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Occasionally, Happy Baby author Stephen Elliott hosts a poker game at his house. After the game, he writes a report of the evening, which is then e-mailed out to a list of subscribers. If you would like to subscribe, you can do so by sending an e-mail to pokerreport-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. - - - - Looking Forward to It - - - - September 27, 2008 The Debate It was the night of the first presidential debate, a debate that almost didn't happen, as John McCain went to Washington hoping to help by injecting presidential politics into the economic crisis. But after saying he wouldn't participate he changed his mind and flew into Oxford to level with the American people. At the beginning of the debate, McCain admitted it was mostly his fault. "It's all this deregulation," he said. "It's market fundamentalism, a misplaced, uninformed belief that the market always corrects itself. All my career, I've worked to remove oversight from giant corporations. I've trusted the greediest and most ambitious among us to police themselves. I was wrong about that. And I was wrong to advocate going to war in Iraq, wasting $700 billion and 4,000 American lives, destroying that country while the Taliban grew stronger in Afghanistan. Some of the most serious mistakes in the history of America were made by me." It was a shocking thing for him to say. But it was big of him to admit it. After the debate, we played poker. The Game We played in my kitchen, our view the windowless backside of Chelsea Gardens, the tacky Mission monument to the next round of gentrification. Adam Krefman had stolen my folding chairs, so I borrowed chairs from Olu, my downstairs neighbor. Dan and Isaac showed up first, then Ben and Tono. Finally, Sarah and Molly. It was nice to have women at the poker table. They wore low-cut shirts and giggled a lot, exploiting stereotypes and pretending like they didn't know how to play. They won all night. We started with Texas Hold'em. Two cards down, five across the middle. Later, we switched to San Francisco Peach Grove, and then Denver Peach Grove. Those are just the names of the games, but it's the people that matter. When Sarah had a good hand, she would call. She would never raise. And this made Isaac furious. He bet blue chips into her like she was his personal slot machine. And, like most slot machines, she never paid out. She just took it, digesting his money, and smiling like it was an accident. When he had high pair, she had triple queens. When he had a straight, she had a flush. When he thought he had a flush, he didn't, and when we played high-low Isaac didn't qualify. "Listen, miss," Isaac said angrily at one point. "Did you just call her a bitch?" I asked. "I did not say that," Isaac said. "Tell him what I said. Otherwise, he'll put it in the report. Do not write that I called Sarah a bitch." "The poker report never lies," I said. The truth is, Isaac lost to Sarah again and again. He lost so many times it was ridiculous. It was like a slow-motion film of a man punched repeatedly in the face. The man's arms are at his sides; the fist is coming toward him. You almost want to yell something, like "Raise your arms! Defend yourself!" But you don't. The back of the fingers line up against the man's cheekbone, the knuckles rolling into the jaw; a spray of spit flies from his mouth. And then she hits him again. It was a metaphor for all senseless violence. There was Isaac, bluffing half the time, not even a high pair. And there was Sarah, only playing when the cards were perfect, smiling like a carnivore at a meat convention. It was like so many modern conflicts. First, there was some provocation, and then the larger country flew an armada of bombers across the border, and soon everything was burning. And you could see how people become desensitized to violence. You could understand why traffic slows on the highway as the drivers take a long, hard stare at a wrecked car. And you could understand movies like Pulp Fiction and Scream, where people are killed in mean and senseless ways yet somehow it's funny, somehow we're still able to sleep at night. And we all sat calmly laughing, unaware of our own cruelty, even as Sarah did to Isaac what a butcher does first to a plucked chicken. Molly played with a similar strategy. She's recently married. Her husband, Chanan, was supposed to play, but Molly wouldn't let him out on a Friday night when there was still cleaning to do at home. Since her wedding, a couple of weeks ago, Molly has carried her beauty differently. Before, it was like a secret, but now it's a flashlight she's shining in your eye. "I have such terrible cards," she would say, turning her face in profile. "I should fold." But her cards held up. She won all the time. On most hands, she didn't even ante. She couldn't be bothered to throw in the quarter. And nobody had the guts to tell her. We all knew what she had done to Chanan. If there was a loser for the night, it was Dollar Dan Weiss, a distant