. “That was the happiest we might ever seen him.”

*Images courtesy Andrew Kosinski & Brandon Shack-Harris

Connor Richards is an Editor & Stay Reporter for PokerNews and host of the Life Exterior Poker podcast. Connor has been nominated for 2 International Poker Awards for his writing.