Ian Hamilton - The disciple of Las Vegas

“The parking spot costs me five hundred dollars a month,” Maggie said as she pulled her car into the underground garage off Mainland Street. “I have classmates who spend less than that on accommodation.”

They took the elevator to the top floor of the four-storey building. As Ava entered Maggie’s open-concept loft she was struck by the living area’s sixteen-foot ceilings and ten-foot wall-to-wall windows that flooded the space with light. The kitchen counters were empty, the walls were bare, and the only furniture in the living room was a beige leather couch and matching chair and a glass coffee table.

“We’ll call Jack from my study,” Maggie said, motioning Ava to follow her.

Ava walked into the room and was visually assaulted by piles of books and paper strewn everywhere. Pictures of Maggie’s family covered every wall and framed the flat-screen television. Empty mugs and glasses lined the windowsill next to the desk, which held a large Mac. Ava stood by as Maggie leafed through some papers spread over a loveseat. “Sorry for the mess. I kind of live in here,” she said. She held up a sheet of pink paper. “Here we are.”

“Just a second,” Ava said. “Before you call, why don’t you tell me a little about Jack Maynard.”

“Sure. Do you want to sit down?”

Ava sat on the loveseat. Maggie took the office chair and rolled it closer. “He’s a young guy, late twenties maybe, and he’s a professional poker player. Believe it or not, he graduated from MIT with a master’s in math. He started playing, strictly online, while he was in university, and he discovered he was very good at it. He’s well known in the professional gambling world. A couple of the poker magazines rate him among the top twenty online players in the world.”

“How much did he tell you he lost?”

“Just under six million, and there were two other regulars who lost in the three- to four-million-dollar range.”

“Not as severely damaged as your father.”

“They’re professionals, not addicts. They knew when to stop.”

Ava nodded sympathetically. “I remember when my mother made my sister and I sit in the car in a casino parking lot for five hours while she lost her monthly household allowance playing baccarat. My sister asked her why she did it, and she said that she just couldn’t help herself.”

“My father took my mother and me to Vegas once, dropped us off in a room, and then disappeared for four days. She said he almost lost the house.”

“If this Jack Maynard is so good, how did he lose all that money?”

“That’s exactly what he’s going to explain to you.”

“One other thing before you call him,” Ava said. “I know next to nothing about Texas hold’em poker.”

“You understand something about poker, though?”

“Just the basics. I mean, I know how the hands are ranked.”

“We’ll look online,” Maggie said.

She turned on the computer and clicked an icon that looked like a waterfall. “This is The River, the gambling site that my father and the others played on.” She signed in and opened up a page that listed table after table of hold’em poker options. She hit one that read $10/$20. “We don’t have to gamble at a table to be able to watch it. Jack told me that when my father and the others were playing, there would be several hundred onlookers. Morbid fascination, I guess.”

There were six people at the table, each with an avatar. “People don’t use their real names?” Ava asked.

“No. Jack played under the name Brrrrr, and my father was Chinaclipper.”

“Then how did they get to know each other’s real identity?”

“Maynard was so famous that everyone knew who was behind Brrrrr. My father was just an anonymous player until he and Maynard and some of the others began to share personal information on the chat line. Over six months they got to know each other quite well.”

As Maggie was speaking, Ava watched the play of cards and quickly began to understand the basics. Each player got two cards, face down. Five cards were then turned face up in the centre — first three, and then one and one. Players bet after they had received their first two cards, then after the first three cards were turned over, and then again after each of the single cards was exposed — four betting rounds in all. Players could use any of the seven cards to make a five-card hand.

The table she was watching was no-limit hold’em. That meant that players could bet every dollar they had in front of them at any given time. She was amazed by how quickly some of the pots grew. At the $10-$20 table they were watching, two pots were raised to more than a thousand dollars each. She began to grasp the multiples that must be involved at tables with antes of $1,000 and $2,000.

“Let’s call Maynard,” Ava said.

Maggie punched in the number and turned on the speaker. “Maynard lives in Virginia,” she said.

“Hello? Is that you, Maggie?”

“I’m here, Jack. I have you on speaker phone. I’m with that woman I mentioned to you this morning. Her name is Ava Lee.”

“Ms. Lee,” he said.

“Call me Ava.”

“Maggie tells me you’re some kind of special accountant.”

“I guess you could call me that.”

“She says you recover money for people.”

“Sometimes I can, but not always.”

“Just how do you that? Get it back, I mean.”

“Persuasion,” she said.

He laughed, more disbelieving than amused.

Maggie interrupted. “Jack, I don’t think we need to quiz Ava. Why don’t you start by explaining to her what happened.”

She could hear him breathe, and in the sound she felt his tension. A bottle cap popped. “Have one for me,” Maggie said.

“I’ve been drinking every day for the past couple of months. I need to stop,” he said.

“Talk to me,” Ava said, pulling out her notebook. “But before you do, please understand that I have only the most rudimentary knowledge of poker.”

“I’m a pro,” Maynard began. “I’ve been playing poker for a living for the past five years, mainly online. I was putting in a minimum of eight hours a day, five days a week.”

“You use the past tense,” Ava said.

“I’m giving it a break — the losses crippled me. I need to rebuild my self-confidence, and my bankroll.”

“Where did you play?”

“On several sites, but in the past year I played primarily at The River. There was always good high-stakes action there.”

“Maggie mentioned the amount of money her father gambled. Is that what you mean by high stakes?”

“Yeah. There were about fifty of us who played for those kinds of stakes on a regular basis. And then of course people were always coming and going, testing their talent at a higher level. Those were the ones we usually took to the cleaners.”

“‘Talent’?”

“It isn’t just a game of luck when you’re playing poker for that kind of money. Maybe in the short term luck will hold, but over the long haul your ability to read people — to understand who you’re playing against and what their tendencies and habits are — sometimes matters more than the cards you’re dealt. And then there’s the mathematical element, which is one of my strong points. I can get into it if you want, but it gets complicated.”

“No, I believe you. The thing is, if talent prevails, how did you and your friends lose all that money? Did you run into someone more talented?”

“No fucking way,” he said, his voice rising.

“Is that ego talking?”

“No fucking way.”

“So who was winning when you were losing?”

“There were two of them. Their poker names were Buckshot and Kaybar. They never played together at the same table, but we never thought that was strange until we started looking back. We also never found out their real identities, which is also strange, because ninety-five percent of the guys knew each other.”