relative of Harry Houdini and one half of the fabled San Francisco band the Progressive Reading Series All-Star Minstrels. Dan makes most of his money working in a new-and-used-book store. In other words, he makes very little money and lives on the tail end of a dying industry. Like many publishers, he doesn't know when to fold. In fact, Dan never folded. "It's more fun to bet," he said. And he kept tossing quarters and red chips and whatever else onto the felt. He lost $24 in all. Mostly to Tono. Tono was the big winner for the night. Which is a little scary, because Tono's a known cheater. With two beautiful women directly across the table, nobody was watching Tono very closely, which is unusual for him. He's just visiting from Colorado. He was Ben's college roommate. Ben, who's never done a bad thing in his entire life, becomes someone different when Tono's in town. He becomes Bad Ben and does nothing but drink, smoke, and gamble for four days. I thought that would change after the birth of his daughter six months ago. But I was wrong about that. "How's T.?" someone asked him through the haze of smoke. "Who?" he replied. "Your daughter." "Where's my beer?" The Upshot The game went late. Vanessa came over, as did Tori. Olu came up for a little while to make sure we weren't fucking up his chairs. At one point, I realized there were four gorgeous women in my kitchen, and two of them were playing poker. The other two were like cheerleaders. Three of them were seriously drunk. How did this happen? I asked myself. When did I become trustworthy? And then it was over. Or kind of. Congress is on the verge of a bailout; nobody's sure if it will work. The country's already $11 trillion in debt—what's $1 trillion more? People stuck around for a bit, helped me put away the table, bring Olu his chairs back, bag up the recycling. Isaac asked if he could sleep on my couch, and then left. Everything went back to normal. But what if John McCain won the election? What then? It was like imagining a world without sunlight. Would any of this matter, these games, this kitchen, these doors? Would we still play poker, or would we only play poker? In the end, poker is a game of hope. Sometimes it's a game for suckers, but the best players are optimistic realists. They're people who believe something good can still come out of this mess. The worst poker players are cynics. They stick with what they know, even when it's a losing hand. They don't enjoy the game, but they don't know how else to spend their days. They're terrified of change. They're old before their time, and even older when their time comes. They're like CEOs of failed companies asking to be hired based on their experience. Barack Obama plays poker. John McCain's game is craps. McCain's been known to stand at the long Vegas table, bug-eyed, swathed in green light, blowing on the dice, ignoring aides imploring him to leave. When McCain gets going at the craps table, his mouth gets a hard line to it, his shoulders pull together, and his brow stretches so tight it's like his forehead's going to rip. He doesn't hear or recognize what's going on around him. He stays focused on the task at hand, without food or sleep, until all the money's gone. Craps isn't like poker. In poker, you have a chance, but in craps you're playing against the house. And you should never bet against the house with your own money. Because the house always wins. Stephen Elliott - - - - June 23, 2008 Guest Writer—Isaac "the Debtor" Fitzgerald It's hard to lose when you show up to a poker game with no money. There's dignity, I guess, but whatever dignity I could scrape together probably wouldn't have covered the $20 buy-in. Still, I decided to go to Steve's house in hopes that he was feeling generous, as friends sometimes do. When I walked in the door, he immediately offered to pay for my dinner if I'd go pick both of ours up at the grocer's around the corner. Things were looking up. By the time I returned with two pints of piping-hot white-bean-and-pork soup, Steve had his poker table, all red felt and busted legs, set up. The other players had arrived and were jammed in around the rickety table in Steve's small living room. Steve clamored over the couch behind his friend Otis, who was visiting from Knoxville and looked a bit like a shark hunter, to put on some music. We were going to have to keep our cards close to our chests. Jason Roberts, Tom Barbash, and Adam Krefman all brought beer. Chanan brought potato chips, and Josh confused everybody by bringing a bottle of wine. Eli Horowitz, whom the L.A. Weekly had just inexplicably dubbed "McSweeney's boyish publisher," was also in attendance. Eli has a face cut from granite that could only be described as aged and haggard. I wondered about the L.A. Weekly's fact checkers. The moment I walked in the door, Steve asked for his change from the soup, which I was hoping to pocket, and for my buy-in. I gave Steve a look that said "Could you cover me?" It was a look I know he'd given many times in his life. In this regard, Steve and