The New Kings of Nonfiction

by Ira Glass

  “Jesus Makes 6-6-6,” I proclaim. “Takes Over Chip Lead, Molests Wife in Public.”

  “Molests Girlfriend in Public,” a railbird amends me.

  “Even better,” I say. But the truth is, I’m dying inside. Not only is Jennifer not here to cheer me but it’s starting to sink in that to win this damn thing I’ll not only have to catch a few monsters; I’ll need to catch them when someone else holds one a single pip lower. I’ll have to play well for four days just to be in a position to get lucky when the big money goes in the pot. If only, if only, I snivel. If only I’d caught aces on this hand . . . till it dawns on me that if I had, I would’ve lost every one of my chips. But of one thing I’m certain: Smooching Jesus is due for an epic correction. Having bounced Duke with aces and Franklin with tens, he now spikes a two-outer and doubles through Jeff to the lead. What he needs is a quick crucifixion, if only to give his strawberry-blond Mary Magdalene something to hug him about. Everyone at the table would love to just nail him right now, yet we’re terrified of taking him on. Not only does he have the big stack but he’s got my old horseshoe lodged miles and miles up his ass.

  T.J., of course, isn’t terrified. He’d seen hundreds of rushes like this before Chris was even born. I fold Raquel Welch (3-8) in a hurry. “Raise,” T.J. mutters as soon as the action gets to him, pushing in $290,000. Abinsay folds, but Shulman reraises all-in. Then Jesus not only calls Jeff and T.J.; he, too, reraises all-in! The big guy can’t seem to believe what has happened, but he manfully lays down his hand, claiming it was jacks. We believe him. What are jacks, after all, once Jesus H. Christ gets involved? Turns out to be a pretty shrewd laydown when Jeff shows two kings, and Chris has . . . the aces again! Get the fuck outta here! The board renders no poetic justice either, because this time the best hand holds up. Just like that, Jeff is out. A couple of minutes ago he was running the table. He congratulates Chris and the rest of us, and then, with his dad’s arm around him, walks away like a man with a future.

  Ten hours later, the Horseshoe’s vast tournament room has been converted to an intimate poker studio, if there is such a thing. In place of last night’s four tables there are twenty rows of seats facing a thirteen-foot monitor. Bleachers were erected along one side of the final table, flanked by more rows of seats at both ends. The table is lit with four banks of lights, surrounded by cameras and monitors. Everyone else wants to interview the finalists, but the Discovery director has first dibs because of the shoot. One of his tech guys wires me for sound, winding the line up through the fly of my pants and clipping the mike to my collar.

  Back behind the bleachers, I peruse the new sheet with Hasan. Chris is in seat one with $2.853 million, Hasan is in two with $464,000, I’m in three with $554,000, T.J.’s in four with $216,000, Roman’s in five with $521,000, Kaufman is in six with $511,000. Between us we have $5.19 million in chips, with which we’ll be vying for $3.74 million in prize money. The other $1.38 million has already been awarded to places forty-five through seven.

  “Good luck to you, buddy,” says Hasan in his buttery lilt.

  “And good luck to you.” We embrace. I’m startled to realize that I meant what I said. For eight days now, we’ve been throwing haymakers at each other over critical pots, but that makes me love him a little. Plus we’ll both need some luck from now on.

  Finally, a little after noon, Thompson introduces us one by one. Chris, at thirty-seven, has already won the $2,500 seven-card-stud event, to go with the 1999 Best All-Around Player at the California State Poker Championship and his new Ph.D., but lists his occupation as “student.” I hear Andy note that his nickname stems not from delusions of grandeur but from his hair and the kindness of his features. I also hear that Hasan used to own a video store but has now, at thirty-eight, been a pro for four years; just last month, at the World Poker Open, he finished second in the $1,000 no-limit event.

