by John Harvey
‘How long you played?’
‘Since I was twelve.’
‘Whatta your parents think about what you’re doing?’
‘They’re dead,’ he said unemotionally. ‘I live with my uncle. When he’s around. Which he isn’t much.’
‘Sorry.’
Tony shrugged.
‘Well, I don’t let anybody into the game without somebody vouches for them. So –’
‘I played in a couple games with Jimmy Logan. You know him, don’t you?’
Logan lived up in Michigan and was a respected player. The stakes tended to be small but Keller’d played some damn good poker against the man.
Keller said, ‘Go get a soda or something. Come back in twenty minutes.’
‘Come on, man, I don’t want –’
‘Go get a soda,’ he snapped. ‘And you call me “man” again I’ll break your fingers.’
‘But –’
‘Go,’ he muttered harshly.
So this’s what it’d be like to have kids, thought Keller, whose life as a professional gambler over the past thirty years had left no room for a wife and children.
‘I’ll be over there.’ Tony nodded across the street at the green awning of a Starbucks.
Keller pulled out his cell phone and called Logan. He had to be cautious about who he let into games. A few months ago some crusading reporters’d gotten tired of writing about all of Ellridge’s local government corruption and CEO scandals so they’d done a series on gambling (THE CITY’S SHAME was the yawner of a headline). The police were under pressure from the mayor to close up the bigger games and Keller had to be careful. But Jimmy Logan confirmed that he’d checked the boy out carefully a month or so ago. He’d come into the game with serious money and had lost bad one day but’d had the balls to come back the next. He covered his loss and kept going; he walked away the big winner. Logan had also found out that Tony’s parents’d left him close to three hundred thousand dollars in cash when they’d died. The money had been in a trust fund but had been released on his eighteenth birthday, last month.
With this news Keller’s interest perked up.
After the call he finished his lunch. Tony delayed a defiant half-hour before returning. He and his attitude ambled back into the diner slowly.
Keller told him, ‘Okay. I’ll let you sit in tonight for a couple hours. But you leave before the high-stakes game starts.’
A scoff. ‘But –’
‘That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.’
‘I guess.’
‘Bring at least ten thousand. . . . And try not to lose it all in the first five minutes, okay?’
The moments before a game begins are magic.
Sure, everyone’s looking forward to lighting up the sour-smooth Cuban cigars, arguing about the Steelers or the Pistons or the Knicks, telling the jokes that men can tell only among themselves.
But the anticipation of those small pleasures was nothing compared with the one overriding thought: Am I going to win?
Forget the talk about the loving of the game, the thrill of the chase . . . those were all true, yes. But the thing that set real gamblers apart from dilettantes was their consuming drive to walk away from the table with more money than they sat down with. Any gambler who says otherwise is a liar.
Keller felt this rush now, sitting in the pungent, dark back room of Sal’s Tavern, amid cartons of napkins, straws and coffee, an ancient Pabst Blue Ribbon beer sign, a ton of empties growing mold, broken bar stools. Tonight’s game would start small (Keller considered it penny ante, despite the ten-large admission price) but would move to high stakes later in the night, when two serious players from Chicago arrived. A lot more money would change hands then. But the electric anticipation he felt with big stakes wasn’t a bit different from what he felt now or if they’d only been playing for pocket change. Looking over the bare wood table, seeing the unopened decks of the red and blue Bicycle cards stacked up, one question sizzled in his mind: Am I going to win?
The other players arrived. Keller nodded a greeting to Frank Wendall, head of bookkeeping at Great Lakes Metal Works. Round and nervous and perpetually sweating, Wendall acted as if they were about to be raided at any minute. Wendall was the smart boy in Keller’s poker circle. He’d drop lines into the conversation like, ‘You know, there’re a total of five thousand one hundred and eight possible flushes in a fifty-two-card deck but only seventy-eight possible pairs. Odd but it makes sense when you look at the numbers.’ And he’d then happily launch into a lecture on those numbers, which’d keep going until somebody told him to shut up.
Squat, loud, chain-smoking Quentin Lasky, the owner of a chain of body shops, was the least educated but the richest man in the room. People in Ellridge must’ve been particularly bad drivers because his shops were always packed. Lasky played ruthlessly – and recklessly – and would win and lose big.
The last of the group was the opposite of Lasky. Somewhere in his late sixties, lean, gray Larry Stanton had grown up here, worked for another local manufacturer all his life and then retired. He was only in Ellridge part of the year; winters he spent in Florida. A widower, he was on a fixed income and was a conservative, cautious player, who never won or lost large sums. Keller looked at the old guy as a sort of mascot of the game.
Finally the youngster arrived. Trying to be cool but obviously excited to be in a serious game, Tony stepped into the room. He wore baggy slacks, a T-shirt and a stocking cap, and he toted a Starbucks coffee. Such a goddamn teenager, Keller laughed to himself.
Introductions were made. Keller noticed that Stanton seemed troubled. ‘It’s okay. I checked him out.’
‘Well, it’s just that he’s a little young, don’t you think?’
‘Maybe you’re a little old,’ the kid came back. But he smiled good-naturedly and the frown that crossed Stanton’s face slowly vanished.