I speak the same language. We're both city kids who have had our share of empty-pocket adventures, and I was relying on a sense of brotherhood. Steve knew I had had an interesting year, and that interesting years didn't usually lead to big bank accounts. Sometimes, but not usually. This one certainly hadn't; it had been the kind of year where you end up working at a biker bar, then find yourself smuggling medical supplies on the Thai/Burma border, only to wake up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with a giant tattoo of a tall ship on your rib cage for absolutely no reason. I've never even been on a sailboat. Unfortunately, Steve also knew I had just gotten a new job. A 9-to-5. I got paid with checks now, taxes taken out and everything. No more fistfuls of dirty bills with drugs still on them, just a clean check every two weeks like clockwork. I was getting my shit together, and Steve gave me a look that said "People with their shit together don't come to poker night empty-handed." "Don't get my first check till next week," I shrugged. "OK, but if you lose it all I'm not covering you to buy back in." I smiled, confident that I'd be paying him back out of my winnings in just a few hours. - - - - We started out with Texas Hold 'Em, which would rule the table for most of the night. Chanan took an early lead, winning the first three hands, taking me to the mat every time. Steve tried to instigate an ethnic war between us (despite my Hebrew name, I'm Irish Catholic), but there isn't much hatred between the Irish and the Jews, and Steve's instigations fell flat. Barbash muttered something about not knowing the rules and we took a break while Josh drew up a list of which hands beat which for him. "Oldest trick in the book," Otis muttered. I agreed Adam dealt the next hand. The flop was the seven of spades with the jack of hearts along with his king. Tom, after scrutinizing his sheet, immediately started betting big, humbling even Steve, who doesn't usually let other people's bets push him around. I wasn't buying it, though. I agreed with Otis and figured Tom was a seasoned player who was looking at the cheat sheet for dramatic effect while winning some easy chips. The five of hearts came on the turn, and then the five of diamonds on the river. I only had ace high. Tom laid down one last large bet, I matched it, and then we showed. Tom took me with a flush. It had now been four straight hands and I'd stayed in till the end on every one only to lose. Stephen smiled. "Slow it down." Eli was sitting next to my right, his old voice like gravel. I didn't pay attention. The chips on the table weren't really mine, so I felt like I was playing without consequences. When you're playing with nothing to lose, I figured, the only thing you can do is win. A few more hands went by, with Otis taking one, Jason taking one, Josh scoring a couple of full houses in a row, and me losing every time. Roberts, who was sitting to my left, and I started drinking from the same bottle of beer, because there wasn't enough space for two between us. People were knocking elbows, and when I got up to go to the bathroom three others had to get up just to let me by. "There's a flashlight behind the toilet if you need a light," Steve told me. This man teaches at Stanford. - - - - It was Eli's turn to deal and, despite Chris Cooney and Ben Peterson being AWOL, he started to explain the rules of Peach Grove. I felt bad for the new players; even Tom, who by now I thought might actually be telling the truth. I remembered my first game of Peach Grove with Steve, Eli, Ben, Cooney, and Windy. It was over a year ago. In fact, that night was when my interesting year really got started. They gave me a bottle of tequila without a glass, half-assedly explained the rules, and then ruthlessly took me for all I had. Nights like that make you leave the country. I looked at my small pile of chips and realized that tonight was going the same way, but I didn't have any tequila to blame it on. "You have to understand there's Iowa Peach Grove, San Francisco Peach Grove, Calcutta Peach Grove—the list goes on," Stephen was explaining to those who had never played before, which didn't help at all, which was of course just what he wanted. After everyone had a grasp on at least a couple of the rules, Eli dealt out the eight hands. We got five across the middle. Everyone was hungry, but for what most of them weren't really sure. Three winners can walk away from Peach Grove, with pieces of the pot going to the high hand, the low hand, and, of course, the grove. You need trips or higher to win the high, nothing above a seven in your low, and you can take the grove with the highest three cards in a row of the same suit. There's a lot of betting and a lot of luck. And a lot of confusion at the end. I bet big, figuring that just knowing the rules put me a cut above the rest. The pot gets so big in Peach Grove that it's hard not to imagine that you're somehow going to get a slice. I drank more of my and Jason's beer, trying to pay attention