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

My friend Nathan hosted a one-off game, twenty whole bucks to buy in. Figured I’d employ my new expertise, even if it was only a few chapters’ worth. I was pretty high on my assignment. It’d be like one of those pieces where someone does a thing for a year and then writes about it, like cook a classic Julia Child recipe every day, or follow the Bible to the letter, or re-create Ted Bundy’s notorious spree with “special noogies” in lieu of murder and whatnot. But instead of one year, it would be two months, because of time constraints and my short attention span on account of the internet. Occasional Dispatches from the Republic of Anhedonia. Eat, Pray, Love for depressed shut-ins. Energized for Nathan’s game, I’d bust out some crazy Sklansky-Fu on these knuckleheads.

It was the most money I’d ever lost in a home game. The gathering was civilized enough. We shared a profession, all writers of one sort or another, five men and three women. More poets than usual (one), perhaps the circus was in town. Home games, you generally play with your own kind. Every night, all over the country, CPAs were playing with CPAs, firemen with firemen. You’ve been driven to the sanctuary of the card table by the same forces. It helps if you have something in common, and this night we warmed our hands by the fires of our undying grievance and anxiety.

The spread was top notch. Sliced meat that came from European pigs that seemed to have succulent body parts American pigs didn’t. We ordered fancy pizzas and Middle Eastern food, drank small-batch bourbon and local vodka fermented from stuff pulled from the Gowanus Canal or something, it was hard to read the label. Good to see everybody. We talked apartments (one bedroom or two), kids (one child or two), work travel to boondoggle festivals in exotic lands, teaching gigs in Podunk college towns. The music was niche indie: Everyone kept asking “Who’s this,” “Who’s this,” and then the creator of the playlist expounded. And hand after hand, I lost.

The pleasant tableau described above is what a home game is all about. It’s not what a casino game is about. That night I played as if those guys knew what I meant by wagering 2.5 times the Big Blind here, betting half the pot on the Turn there. Sklansky, Sklansky, I tried, brother. But what use is my semi-bluff when my nonfiction-writing friend blindly threw chips into the pot, more intent on sharing his story of how his eczema was “really flaring up.” His doctors wrote a scrip for a new topical steroid, what the heck, he’ll try anything at this point. Sklansky, Sklansky, tell me: How can “The Hammer of Future Betting” pierce the armor plate of “Level with me, guys. How old is ‘too old’ for breast-feeding?” I was being outwitted by allergies. “You wouldn’t think it, but there are some not-bad gluten-free beers on the market. It’s my turn? Sure, I’ll throw in two bucks. See, instead of using hops …” If no one’s paying attention to my new, hot-rod playing strategy, does it even exist?

No. I bought in for another twenty, and then another.

They weren’t going to drop, these romantics. In love with the final card, the River. They will stay in to see the River, for it will save them, always, plug the holes in the straight, gussy a pair of 5s into trips, reverse the evening’s bad luck. The River will wash away their sins, of which they have many: holding on to cards that are real long shots to improve (I’d never do that); ignoring ominous developments on the board and textbook-strong betting from across the table (i.e., from me); and ruining the night of a pal who is stressed out about going to the World Series of Poker and could use a break (me again). My twenty-five-year-old self would’ve been broken by the losses. A hundred and forty bucks was everything back then. It was beer, cable, and cigarettes. Hope.

That’s why serious poker players deride low-stakes limit games as No Fold’em Hold’em, like cineastes sneering at the latest Texas Chainsaw retread. This is not art but a massacre of all that is holy. The common folk, they like their cheap entertainment, play for social currency more than cold hard cash. Tomorrow it’s back to filing the quarterly reports, that conference with Kaitlyn’s teacher about her absences, getting the boiler checked out. But tonight you are free. You dragged your sorry ass out to forget your daily disasters. Why let an obvious flush muck your hand when the River is going to abracadabra your two pair into a full house? It’s fifty cents, it’s four more bucks, whatever, to see that last card. Just wanna have some brews and try out that new joke you heard at work, not conform to some Sklanskian ideal of the Game.

Yes, it was everybody else’s fault. Not mine for letting these fools draw out on me, for making it cheap to call my bets, for not changing gears to adjust to a loose game. For not realizing the simple fact that a money game is not a tournament. It was like writing short stories and thinking it was the same thing as writing a novel. That night I started sleeping more poorly than usual.

YHS :“Your hand sucks,” from online play. You post the breakdown of a hand to get advice from the community, but your cards are so bad the situation is a no-brainer. “YHS, moron,” is the response that pops up in the chat box. If that’s too hard to remember, think of it as “Your High School.” Surely you’ve not forgotten that particular awfulness.

Memorial Day Weekend. Six weeks until the start of the Main Event.

Saturday morning, the Tropicana Poker Room was a whisper. The players were still bent over their late breakfasts, chewing over last night’s losses and delivering surething declarations of today’s successes. One last, shallow interaction with non-poker-playing companions before everyone diverged to their chosen gambling arena.

In those other quicksand places — beeping and blinking slot sinks, blackjack maws, and overpriced buffets — the casino makes its daily bread. The poker room is a loss leader. That precious square footage eats up room that could be used for any number of more devious money-sucking machines. The house takes a rake, a tiny percentage of each pot, but that’s it. Caesars, the Trump Taj Mahal, and all the other casinos sticking up out of the boardwalk like rotten teeth, they host a couple of tournaments a day. Morning, afternoon, evening, recouping the operating expenses (electricity, staff, the inhibition-lowering mist dispersed into the ventilation system) from rooms, meals. The various acts of larceny perpetrated upon the poker players’ companions.

For my part, I was not enthused about reading a poker how-to while queued for the omelet station of the buffet. Might as well get caught highlighting Beyond First Base: Advanced Booby Tips of the Pros on the way to the prom. I grabbed a grande coffee and performed some lastminute cramming in my room. I was only a third of the way through my tournament primer. It would have to do.

While today was my first casino tournament, I’d played in half a dozen homegrown ones over the years. Once at a bachelor party. At a pal’s house once or twice someone had suggested an impromptu tournament, everyone bought in. Unaccustomed to the new pace, folks busted out quickly and pouted on the sidelines, so we gave everybody their money back and started playing Omaha again. One time a friend of a friend organized an eighty-man tournament. He cleared out the desks in his office — some sort of internet boondoggle or design studio — to make room for rented chairs and tables. It was all guys, a real sausage party when we lined up for our table draws, sweating testosterone, trying to figure out who in the room was a chump or a ringer. Was this the set of a gang bang? Gang-bang shoots probably have beer and pizza, too.