The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death

  Finally, I had my talisman. Our last day together, I asked the kid to give me a good-luck charm. I was going to be gone three weeks all told, the longest we’d ever been apart, and I started missing her even before I left. I’d make up the time when I got back, we had years and years ahead of us, but how can you make up moments? I was standing on the terrace outside the convention hall, baking in the merciless Vegas heat and trying to keep a steady signal on my cell, when she told me, “I saw a rainbow, Daddy!” The ex-wife and the kid were in upstate New York, and I knew it had rained because folks were complaining about it on my Twitter feed. Her first rainbow. It hadn’t occurred to me that a rainbow was one of the milestones. Unscrewing the training wheels, sure, but light refracted through water vapor? What she felt about it was the important thing. Light refracted through water vapor. Here I was dying in the desert. The kid. What else did I have but the kid?

  That last day, I asked her to pick something out from her toys. “I’ll keep it on my table and it will give me good luck, and I’ll think of you whenever I look at it.” She deliberated, and chose a pink flip-flop. It was an inch and a half long, made of soft foam, and dangled from a key chain. It just appeared one day, probably from the bowels of a birthday party goodie bag—there was all sorts of weird little crap in those things, nestled among the Smarties and renegade Now & Laters. “Can you write something on it?” I asked. “Like ‘good luck’?”

  She deliberated again, and wrote GO LUCK in a six-year-old’s penmanship on the sole of the flip-flop. We let the ink dry.

  A pink flip-flop on a key chain. The first day I played, I kept it in my jacket pocket. I couldn’t bring myself to put it out there. It was definitely not cowboy, it was the very anti-Brunson made physical. On Day 2B, I pushed the charm up against my $23K. There was invisible stuff tied to the ring besides the pink flip-flop, too, all my psychic baggage on a string, limply rising to the ceiling of the Pavilion like a bouquet of faltering balloons. All right, Luck, I’m waiting.

  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.

  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 m
anager 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.

  I joined Black 6, Seat 4. I didn’t say anything and got the same back. This was a real table, they were playing cards here: $100K stacks, whole edifices of $1,000 chips like I’d only seen on the tube. Seat 2 was the table leader, decked out like the Unabomber with his hoodie cinched around his face, mirrored lenses repelling others’ eyes. I was the second-shortest stack—the worse-off guy looked queasy. But I’d double up again before dinner, per Coach. I felt giddy, like my skin had become so thin that only the tiniest membrane separated me from the outside, my inner self from the pure poker atmosphere I moved in. I’d pulled one heist, and I’d do it again.