to the cards, but I was more focused on tossing the chips into the ever-growing pile. Everyone stayed in, except for Chanan, who had been smart enough not to ante up at all. When we all showed, everyone spoke at once. "Why the shit did I stay in?" "What the fuck?" "I think I've got the grove ... maybe?" "I've got everything." After the smoke cleared, Otis walked with the low, Steve had taken the high, and Krefman took the grove with queen, king, ace, all spades. Two hands later, Steve found an ace of spades under Krefman's seat; he denied any wrongdoing. The grove had all but wiped me out. Without even asking, though, Steve set me up with $20 more worth of chips. "He's not doing you any favors." Eli's last bit of advice. He cashed in his chips, saying something about having to conduct business in Brazil. Soon Tom and Jason had to head out as well, though they failed to mention whether or not they were off to exotic lands. Adam soon followed. The room opened up, but, with everyone leaving, my pile of chips, even with Steve's loan only a few hands back, looked smaller. Chanan kept us on track. Texas Hold 'Em games bled into one another, with Steve, Otis, and Josh taking turns at taking my money, which wasn't really mine. Playing without consequences had led me to bet big and not win a single hand. But the room had more space, and soon we were all laughing. Steve got out some photo albums and he and Otis reminisced about their past together, although what they used to do was never really made clear. Josh opened the bottle of wine he brought and poured a couple of glasses. The beer was gone, and bringing a bottle of wine, which hadn't been touched, to a poker game didn't seem strange anymore. It seemed genius. By the time we called it quits, I only had $3 left of my second buy-in. I told Steve that I'd have his money by the end of the week. "Don't worry about it," he said. "It's fine." It was good to hear. He knew I'd get it to him and there was no need to worry. Otis, Josh, and I got up to leave as Steve described to Otis the Wiggle, a series of streets that bicyclists use to avoid the hills of San Francisco. We all parted ways as friends. - - - - Adam called me a few days later. I was at my new job, sitting at my new work computer, which stood atop my new desk. It has been a long time since I have had a desk. I was looking forward to the check with which I was going to pay back Steve. California was allowing people to get married to one another no matter their gender, and everyone in downtown San Francisco seemed to be in a great mood. I was in a great mood. "Have you seen Steve's website?" Adam asked. "No, why?" "Just go take a look." I hung up and went to Elliott's page. I was greeted by my own face on the computer screen, wearing a menacing grin. Beneath the unflattering photo, it read: "Have you seen this man? If so, keep him in custody. He's wanted on outstanding poker debts." I had owed Stephen Elliott $37 for three days and he was already calling me out. For all I knew, he had put a bounty on my head. My phone vibrated. It was a text from Steve: "How's my money treating you?" Isaac Fitzgerald - - - - June 3, 2008 It was 8:30 in the evening and I met Windy at the Phone Booth, a dimly lit smoker's bar on South Van Ness. We were on the edge of the Mission, near her boyfriend Eric's house. He was having a tournament. It was the day before the election and voters across the state would soon decide if San Francisco should continue to have rent control. Windy drank a Maker's Manhattan in a chilled glass. She wore a dress that stopped dramatically at her knees, and white heels. She looked good, like someone healthy, with a job. It could be the day before the end of San Francisco, but we doubted it. Proposition 98 wouldn't pass. The forces of darkness would be banished to their vaults full of money for a brief time. Rent control would be saved and later we would burn down their houses. I told Windy I had been picked as the best political-lit S&M guy in the city and I was wondering if that would affect my life in any way. She said, "You're so famous." I knew she was just buttering me up, two fingers gripping the stem of her drink. She intended to take everything I had. - - - - Here's how you play Texas Hold'em No Limit Tournament Style. Twenty-five dollars buys you a $100 worth of chips, winner-take-all with three rounds of rebuys. Each round is 25 minutes, so if you lose everything in the first 75 minutes you can buy back in for another $25. There's a small blind and a big blind and nobody else has to bet if they don't want to. If you do bet, you can bet as much as you want as long as you have enough chips to cover. You get two cards down. Three shared cards come in the flop, then a fourth, then a fifth. The down cards and the cards on the board give you seven cards to make your hand. The best five-card hand wins, if the cards are ever shown. Normally, the cards aren't shown. The cards are dealt, there's a bet, and then another bet, then a fold, then more folds. Twice I was big blind