  Now me. On their live Internet broadcast, Glazer and Phil Hellmuth, the 1989 champion, are calling me the “family man’s family man,” mainly because of my brag book and frequent calls home. Thompson says I’m playing in my first poker tournament and that most of my no-limit strategy comes from T.J.’s book. Down I sit. T.J. needs no introduction but gets a rather lengthy one anyway, followed by a standing ovation. This is his fourth final-table appearance at the Big One; he’s won four other WSOP titles, fifty-one major championships altogether. At sixty, he’s the sixth-leading money winner in series history, but by placing first or second today, he’d move past Johnny Chan into first. Abinsay, a fifty-two-year-old Filipino now living in Stockton, California, has already placed second in the $2,000 limit hold’em event, so he’s hot. Kaufman, fifty-four, is a rabbi as well as a professor of languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and other Semitic languages) at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, sufficiently high-powered as a scholar to be a consultant on the Dead Sea Scrolls. After playing big tournaments since 1997, he made the final table at Tunica. He’s also a bit of a noodge.

  I may have the second most chips, but we’re all basically tied for second behind Ferguson. And with a stack less than half the size of mine, T.J. is at least twice as dangerous. He sits bolt upright and smokes, his gray Binion’s polo shirt tucked into beltless beige slacks. I let him know one more time how terrific his book is, but he doesn’t want to hear about it. He seems to think it’s some kind of gamesmanship, and maybe he’s right. Yet it’s obvious to him and everyone else who the novice is here, the book-learned tournament virgin. No question, these five other guys see my $554,000 as the most plunderable stack.

  The blinds are still $15,000 and $30,000, with $3,000 antes, and will be for the next eighty-one minutes. T.J. can’t wait long to make a move, but it’s Hasan who puts in the first raise, to $70,000. I’m tempted to call with 2♦ 2♥ but come to my senses—duh!—in time to pass. When T.J. and Roman pass, too, it looks like Hasan may have executed the last day’s first steal. But then here comes Professor Kaufman blasting over the top of him in a language we all understand: twenty pink. Once Jesus folds, Hasan has the day’s first gulp-worthy decision. After gazing at Kaufman for maybe ten seconds, he lays down his hand with a sigh.

  Hand 2: From the button, Roman makes it $100,000 to go, a likely positional raise. Chris says, politely but firmly, “All-in.” Roman calls, pushing his entire half million, then turns over A♣ Q♣. Chris shows 8♦ 8♥. I want to observe Roman’s face, but T.J. is blocking him out as Thompson narrates the 7♥ 2♦ 7♣ flop, followed by a jack and a trey. Roman stands up from the table to abundant applause. His ouster has just guaranteed me fifth-place money, though it’s the last thing I care about now. What I want is to cast Jesus and the rest of these money-changers from the temple and rake in the serious shekels. What I don’t want is to glance at a monitor and be forced to wonder who’s the little homunculus hunched in the seat next to T.J.—this as, on Hand 4, T.J. is moving all-in. No one calls him, certainly not the homunculus with his measly J♦ 5♣. T.J. shows us A♠ 10♠. And now, on Hand 5, here comes Hasan moving in. I can’t call with 7♠ 6♥, and neither can anyone else. Am I playing too passively? I’ve already bled away 10 percent of my stack while the others are letting it rip.

  On my next hand Chris raises $50,000, Hasan folds, and with 8♣ 6♣ so do I; so do T.J. and Roman and Steve. We’ve thus let Chris extend his lead by $63,000. His chips are arranged in two massive triangles, one on top of the other: ten pink twenty-chip columns in a 1-2-3-4 configuration, topped by six of less-regular color scheme arranged 1-2-3. Very scary.

  My next few hands are unplayable, but on Hand 9 I find A♣ Q♣. Hasan, in the small blind, has raised it all-in once again. Suited A-Q is a better hand to raise than to call with, but still. Five-handed, it can fairly be called, pace Brunson, a monster. Granted that Roman’s A♣ Q♠ just got him beheaded, but my read of Hasan is that he’s caught up in a spasm of all-in steal-raises. In the end I am happy to call him. Pushing my seven stacks forward, I believe that this puts me all-in. Hasan shows A♥ 4♥. I was right.
When I flip up my A♣ Q♣, everyone sees why I’m thrilled. What a call!

