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

I DM’d Coach on the situation. You may be wondering what Helen was doing in between strategy sessions. She was thousands of miles away in her Upper East Side apartment, gathering intel on the game at her kitchen counter and doing home projects. “I was watching my Twitter feed,” she told me later, “and making sure you were not tweeting. Then when the levels started, I would run away. I was so nervous for you! I was listening to books on tape, scouring the floorboards. Cleaning the oven. Doing home projects.” She had made what she called her “M-sheet,” an index card listing how to bet at different, danger-zone M’s, the blind structure at each level. She kept the M-sheet in her pocket for quick consult during my breaks.

Under $8K, she wrote one word: Worry .

You’re ok, you’re ok. But you’ve got to double up and loosen even more. Here’s how:

Once again, she broke down the hands to play, and how.

Do it. Double up. Then double up again, damn it. #toughlove

I blipped out a message through AT&T’s “cellular network” and told her I hadn’t seen any of those hands, just Aces, so I was due.

Hell yes, you’re due. You are not going to bust out of Day 2. You are a shove machine .

You’ve outlasted 500 players (Matusow, Dunst, Greenstein) for a reason. Patience. I predict 3 double-ups b/f dinner. RUSH dang it!

I want to see you double up and then shove all-in before you’ve had time to stack your chips. I see it. Rush! Then swordfish .

GOGOGO! I am glued to this computer rooting for you with the blind structure and Ms in my apron pocket .

There you have it. No more negative thinking, despite its centrality in my day-to-day philosophy. I was a player, and I was in this game. I wasn’t depressed, I was curating despair. I wasn’t half dead, but half alive.

I reentered the Pavilion and waited for the color-up to finish, when they take out all the $25 chips and change them for $100s. Bye-bye chump change. Bye-bye chumps, too.

I started humming that song from Ocean’s Eleven . I know most classical music from the pop vehicle that introduced me to it, hence “That orgy song from A Clockwork Orange ” or “That one where Bugs Bunny victimized the opera singer.” The aforementioned opera sequence from The Untouchables . The tune in question was “Clair de Lune,” a tender little number, and I did not mind humming it among the gamblers. If I whistled on the streets in New York, I could hum in the casinos of Las Vegas.

So, Debussy. “Moonshine.” It starts off slowly, and you lift with the current, this sort of warm levitating feeling. Then it picks up, cresting to a victorious apex, but it’s a curious kind of victory, for even as it approaches fulfillment, each triumphant note is undercut by evanescence, a hint of loss that is contrary to the apparent trajectory of the song, and at the same time its true destination. The eventual collapse of the idea of escape is the real heart of the tune, even as we float joyfully on its evasions. It contained both failure and reward at the same time, and it was okay.

In Ocean’s Eleven , the movie stars assemble before the Bellagio’s dancing waters, the casino’s nightly extravaganza of synchronized fountain jets. For the whole flick, the movie stars have been handsome, they have been clever and rude, but now they are quiet. They cannot speak. This was the big one. It was the big job, the heist of a lifetime, and somehow they’d pulled it off. Everything before this was half-assed practice. Everything after will be disappointing postscript. The movie stars stand there looking at the dancing waters, among strangers, the tourists and the squares, the ones who’d never know that a miracle just happened. But these guys knew, they had touched it, even if seconds from now it would change from what they did into what happened , become a story they’d rarely share. They’d tell it years from now because they felt safe with their companion, or because they were feeling down and couldn’t help themselves. The night is cool, the heart is sliding into nostalgia, and they say, “Did I ever tell you about the time I played in the World Series of Poker?” The awful knowledge that you did what you set out to do, and you would never, ever top it. It was gone the instant you put your hands on it. It was gambling.

The only heist I’d ever pulled was some Rififi -type shit to get the kid’s tooth from under her pillow and slip some Arby’s coupons in there. But I was calm, for a shove machine. This was the round where I’d make my stand. I arranged my chips into a tiny fort. I turned the pink foam flip-flop upside down so I could see what the kid wrote to me.

GO LUCK

(Don’t tell me you didn’t realize this was a sports movie, the only one I’ll ever star in. Maybe you, too, because we’re in this together, you and I. But keep in mind it’s a ’70s sports movie, and you know how those end.)

The blinds were $400/$800 with a $100 ante. I was at 4M, the Wave of Mutilation rising five seats down. The dealer shuffled and … I got cards. Two hands into Level 8, I got AK. Big Slick. Now we could begin.

I pretended to think about it, lying like a weatherman, and went All In. Everyone folded except for the swiper. Perhaps he suspected I’d run a game on him that last round before break, made him fold something promising. Here was a duel, unfolding before the table broke, it was a harpoon fight on a disintegrating chunk of ice in the polar seas, I’d seen this on TV. I intended to gut him, and I did. I turned over my AK, he showed his K-whatever, and I bled him on the Flop, and the Turn, and the River. I doubled up to $19K. You bet all your chips, the other guy or gal matches you, and if you win, you get all that plus the blinds and antes: double up. “Swiper, no swiping,” as Dora says.

They were about to break the table. The floor manager had our table draws, and he’d distribute them after this next hand. Country Time went All In. He’d done it a few times before, to mucks all around. This time, someone called him. I can’t remember what the flop was. All I know is that Country Time was out, and he drifted away.

The dealer was having some trouble sorting through Country Time’s stack. Seat 5 said, “I don’t know if he’s out.” Maybe Country Time had chips left.

“He’s still there,” someone said. Indeed Country Time was, well, taking his time in his departure. There are different types of players. Aggressive. Solid. But there was only one way to walk out of the room when you bust: Absent of dignity, full of shame.

“Should we get him?”

“Count it,” the floor manager said.

The dealer moved the chips around.

“Does he have anything left?”

“He’s walking slowly.”

“We can catch up to him.”

We looked over. We looked back at the chips.

“How much does he have?”

“Should we get him?”

No one moved.

“Count it again,” the floor manager said.

“He’s walking pretty slowly.”

Country Time exited the Pavilion. He had a single chip left, $1,000. One of the players asked what was going to happen to it. The floor manager said it would be placed at his seat at his new draw. He’d be swiftly blinded out. It was an unsettling image, the floor guy setting this anonymous chip on the next table and the chip just sitting there, being eroded into smaller chips, and evaporating. Never a face to put to the player formerly known as White 83, Seat 5. You know, Country Time.

The table broke. I liked them now, the gamblers. They were just people. They had intimidated me, but no more. They were better players, dexterous in their manipulation of the underlying principles, they had poker faces they toiled over, but they were just dumb morons like I was, mules walking on their gravel. They put on too much cologne or too little antiperspirant, uploaded stupid photos to Facebook, were riven by doubt and then fortified by an unexpected reversal, wiped ketchup from the corners of their mouths, these messy eaters. They were scared, like I was, of being wiped out, of losing all their chips in hexed confrontation. Mules like me. They carried tokens from home to remind them of what they had left behind, and placed these things next to their chips, and they prayed.