to Eric's little blind and I took his half stack without even gesturing. - - - - It was an 11-person tournament. There was more than $400 sitting in a cigar box next to a monitor. Eric had set up a playlist full of songs I'd never heard of. It had been six months since I'd played poker, more than a year since I'd played a tournament, driving down to the South Bay with Andy Miller at the wheel strung out on crystal meth. Not me, of course. I'm essentially clean and sober. But Andy treated his body like a laboratory, a mixture of blood, tendon, and synthetic adrenaline. Andy doesn't come around since he got arrested and Ben had a baby and Chris Donahue changed his name to Christine so when you call you don't know if you're talking to him or his wife. It had been so long since I'd played I couldn't remember the meaning of "big slick," or how to play a low pair in the hole, or what it meant when someone pressed two black chips onto the felt and said, "Chelsea Clinton." It didn't matter. I had a streak of focus dripping down my spine that made me grin. The best poker players don't play the cards, they play the person. I was ready to go one step further than that. There were two tables. One in Eric's bedroom, which is also his living room. That's how we live in San Francisco, roommates finding creative ways to split one-bedroom apartments. It's what I do, sharing my space with a 26-year-old hipster who sits on the couch all day reading Foucault and Roth, eating nothing or dining on Acme bread smeared with Nutella, wearing a cheap brown suit and a pencil-thin tie. There are only two other options: find work or move out of town. I played at the green-felt table in Eric's room, the windows staring west toward Portrero and south where Bernal Heights rises to the sky. His room is filled with album covers and guitars hanging from the wall and the glass backings of dismantled pinball machines. It's a visual celebration. There are bottles everywhere, many covered in dust and half-full of something strong enough to clean a puncture wound. I won fast and early when the blinds were small: $1/$2, $2/$4, $3/$6. I lost to James, who went all in after the flop on an ace-high flush, and me with a pair of jacks in the hole and nothing higher than a 10 on the board. But I won with bullets and I won with a flush draw, and I came back over the top several times, scooping 10 with 30, 15 with 50. But in a tournament the early games aren't worth much. They might save you a $25 rebuy, but when blinds get up to $20, and then $40, those early pots get filed into a data bank of pleasant memories, about as important in the grand scheme of things as the roller-coaster ride you took when you were 11. The other table was in the kitchen, near the beer and the porch where players went to smoke when their luck was bad. Windy sat there, leaning suggestively over the Formica table, a pile of chips rising to her chest. Eventually, the tables joined together in Eric's room. Windy, Eamonn, and Timmy Tunks came in from the kitchen. It was almost midnight. It was Monday. People were very drunk. Felix had been wiped out an hour ago. He said he had a date later. He was wondering if there was anywhere open he could buy some chocolate and flowers. "That sounds like a booty call," Windy said. "No, no," Felix protested. "I don't even know her." Ace was still in, wearing her visor, a silent killer quietly hovering at the level she started at. The Ref (aka the Colonel) was standing in the doorway. He had lost everything early in the evening, or years ago, depending on what you were talking about. To the Ref it wasn't about the money, it was about staying out of the wind. I was as far as I'd ever been in a tournament, but my stack was dwindling. It was always James, beating my eights with his nines, my pair with his trips, my queen-king with his king-ace. I wasn't even tired. Timmy told us all about a famous porn movie he'd seen while working on his master's thesis. The woman had sex with more than 300 men. The janitor, who just worked in the building and wasn't part of the shoot, also had sex with the woman. When someone interviewed the janitor he was asked if he was afraid of losing his job. The janitor told the interviewer it was a lousy job anyway. They didn't pay him hardly anything and he could get another job just like it anytime. "You see," Timmy said. "It's about labor. That guy didn't even have health insurance." I wondered if someone could have sex with 300 men in one day and then run for president. I wondered when we were going to get over this sex thing, take the shame out of everything, and stop hiding ourselves. I had been in a porn once. It was a very strange experience. But at some point it's just naked people and a camera. Or not. It was almost 1 in the morning when I noticed the disco ball above Eric's bed and the red light aimed at the silver globe. The music had shifted from funk, to Yes, to folk rock, to techno. Somebody asked, "What would Morrissey do?" But I've never liked Morrissey. Maybe I wasn't as awake as