  But now comes the flop of Hasan’s and my life: 9♠ 6♠ K♠. So far, so fantastic. Dead to the three remaining fours, Hasan groans, shakes his head. The other forty-two cards in the deck give me a $900,000 pot and a real shot at taking down Chris. The crowd’s yelling hundreds of things, but all I can hear is the Habib Society pleading for fours. “Ha-san Habeeeeeeeb!” someone croons. They outnumber my own fans, such as they are, plus they have a specific card to pray for, but I’ve come to understand that I’m gonna win not just this hand but the tournament. One and a half million dollars. The heavyweight championship of poker. My faith is confirmed when fourth street arrives as the sacred, the numinous, the preternaturally chic five o’diamonds. Close to a four, I gloat to myself, but no sucking-out-on-me cigar. Hasan has stood up, getting ready to shake hands. My heart pounds spasmodically, but I’m still feeling thoroughly confident. So that when the fifth street card—what?—is—what!—4♥, I “reel,” according to Glazer’s column that night, “in stunned silence,” even though a chorus of f-words and blasphemies and fours is howling like a squadron of Pakistani banshees on tilt through my skull. Glazer will also write that “Jim hadn’t suffered too many indignities at the hands of fate in the last couple of days. Most of his leading hands had held up. But now, at the worst possible moment, he’d taken a punishing blow.” Punished and reeling, then, away from the table, I have to be told by Hasan that I had him covered. “You’rrre still in therrre, buddy. I’m sorrrry. Keep playing. I’m sorrrry . . .” Although it feels like I died, I have life, if only $105,000 worth. Hasan and I are still clasping hands, shaking our heads in amazement. We realize that this is what happens in poker sometimes, that it could have just as—more—easily gone the other way, the towers of pink and orange chips being raked a foot to the left instead of a foot to the right.

  A round or so later I find A♠ 2♠. I have barely enough chips for the blinds, so I probably won’t see another ace, let alone a big pair. I move in. Kaufman—who else?—not only calls but moves in himself, trying to knock me out on the cheap while making sure it stays heads-up between us. Once Chris and Hasan muck their hands, Kaufman turns over . . . A♦ Q♠. It’s perfect. That I’m now in the same spot Hasan was just in somehow inspires an ever-more bottomless gloom. Yeah, sure, when Dante was spiraling down into the frozen bowels of Hell he may have also been ascending, without realizing it, toward Paradise, but here in Las Vegas, another frigid desert peopled by faithless demons, threeouters don’t spike twice in a row. Forget about the long odds against it—I know it’s not going to happen. And indeed the nine-six-king flop gives me neither a straight draw nor a flush draw, let alone a sweet deuce. In the end, with an ace on the turn, a ten on the river, it’s not even close. I am out.

  Now that the Satanic Prince of Noodges has forked me down into the pitch, there’s applause. Many zooms. Many clicks. I shake Kaufman’s hand, then Hasan’s, then T.J.’s. “You played well,” T.J. says. And that’s something. And now here is Jesus coming around for a hug. “You played great!” he says, bonily squeezing me. Walking away from the table, however, it dawns on me how alive I felt while playing four days in the Big One, and now I feel dead. I mean dead. As Thompson and Glazer and Hellmuth and all the other commentators are making clear to the assembled and far-flung poker universe, I’ve won $247,760 by finishing fifth out of 512. What it feels like is fifth out of six.

  Up on the podium, Becky Behnen shakes my hand, pets my arm. “You were wonderful, Jim. And last night! Congratulations!” Shaking my hand in his turn, her son Benny snaps me back to reality. “That four was brutal, man. Brutal. You were playing so awesome last night!” Yeah, last night . . . Tom Elias ushers me a few steps to the left, where the pay-out booth stands. From his unbashful spiel, I gather that “big winners” have to tip the dealers “between 2 and 8 percent.” I have to decide that right now? “We have to take care of our people, Jim. So, I mean, yeah, you do.” I decide to tip $7,800, 3.3 percent of my profit and vastly more money than I’d ever played poker for, or made in one week doing anything. After thanking me, Tom details a Horseshoe security guard to escort me downstairs to the cage. Passing a monitor, I see that Hasan has just been bounced, and I desperately want to keep playing! But I know it’s all over when the technician starts removing the sound pack. “If you’d just undo your belt . . .”

  At the cashier downstairs, I play hurry up and wait with bucket-toting slot players, then start signing form after form. I slide the tax forms, the tip receipt, and a trayful of five-thousand-dollar brown chips into my lockbox, keeping one of them back to rub against the coins in my pocket.

