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

This trip they were beginning with a three-day event, Six Handed Hold’em. “The game that started it all,” as Helen put it, referring to her Phil Ivey — James Akenhead match two years prior. Maybe it’s lucky.

At starting time, Coach was cozy at Bronze 61, Brasilia Room. It was the first time I’d seen her play. She wore a black dress with a white collar, pearl bracelet on her wrist. Legs crossed, vivid red nail polish glinting. Her fingers lightly brushed the table, as if she were in a canoe, her hand dipping lazily in the current. If this was her housewife costume, this day she was hosting a dinner party for some swell couples from the planned community, the roast cooling on the rack. If you check out the director’s cut of Rocky this is exactly what Burgess Meredith wears when he gives his “A Bum’s a Bum” speech in the deleted “Perfect Ham Sandwich” scene.

She patted the red purse in her lap: Let’s go. When the cards flew, her table waited on one player, some hotshot who was tearing up shit in another event in the next ballroom. Or just some guy filling his Velcro pockets with protein bars and Pepto tablets at the sundries shop down the hall. At present, her adversaries were two young guys plugged into devices, one of the Ubiquitous Loquacious Middle-Aged White Guys, and a tattooed man with a sinister air. Yeah, I know your mom has a tattoo of Simon Le Bon on her back, but this was something else, a rather impressive wrist-to-shoulder ornamentation, “sleeves” they’re called. Which seems a misnomer because generally one of the main things I look for in sleeves is remove-functionability.

Familiar types from my training missions at first glance. But no, their postures were more controlled, their expressions more rigid, their movements less slack. Versions of people I’d been playing against, impurities removed. The higher stakes, the cleansing fires of these hallowed WSOP halls, had burned away the weak stuff. What was still familiar: They could outplay me.

Let’s patrol. Sixteen hundred runners entered Event 16, spread out among the convention hall. In other parts of the ballrooms, earlier matches wound down to the final, inevitable All Ins. Over in the Amazon, for example, it was Day 3, Level 70 of the $10K Heads-Up game, ESPN capturing one of the final tables for posterity. In the Pavilion, PokerNews.com streamed Day 2 of the $1,500 Limit Hold’em event, beguiling some thirteen-year-old in Punxsutawney with visions of future bracelet glory.

Early in the series, the population was sparse, the Main Event mob yet to curl into a fist. This locomotive was slow to accelerate. Fewer concessions hawking away in the corridors. The “misting station” on the terrace, which cooled the flesh from the desert’s heat, was devoid of basking enthusiasts. The terrace: I loved it for its respite from the intense poker frequencies inside the convention hall. Even if the heat shriveled me like a piece of charqui , or jerky. ( Charqui , “cut into strips and dried,” from the Spanish, and the Incans, who dehydrated llama meat in the sun to preserve it.) A nice sprint through the misting-station jets sets you right.

The iPad population was up this year, however. In the Pavilion I caught one character squinting at an action scroller between hands, Beats by Dre headphones beeping in his ears. The Pavilion was where Lex was installed. Relaxed but alert in his dapper sports coat, some color in his angular face from his time at VooDoo Beach. Helen enjoyed a nice spa treatment before a big game; Lex didn’t mind catching some rays at the Rio pool.

I tried to find Matt, but he was fathom deep at a table far from the velvet rope. I could just see him when his neighbor leaned back. Matt looked a bit flushed in his sweatshirt. Earbuds screwed in, concentrating on whatever holographic poker abstraction he projected into the air above the felt.

Then I was compelled to the satellite grottos, the Sit-n-Go’s. Sit-n-Go’s were not, as I had mistakenly thought, adult diapers for poker players, so they don’t have to leave the table. Who wants to miss getting dealt aces? They’re actually one-table, ten-player tournaments. Which explained a lot, like that time that floor manager kept shouting, “The Sit-n-Go is full! No more room in the Sit-n-Go!”

At our first meeting the year before, Coach had instructed me to hit some Sit-n-Go’s during my AC training. But time was tight and I never did, concentrating on longer, protracted tournaments instead. When I told Matt at our lunch that I might warm up for Day 1D with a few, he shook his head. Why bother at that point? It was a different game than what I’d be playing in the Main Event. Different rhythms, different goals. It was too late.

Now I was fixated. See, something wonderful had happened the day before. In the cab to the Rio, Coach and Lex asked me if I was going to play. Naw, just take notes. Grateful to be a passenger again, after last year’s ordeal. But an hour after I dropped off my bags, I was leching outside the Sit-n-Go’s. Bunch of other pervs flitting around in anticipation, too. I wanted to play. Just one game.

The floor guy shuffled cards with different table stakes—125, 175, 200 smackers. Employing their idiosyncratic gambling spider-sense, the hopefuls registered for stakes that possessed the aura of good fortune. I recognized that feeling I first got in roller rinks and at high-school parties/shame cauldrons, where I’m going to dance but the song isn’t right. I need the right one, some beat-box/synth concoction devised by weirdos. This one is too slow. This one is too corny — and then Prince comes on. I laced up and skated to a $125 table. After a few rotations, I saw it was the cheapest.

The order of business was simple: ten seats, ten players, winner takes all. I was rusty, but after an hour of “Do I cut the green wire or the red wire?” it was down to me and an older white guy. He was in a rush: Want to chop? Split the take? We shook hands.

I was up $490, and my old friend down in the utility room flipped the switch: More . The rest of the night I told myself I was done. The next morning, too. But how was I supposed to kill some time while Coach and Lex ran through their levels? I was almost done reading I Wish I’d Never Had You: The Best of “The Family Circus.”

The word More , and also this bat-shit incantation over crazy-clown music: Gonna do it, take ’em down, grab the pot, win it all . Summon the waitress for a BAVERGE: self-delusion, neat. Gonna do it . I’m a fucking Sit-n-Go Master, I shoulda been playing these tables all along. My lucky number was $125. I played those stakes again. Lost. Back on the dance floor. Played $175—I won $490 at a $125 game, so if I win a $175 table, I’d pocket that much more. Take ’em down . It’ll make up for that $125 I just lost. Plus, I’m still ahead from that one win, so the game I just lost doesn’t really count. That’s a natural dip. Up, down, that’s how it goes, don’t sweat it. Grab the pot . Those crazy clowns are really going nuts on that xylophone! Lost another $175. Cool. Still ahead. I’m not the only one doing this nutty tango, with this frenetic monologue running in my head. There’s that scruffy Robotron with the backpack, and that woman in the baggy hoodie who nods at me when I play with her again, we’re pals now. Oh — she’s out again. She hit another Sit-n-Go the next table over. Win it all . I lose $175. Again $175. Again $175.

Stop.

This is insane. Feels great.

I should probably see how Coach is doing.

Whistling the Cold Deck Blues. Whittled down to $1,200 in chips, Perma-Sleeves on her left using simple gravity to suck chips to his person.

At break, Coach was vexed. Shaking her head. She told me about the pink note card she kept in her red purse for consultation in the bathroom: a list of dos and don’ts, her strategies and weaknesses set down by typewriter keys. Old-school. “And I just did that!” she said, referring to some unspecified prohibition. “It’s a tough table. I can go All In, but it’s going to be expensive.”