I felt. I wished Andy Miller were still around, but even when he finishes his sentence he'll still have to deal with all those restraining orders. I realized how comfortable Eric's room is, and how happy I was to be at a card table again. I realized we were more than still young, we were children. In a desperate bid, I went all in with a pair of sixes. Timmy Tunks, a man who had built a career out of years of carefully analyzing adult films, called me with a king-seven. The odds were in my favor, but just barely, and I wasn't even sure that was true. Anyway, whatever was or wasn't true was quickly wiped out by the flop, with its seven swimming like a guppy upstream in a sea of clovers. It didn't matter. I was back in the action. I had never left. I've been in San Francisco 10 years now. My bicycle was still locked on the corner with both its wheels intact and I pedaled through the night of my chosen city to my home and bed, more than ready for whatever would happen next. - - - - November 16, 2007 1. It's been a long time since I've written a poker report, or been in Vegas, or looked into the cold eyes of a murderer, wondering what he told himself as he tried to sleep in his windowless cell at night, but that's the kind of week it's been. It's the middle of November and I'm on Virgin America, flying back from Las Vegas to San Francisco, where, on the other side of the bay, Hans Reiser stands trial for the murder of his wife, Nina Reiser, whose body was never found. I read recently that people are only really interested in sex and murder. And people aren't as interested in sex as we think they are. I think it was Dominick Dunne who said that. Dominick's become a murder junkie, mainlining the Menendez brothers and Claus von Bülow's fatal charm, assessing the cut of O.J.'s suit. He can't get enough. Nonetheless, I left the Reiser trial, where the famous computer programmer's son was being mercilessly cross-examined by the talented defense attorney William Du Bois. The child was 6 years old when his father did or didn't kill his mother. He's 8 now, and is as handsome as his mother was beautiful. Pursuant to international treaties, he was flown in from Russia, where he'd been staying with his maternal grandmother. In Las Vegas, I met a longtime girlfriend who was there on business with a free room at the Bellagio on the 21st floor, and a view of the city consuming the desert like termites on a block of wood. We have the type of relationship open to people who don't get married, or have children, and are willing to live as long as possible slightly unmoored. There was room service, then dancing, and then, while she slept, I crept down to the poker room. It was 6 in the morning. I said, "Deal me in." 2. One-Dollar/Two-Dollar No Limit was the only game available. There was a drunken Jew at the table, and a German. The Jew said, "I'm a Jew. But I don't hate you because you're German. That was a long time ago." The German said he appreciated that. A flop came with a pair of tens and the Jew wrapped his knuckles on the felt and the German pushed $40 over the line. In No Limit you can bet as much as you have, and the Jew had stacks to his eyeballs. I only call him the Jew because that's what he called himself. I'm half-Jewish, but I never refer to myself as "the half-Jew." I usually introduce myself as Steve. But that's not what happened. What happened was it was early in the morning and normal people were sleeping. The Jew was drunk, but playing very well and talking strange. People bet heavily against him because he made such a scene, but he won every time, or folded when it was the right thing to do. He wore a nice suit and had a big head of hair. He swung his giant stack of chips like Chris Cooney swings a hammer: hard, and with precision. The Jew came over the top toward the German, pushing $80, and then, on the turn, which is another way of saying the fourth card, because in Hold'em there are five cards with the first three coming on the flop, then the turn, then the river. And soon he was all in, though not really. He was all in for the German's money, but if he lost he would still have money to spare. He had been winning all night. The German lost that hand, even though he was drinking seltzer and the other man drank whiskey. The Jew said he would buy drinks for the table, which was totally unnecessary since the drinks were free. He tipped the dealer $10 for the 10/ace in the hole. He called the cocktail waitress. He said, "I always tip you, right? Don't I always tip?" I wanted to say, "Why do you call yourself 'the Jew'? Don't you know I'm going to write about this?" Of course, he didn't know. It's something I've been wrestling with recently, the difficulty of being decent to my subjects while still being honest with the reader, and where exactly is that moral line? On Sunday, when we're watching football, there's an orange line showing the first down, and all the players have to do is get across that line they can't see. Life's more complicated than that. The Internet has made people