  By the time I get back upstairs, it’s down to T.J. and Chris. T.J. has one and a half million, and Chris has about four. It’s hard to get close to the action because of all the film and press people. Then I see what the commotion’s about: a phalanx of Horseshoe security has just delivered the traditional cardboard box to the table. Benny’s pulling out wads of cash and handing them to his mother, who stacks them at T.J.’s end of the baize. Each wad she takes from her son consists of five hundred Ben Franklins subdivided by five yellow and white paper bands marked “$10,000,” these in turn held together with rubber bands doubled near the ends of the bills. When Becky has finished there are thirty such five-inch-thick wads stacked in a ramshackle cube three wads high, five across. She lays the gold championship bracelet across the second gray tier, facing T.J., and T.J. can’t help staring back. It’s the thing he wants most in the world.

  I finally find Hasan and ask him what happened. “I had king-queen,” he purrs wistfully, shrugging. “Chris had ace-king.” Enough said. As we edge two steps closer, Chris makes it $175,000 to go from the button. T.J. calls. When the flop comes K♦ K♣ 6♥, T.J. checks. (In heads-up action, the player on the button bets first before the flop, second on subsequent rounds.) After thinking for over a minute, Chris bets $200,000. When T. J. says, “Call,” there is eight hundred grand in the pot. Fourth street arrives a red trey. Check, check. Street five: J♦. No straight draw, no flush draw, but do either of them have a king? T.J. at least represents having one by betting $600,000. Chris takes a while to decide, then calls and turns over a jack and a six, only to watch T.J. turn over K♥ 10♥. His check on the turn, letting Chris catch his jack for “free,” earned him an extra six large and put himself into the lead, with 2.6 million to Chris’s 2.5.

  “Only in no-limit,” says Andy.

  A couple hands later, Chris raises $175,000, prompting T.J. to come over the top for another half million. Chris shows how frightened he is by responding, “All-in.” Without a blip of reluctance, T.J. calls. Whoever takes this pot wins the championship.

  At Thompson’s official request, they show us and the cameras their hole cards: A♥ 7♥ for T.J., A♠ 2♠ for Chris. An uproar, then relative silence. From six feet away in his booth, I hear the Discovery director whisper, “Camera Two, give me Jesus.” Because Jesus is dead to a deuce or a flurry of spades and we all want to see his reaction. From my vantage point he looks nervous, unhappy, and pale. The flop comes 3♠ 10♠ Q♥. Although still a 3 to 2 underdog, Chris’s four-flush gives him nine extra outs to go with the two other deuces. Both guys have proven they have solid brass balls, but right now all four must feel clammy. When the turn comes K♥, T.J. picks up his own flush draw. But when 10♦ shows up on fifth street, yielding ten-ten-ace-queen-king for another chopped pot, the vibe suggests that maybe they’ll play on forever. Chris looks tapped out. How many deaths and resurrections can the Son of Man suffer per hour? Even the Texas centurion pretends to wipe sweat from his brow.

  The next two small pots go to T.J. when Chris is unable to call even modest $100,000 raises, but on the following hand Chris wins $400,000 with a raise on the turn. The hand after that brings no pre-flop raises, and when the flop comes K♥ 3♥ 8♣, Chris checks again. T.J. bets a mere hundred grand, Chris calls, and we all sense a trap being set. The question i
s, who’s trapping whom? Because when 7♠ hits on the turn, this time it’s Chris betting a puny $150,000 and T.J. who’s warily calling. Four of clubs on the river, and both of them check. While they stare at each other, Chris flashes what must be a king. T.J. mucks. They’ve been at it now for four and a half hours—a long time with this much at stake and dozens of lenses and mikes jabbing into your poker space.

  Ten minutes later, on Hand 93, T.J. raises to $175,000. When Chris reraises six hundred thou, T.J. moves in like a shot. The pulse in his cheek makes me think that he feels like he’s finally got Chris where he wants him. Certainly, if Chris manages to call him, this will be it—unless we get another chopped pot. Chris scratches his beard, shakes his head, exhales. Two minutes pass. I can’t speak for T.J., but no one else seems to begrudge all the time he is taking. “Call him, Jesus!” shouts a rowdy fan twenty rows back. T.J.’s eyes narrow as he drags on his umpteenth Salem. He puts his left fist to his mouth, clears his throat. Won’t anyone give him a lozenge?