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

“I used to be like her,” Matt said.

Back at Harrah’s, 10:30 p.m. The satellite had dwindled to two tables, eighty-five gladiators culled to eighteen. And there were Helen and Lex, still in it. Sitting next to each other. Married couples were rare in poker. But here they were, might as well have been sitting on the couch back home, thanks to the accident of table breakage. It was adorable, but I didn’t tell them that until the break. I didn’t want to mess up their camouflage.

Coach was up to $38K, and Lex hanging on at $15K. Shove time for the man, once he picked his opening.

“Will you take Lex out if you have to?” I asked.

“Definitely,” Coach said.

Lex smiled. “Ask us later about the Kings versus Aces story.”

The game had decelerated, this close to the bubble. Bubble Boy, where art thou? Fold, fold, fold, fold. If Coach and Lex outlasted the next clutch of players, they were in tomorrow’s $1,600 game. They ran alternative scenarios, like everyone else in the third-floor ballroom. If Lex busted, there was an 11:00 a.m. Turbo game, and if he cashed there, he could make the second, 7:00 p.m. start of Event 10. If that didn’t work out …

Coach, for her part, might fork over for the Main if she crapped out tonight. The Ladies Event was cheaper, but the idea incensed her. “That’s sexist!” she said. “I’m upset. They assume or whatever that women will not be in the Main Event — why else would they schedule it at the same time?” Yep, if the Mega didn’t pan out, she’d pay her way in. She was still up for the year, cashes-wise. The price of doing business.

Lex busted out a few seats from the bubble, at fourteen.

He hit Replay and nodded to himself. “I think that was the right move.” He joined me on the rails. To Turbo or not to Turbo?

Eighteen to fourteen to twelve seats. Almost there. At midnight Coach was up to $70K, battling.

I was tired. And I didn’t belong. These people were scientists. I departed to play $2/$4 No Fold’em Hold’em downstairs with my people: the Methy Mikes, the shivering elderly, and the drunken fifty-somethings in town for AC shenanigans. Back with poker’s hoi polloi, with our tepid raises and sloppy calls. Adele sang “Rolling in the Deep” and CeeLo crooned “Fuck You,” just as they had during my Vegas WSOP jaunt a year and a half ago. The same pop songs still circulating, the communal soundtrack of a life half lived. It was safe down there with the dopes.

Outside Harrah’s the next morning, a brief scene:

Sedans and town cars double-parked, the valet is scurrying around trying to sort it out. A quartet of weekending sixty-somethings, three men and one woman, mill around a white Honda. It’s unclear if they are arriving or departing. We know why everyone comes here, but we all leave under different circumstances.

“C’mon, I want to gamble,” says the man at the center of the tussle. Unsteady on his feet but full of energy. Bristling.

“You can’t stand up,” says one of his companions.

“C’mon,” the belligerent old dude says. He gets one foot in the backseat of the Honda and then reconsiders. His companions have their hands on him.

“You’ll fall again.”

“C’MON. I WANT TO GAMBLE. GET A WHEELCHAIR!”

They continue to try and pack him in the car. The woman paces back and forth, a spouse unsure what her role is in this fight. Intervene or no, what are the repercussions? After all these years the same dilemma.

“C’MON! GET A WHEELCHAIR!”

I’d seen a lot of gambling in the last year and a half. Exciting gambling. Foolhardy gambling. Gambling as an art form. What this old dude enacted was fodder for the pamphlets and PSAs the casinos give you as they happily hand over chips. Another great gambling truth. But I’ll leave that for other correspondents.

Later. Saturday afternoon, the kickoff of Harrah’s Main Event. Lex was playing his Turbo. I found Matt, cheerful in his crimson zippy, and wished him luck. He was more upbeat than he’d been on the ride down, perhaps revitalized by his night playing Open Face Chinese Poker in an amigo’s comped hotel room. It was a new game, the new cool hot rod among the gambling set, and it was his first time kicking the tires. Matt may have been burned out and preoccupied, but he perked up when he explained the rules. “You get dealt thirteen cards and you have to set your hand in such a way that your worst hand is a three-card hand in the front, then your second-best hand is a five-card hand in the middle, and then your best hand is a five-card hand in the back …” I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. But I was glad to see he still loved cards, despite his late uneasiness with success.

I cruised between the tables and discovered Action Bob ready for battle, with his Gigantor cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, sunglasses, and earbuds. He waved, grinning. Across from him sat Coach in a turquoise blouse with gold flower petals. Just another Saturday afternoon of cards with some of the neighbors on Oak Street.

I don’t know if their table was bad meaning bad or bad meaning good, but the cards snapped and the gamblers hunkered, the million-dollar winners and the diligent grinders, the jowly veterans and the pimply first-timers. Any one of them could win it all, and no one deserved it more than anyone else.

Let’s leave them there, as they wait for the next hand, the one that will change it all. I have a game to return to myself.

What do you say we see what happened that one time I went to Vegas?

Like my first sexual experience, my time at the World Series of Poker didn’t last long … is how I would’ve started this section if I’d been eliminated the first day. But I wasn’t. Suck it, Entropy. We have an appointment, my old friend, but not today.

I was up at 5:00 a.m. We have a saying back home: “Wake up in the grip of terror, things will get worse before they get better.” (It is also the title of one of our most beloved children’s books.) Scratch the wake-up call, which is no way to start the day, wherever you come from. Why so cold and distant, hotel robot voice? “This is your 6:00 a.m. wake-up call.” What’s wrong with “Go get ’em, Tiger!” or “You look sexy when you sleep”?

Dig if you will a picture: Sunday at noon. I was finally able to register after the accountants found my check. My table draw was Yellow 163, Seat 9. Pavilion. When I returned half an hour before start time, the room was mostly full, the players warily clocking their tables, approaching, backing off, like guests at a reception waiting for the signal to dig into the canapés. No one wanted to be the first to go out, and no one even wanted to be the first to sit down.

The announcer bid us to join the dealers, who had been at their stations, bow-tied and patient. Terse greetings all around. “Hey.” “How’s it going?” Mostly fifty-something white guys, with two youngsters in Seats 5 and 6. Yes, the young guys owned the game now — the past couple of winners have been under thirty. Some of them probably even did yoga.

They played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” I stood out of politeness. One does not often hear the national anthem of the Republic of Anhedonia at a sporting event. The so-called “lyrics” consist mostly of grunts, half-muttered curses, and long, drawn-out sighs, depending on the particular sufferings you’re cultivating that day. Still, it never fails to lift the spirit, however faintly, we agree on this if nothing else.

You don’t want to see our flag, trust me.