very sensitive with being written about. The Jew said, "I'm just having a good time." I liked him quite a bit. The table was open like a flower and as loose as a hubcap without lugs. It cost $2 to see a hand, provided nobody dropped a pre-raise. I played everything, four ten, five jack suited. I lost $5, $10. But when I won, I won big. I never bet. I took my free cards. When I made a hand, I doubled or tripled whatever came back to me. I didn't worry about pot odds. I played the players. It was early. An orange sun had risen. A beautiful woman was breathing softly into her pillow on the 21st floor. The Jew was telling jokes. The slot machines were almost musical. I was patient and I was winning hundreds of dollars. "I'm Asian," the guy next to me said. "I'm supposed to do better than this." By that time the German was long gone and I realized that poker says a lot about how we process ethnicity. At some point I felt compelled to tell someone I was born in England. My biggest loss came with an ace/king of spades in the hole. Two spades came on the flop. Another player raised and I raised back for $70. I was looking for a payday. The turn came: a heart. Now there were two spades and two hearts. If another spade came, I would have the nuts. My opponent went all in. He had a stack and I had a stack. It would cost $400 to see it. If it was a spade, I won. But the odds were less than 25 percent. If it was an ace or a king of diamonds or clubs, I was in good shape, but it wasn't guaranteed. My chances were less than 50 percent, but there was already $100 in the pot. I didn't like it. I tossed big king into the muck. When I told my girl I had won $300, she took $100 from me. She didn't even think about it. It was fair enough, in a way. She was an escort and lived in Washington, D.C., but that's not why. She'd come out to Vegas for the week with two scientists who were best friends and split their days with her. They paid for the room, and the room service. She was a friend of the girl I saw sometimes in San Francisco, who would also want $100. It's the price of winning. Relationships always take off the top. Just like the house. The house pulls a rake from every hand played. When you lose money, they never give it back. After lunch, she went back to work and I went back to the tables. In the afternoon, the players were well rested; the tables had tightened up. There was a debate happening that night at UNLV but nobody cared. We talked about Barry Bonds looking at perjury charges. "It's such a dumb crime," someone said, probably me. "You never need to lie to a grand jury." Meanwhile, the Democratic candidates were refocusing on Hillary Clinton, who, a few months ago, said that she would continue to accept money from lobbyists. "A lot of these lobbyists represent real Americans," she said. "They represent nurses, social workers, and, yes, they represent corporations and they employ a lot of people." With the front-runner talking like that, it's no wonder people are sitting out. The point is, I tightened up as well, and I was as interested in the debate as everybody else. I waited. I didn't check the flop. I played the cards. And then I noticed the kid three from the dealer. His black hair spiked and nervous, he looked about my age when I had my first major poker loss. That was a devastating moment and, at the time, I wasn't sure I would ever recover. I took him for $50, then I folded a winning hand against him and he threw his cards face up on the table with a sharp laugh. "It's about time that worked!" It was uncalled for. He was rubbing my face in it. But I didn't feel angry. I felt calm. This kid was going to lose it all today. He was going to lose it to me, or someone else. An hour later, we went back and forth on a hand until he pushed all his chips into the middle, a stack of 30 red. I asked for time and I looked at him. He was biting his lip, glaring at me, looking down. I had a paired ace on the board. I had more money than he had. He didn't have the confidence. All I had was high pair, but he had nothing. So I called and the river came and he faced his cards and stood to leave while I organized what he used to have. 3. That was yesterday. I'm on a plane back toward the Bay. Reiser's trial will take at least two more months, probably three. In the airport, I see Snoop Dogg, wearing silver track pants and an oversized sweatshirt with the hood pulled forward covering a pair of giant headphones. He was traveling with two of the biggest men I've ever seen. I watched him go to Mrs. Fields and buy cookies with a hundred-dollar bill. He smiled at the woman behind the counter as she counted out his change, and I stood to the side, pretending to consider the hot dogs. Last night, I wondered if that kid at the Bellagio could afford to lose. Someone said, after he left, that he couldn't afford not to lose. I doubted that. But, then, not everything always adds up. Who pays for cookies with a hundred-dollar bill? Stephen Elliott - - - - July 18, 2007 Guest Writer—Steve Almond It was Baudelair |