Colson Whitehead - The Noble Hustle - Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death

McManus covered a murder trial, the specters of drugs and organized crime circling his stories of the Main Event like tourists around the crab-claw tray at an all-you-can-eat. That kind of trouble, real trouble, permanent trouble, puts a dent in visitor-retention stats. The only crimes I witnessed during my stay this time were some ill-considered shirts and multiple counts of misdemeanor hairdos.

McManus’s deep run in the Main Event not only made him the Man among amateur players but likened him unto a god to amateur player-scribblers. Shoot, he earned his way into his seat. I had my entrance fee handed to me. (Assuming it showed up. We’ll get to that.) The shame.

I didn’t have illusions about being one of the November Nine. We live in an age in which sitcoms outnumber miracles, and perhaps that is what we deserve. The amateurs were thumping the fabled cowboys these days, but I was an amateur’s amateur. I didn’t want to go out first, and I wanted to make it to Day 3 at least. Day 3 had the sheen of respectability. I would not bring dishonor to my house — my friends, family, and poker game back home. To Coach. Day 3, then take it from there.

Despite my persistent terrors about being the first one to wash out, there were four starting days to the Main Event, so the first player flamed out while I was still brooding in my Brooklyn hermit shack. Twenty minutes into Day 1A, his KKs got smithereened by Aces. Aces, Aces. He stumbled out of the hall, ducking the media, this nameless, hapless schmuck, and into the neon desert-within-a-desert that is Las Vegas. Where presumably he lost some more money.

On the bright side, that didn’t mean I couldn’t be the first player to wash out on my starting day.

With less than twenty-four hours to go, I made another trip to registration. I’d tried to snag my table draw earlier, but they couldn’t find my check. As a writer, I was used to this. The silver-haired lady in the Cage remembered me from before and was quite helpful despite the lack of news.

“You’re wearing your hair down,” she said.

I like to mix it up. “Yeah. What do you think?”

“If you want to look like a badass, wear it back.”

“Okay, then.”

If the check didn’t appear, I was fucked. I was having trouble keeping track of affronts to my psyche, but I was used to that, too. I pinballed between the ballrooms, Amazon to Brasilia, Brasilia to Pavilion, Pavilion to Amazon. Mapping the castle, the system of unmarked doors, secret passageways. This one shoots me to the terrace where I can sweat out toxins in the brutal sun, that one is a wormhole to the Poker Kitchen and its Have-It-Your-Way Wraps. And this exit is most important: for here be the johns.

After six weeks, the run-up tourneys were finished. No helter-skelter sprinting from room to room to scoop up Player of the Year points. Can anyone catch up to Ben Lamb, this year’s leader? So young, Ben Lamb, such healthy skin, such psycho-killer eyes. Stray cats disappear in his hometown. Pass Lamb, bounce back after What Happened in Prague, that Cold Deck in Melbourne. The names like cities in spy novels where bad shit went down, it was Ivan’s trap all along, no need to elaborate.

Whatever 2–7 Triple Draw Lowball (Limit) is, it’s history, cashes added to a player’s lifetime winnings on the online ledgers. The three-day Seven Card Razz, with its $2,500 buy-in. And also the niche events, such as the Casino Employees game (congrats, Sean Drake!), the Seniors event (fifty-plus only, please), and the Ladies No-Limit Championship (Marsha Wolak, represent!). The specialty events were supposed to give subcommunities a time to shine, but it didn’t always work out. Last year, some bros dressed in drag and crashed the ladies’ event to protest “gender discrimination.” Rhinestone buckles, fringed vests, camisoles. Poker dudes: any excuse to wear something a little fancy.

The bracelets, for example, were snazzy as hell. Every sport has their trophy. What you get when you win. Stanley Cup. Super Bowl Ring. Here it’s bracelets. Fifty-seven of them handed out so far this year, sparkly numbers, with fifty-two diamonds embedded in buttery white-and-yellow gold. Walk up to the 7-Eleven counter to pay for your Snapple and pork rinds, they’ll know you’re a man of substance, maybe throw in some scratchers, gratis. I’m reminded of the Republic of Anhedonia’s Medal of Honor, the Pouch of Sighs. It’s a little sack of oiled leather, stuffed with twenty-five captured sighs, that hangs around your neck on a silk lanyard. They come up on eBay from time to time, if you’re interested.

The final remaining bracelet was the Big One.

Also starting on Day 1D was Matt Matros, whom I’d met eight years ago, when he was in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence. He supported himself on poker through grad school, carving out fiction during the day and wagering at night. His book The Making of a Poker Player: How an Ivy League Math Geek Learned to Play Championship Poker detailed his trip to glory.

We’d only talked briefly, but Matt reached out to me when I was Rio-bound and offered to give me some tips. You may wonder why I kept meeting writers on my journey, but my social circle is quite small these days. “Why are there so many crackheads in this crackhouse?” the crackhead asked. People like that are the only people here.

Not many people know that Anhedonians invented brunch. It makes sense now that you think about it, right? Because brunch is horrible. A weekend midday food engagement was a sacrament to my kind and made me feel at home in this alien place, even if it was “ethnic food” at an establishment called the All-American Bar and Grille. It was located in a Rio eddy, where the convention hall joined the raging waters of the casino.

Old hands at the WSOP avoided the place, Matt informed me. “We’re on such an absurd schedule out here,” he said. “Half the tournaments start at 5:00 p.m., and they go til 3:00 in the morning and then they start the next day at 3:00 p.m.” It messes with the digestion. “There’s basically two thousand people all trying to eat in these restaurants and they don’t hold two thousand people. So we get out of here, clear our heads, have a meal someplace we like. Nothing too heavy.”

Talk about proper nutrition, and I know you’re a veteran. I opened my marble notebook after apologizing for its cover, which the kid had decorated with bright-colored stickers and Cray-Pas during an impromptu “crafts project.” Did McManus write in gaily colored notebooks? Hells no. But the red, yellow, and blue dots were a constellation to steer by. I was far from home, but I’d find my way back to the kid.

The last two WSOPs had been good to Matt. The previous year, he’d won the $1,500 Limit Hold’em bracelet, and in the run-up to this year’s Main Event, he’d bagged the $2,500 Mixed Hold’em event (“Mixed” means alternating between Limit and No Limit, switching your brain back and forth). He pocketed $300,000 and was my Rio John McClane, creeping barefoot over glass with a machine gun, ho-ho-ho.

Not that you’d know it from Matt’s low-key demeanor. This is how I judge character: If you were a stranger, would I ask you to watch my bag while I hit the coffee-shop bathroom? Not that anyone would want to steal what’s in there. Breath mints. Misery beads. The matted, moth-eaten arm of a teddy bear, the final remains of my childhood companion Emilio Pepper, who taught me about love and loss. Nonetheless. I trusted Matt.

Underneath the wash of his brown hair, behind his rectangular glasses, his eyes give no indication of the multifarious calculations zipping ’round his brain. Matt had a sideline in poker coaching, which perhaps reinforced his patience with morons like me, but doubtless his composure had been perfected by years at the table. Everybody tilts, but he who tilts less, tilts best.