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

Coach wanted me to double up before dinner to $46K. Despite my prediction that I’d unleash my crazy-psycho betting style in Level 6, the only quirks I added to my play were that new protectiveness toward my blinds (Peck at my blinds, will you, crow? I’ll show you!) and a more receptive ear to the siren call of pot odds (It only costs a little more to see the flop …).

Yes, Big Mitch, I know it’s kid’s stuff, but in my cheapo home game you didn’t consider these things because the stakes were so low. After the Main Event was over, I played some of the home-game poker that had been my usual fare for so many years. It was bananas. Like if you stuck ten squirrels in a cardboard box, shook it up, and then threw in a deck of acorn-scented Bicycle cards. (You will recall my squirrel antipathy.) Raising 2x the blind — what exactly did you mean by that bet, it was fucking gibberish! Six people seeing the flop? You can’t all have Aces. I had become a whining Robotron, trapped with bona fide humans.

At the World Series, of all places, I was finally comprehending the underlying principles I’d been studying, getting the barest glimpse of how they worked, their consequences and power. The deep magic. I had an inkling now of what Coach was saying when she said this place was heaven, what her father meant when he told her Vegas was the center of the universe. I felt it.

Too bad it just ended up costing me chips. Nothing panned out. Someone called me when I had QQ, but other than that I didn’t scratch up anything during Level 6. In fact, I lost a bunch. I was down to $14K. I was dying. The blinds were about to shoot up to $300/$600, with a $75 ante. The Wave of Mutilation was gathering force, and I was definitely drowning, not waving, as the poet put it. At the break, I sent a DM: 14.5K … Ten M. Okay, coach what do I do?

I received a short reply: Call me .

Out on the terrace with the smokers. You know how in the literature, once you share blood with a vampire, a psychic link is established whereby he or she can send visions and imperatives? That’s cigs, even years later. Anyhoo.

“Hey.”

It was the Farting/Burping Guy from Day 1D. He was running bad, $90K down to $50K. “I haven’t had a pair of Aces all day,” he said. He asked how I was doing.

I told him.

He shrugged and gave a grim smile. “You never know,” he said. I’d despised him the day before, touching my stuff, but now we were just two guys in the Main Event, hanging on. He was all right by me.

The 3G limped along. Everybody calling their buddies back home, their spouses, shrinks, giving updates. I couldn’t get a signal out. Twitter was dead. Given my low emotional bandwidth, I understood AT&T’s difficulties, but hell. Finally a bunch of lazy-ass electrons eked through and I got a stream of DMs:

Shove time. But you have time to wait for a decent hand. I’ll run it down for you .

Her next couple of DMs detailed starting combos I should go All In with, pairs, face cards, how to play them in different positions around the table. Under the gun, middle, the button.

You are in all-in shove mode. This is easy. You have one decision and plenty of time to wait for a decent spot .

Doubling up is key, but stealing 2,400 pots with all-in shoves is fine .

New goal: 25K by end of this round. Once you reach this, you can relax and play normal for a little while .

Double up time. One, two, three double-ups and you’re a contender. Go get ’em .

I tried to keep it straight. Was that a pair of 7s in early position, or only if there’s no raiser? AJ when, whatzit, huh? But Coach believed in me, I was going to do this. If I didn’t, I would cease to exist.

At the start of Level 7, I gathered myself. I recalled a steamy Brooklyn summer morning weeks ago, when my physical trainer Kim tried to straighten out the sad, gnarled bone-cloak I called my body. Get into your spine, she said.

Get into your spine.

Get Some Spine.

Patience and Position. I waited. I wasn’t the only one with water in his nose. Seat 9 had started out with a stack my size, and he mixed it up in Level 6. Now he was treading water and looking for his shot. He shoved his chips in — and the Wave of Mutilation took him under. Seat 3 was a young dude who’d been staying afloat by attacking blinds, some chips here, some chips there. He went All In, and was sucked down into the bleak fathoms. (You shouldn’t wear headphones when swimming, because you can’t hear when someone yells, “Shark!”) For my part, I got KQ offsuit early in the level … and didn’t go for it. It didn’t feel right, and surely a better hand was rising in the deck, about to bubble up from randomness and bail me out. Right?

It didn’t happen. Rags, rags, rags for an hour and a half. Instead of limiting my speech to the word “Raise,” now I said, “Can I have some change?” as I slid a $1,000 chip to Seat 5. The Wave of Mutilation washed away my stack, chip by inevitable chip, and I kept calculating and recalculating my M. Was now the time to freak out, shove with anything? Was I being passive, or waiting for my shot? Down to $6K. I wasn’t feeling that well. Then I saw them: pocket Aces. Rockets. The selfsame bullets on the T-shirt. I was going to take down this fucking pot.

I went All In … and won the blinds and the antes — i.e., bubkes. Bobbed up to $8K, but the swells were about to get much worse.

The announcer informed us there were three more hands until break. The floor managers broke tables on the edges of the White Section; they’d disperse my happy clan soon. I didn’t know if it was better to play with these guys or a fresh table. Who knew what kind of behemoth stacks roamed out there in the depths, beyond my little tide pool. I was going to make a move before Level 7 ended, no matter what. As I said, the poker-book advice can be hard to follow — the esoteric slang, the situations you have to experience firsthand in order to appreciate, the crappy writing. And then there was advice that made perfect sense, like: Before the end of the night, before a break or adjournment for dinner, you can grab a pot because people are distracted and want to split. This made sense to me, more than “suited connectors on the button can be a strong play,” because it was sneaky, and I came from a long line of secretive, sneaky bastards. We slinked down the block to steal a cab upstream, left two teaspoons of juice in the carton and put it back in the fridge, and pretended that we didn’t use up all the hot water. Sneaky.

I had three chances. It was a Wave of Mutilation: Surf it, motherfucker. My first two cards were no go. White 83 fidgeted as it contemplated the break. Next hand, I think I almost pushed my chips in, but declined. I wasn’t feeling it. Players from other tables squeezed out into the hallway. One more chance: K-8, offsuit. Half my table looked at their hands and mucked and departed to have a smoke or take a piss. I pushed — and the new guy in Seat 3, he did nothing at all. He sat. He was the Big Blind this hand, and he was a swiper, green chips in towers.

So the swiper’s BB was in the pot. What happens, you may ask, when the swiper becomes the swipee ? Swiper scrutinized me and asked a question. I didn’t catch it, it was some poker nomenclature beyond my ken. I stared into the pot, then past the pot, through the felt, into the void. In general, I had realized, most of my table image was me pretending I was spending a typical afternoon in my crummy, divorced-guy apartment. Just hanging around with a faraway look. Tick tock. Finally he folded. Anticlimactic. It was some chips anyway. Up to $9.6K.