Stanton was the banker and took cash from everybody and began handing out chips. Whites were one dollar, red were five, blue ten and yellow twenty-five.
‘Okay, Tony, listen up. I’ll be telling you the rules as we go along. Now –’
‘I know the rules,’ Tony interrupted. ‘Everything according to Hoyle.’
‘No, everything according to me,’ Keller said, laughing. ‘Forget Hoyle. He never even heard of poker.’
‘Whatta you mean? He wrote the rules for all the games,’ Lasky countered.
‘No, he didn’t,’ Keller said. ‘That’s what people think. But Hoyle was just some Brit lawyer in the seventeen hundreds. He wrote this little book about three bullshit games: whist, quadrille and piquet. Nothing else, no Kankakee, pass the garbage, put-and-take stud or high-low roll ’em over. And try going into the MGM Grand and asking for a game of whist. . . . They’ll laugh you out on your ass.’
‘But you see Hoyle books everywhere,’ Wendall said.
‘Some publishers kept the idea going and they added poker and all the modern games.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Tony said distractedly. He shoved his geek glasses higher on his nose and tried to look interested.
Keller said sternly, ‘Sorry if we’re boring you, kid, but I got news: it’s knowing everything about the game – even the little shit – that separates the men from the boys in poker.’ He looked over carefully. ‘You keep your ears open, you might just learn something.’
‘How the hell can he hear anything even if he keeps his ears open?’ Lasky muttered and glanced at the boy’s stocking cap. ‘What’re you, some kind of fucking rapper? Lose the hat. Show some respect.’
Tony took his time removing the hat and tossing it on the counter. He pulled the lid off his Starbucks cup and sipped the coffee.
Keller examined the messy pile of chips in front of the boy and said, ‘Now, whatever Jimmy Logan told you about playing poker, whatever you think you know from Hoyle, forget about it. We use the big boys’ rules here, and rule number one: we play fair. Always keep your chips organised in front of you so
everybody at the table knows how much you’ve got. Okay?’
‘Sure.’ The kid began stacking the chips into neat stacks.
‘And,’ Wendall said, ‘let’s say a miracle happens and you start to win big and somebody can’t see exactly how many chips you have. If they ask you, you tell them. Down to the last dollar. Got that?’
‘Tell ’em, sure.’ The boy nodded.
They cut for the deal and Wendall won. He began shuffling with his fat fingers.
Keller gazed at the riffling cards in pleasure, thinking: There’s nothing like poker, nothing like it in the world.
The game went back nearly two hundred years. It started as a Mississippi river boat cheaters’ game to replace three-card monte, which even the most gullible slickers quickly learned was just a scam to take their money. Poker, played back then with only the ten through the ace, seemed to give them more of a fighting chance. But it didn’t, of course, not in the hands of expert sharks (the innocents might’ve been more reluctant to play if they’d known that the game’s name probably came from the nineteenth-century slang for wallet, ‘poke’, the emptying of which was the true object of play).
‘Ante up,’ Wendall called. ‘The game is five-card draw.’
There are dozens of variations of poker games. But in Keller’s games, five-card draw – ‘closed poker’ or ‘jackpot’ were the official names – was what they played, high hand the winner. Over the years he’d played every kind of poker known to man – from California lowball draw (the popular poker game west of the Rockies) to standard stud to Texas Hold ’Em. They were all interesting and exciting in their own ways but Keller liked basic jackpot best because there were no gimmicks, no arcane rules; it was you against the cards and the other players, like bare-knuckle boxing. Man to man.
In jackpot, players are dealt five cards and then have the option of exchanging up to three in hopes of bettering their hands. Good players, like Keller, had long ago memorised the odds of drawing certain combinations. Say, he was dealt a pair of threes, a jack, a seven and a two. If he decided to keep the pair and the jack and draw substitutes for the other two, he’d have a one in five chance of getting another jack to make a two-pair hand. To draw the remaining threes in the deck – to make four of a kind – his chances dropped to one in one thousand and sixty. But if he chose to keep only the pair and draw three new cards, the odds of getting that four of a kind improved to one in three hundred and fifty-nine. Knowing these numbers, and dozens more, were what separated amateur players from pros, and Keller made a very good living as a pro.
They tossed in the ante and Wendall began dealing.
Keller focused on Tony’s strategy. He’d expected the kid to play recklessly but on the whole he was cautious and seemed to be getting a feel for the table and the players. A lot of teenagers would’ve been loud and obnoxious, Keller supposed, but the boy sat back quietly and just played cards.
Which wasn’t to say he didn’t need advice.
‘Tony, don’t play with your chips. Makes you look nervous.’
‘I wasn’t playing with them. I –’
‘And here’s another rule – don’t argue with the guys giving you rules. You’re good. You got it in you to be a great player – but you gotta shut up and listen to the experts.’
Lasky grumbled, ‘Listen to him, kid. He’s the best. I figure I bought his friggin’ Mercedes for him, all the money I lost here. And does he bring it into my shop to get the dings out? Hell, no. . . . Call you.’ He shoved chips forward.
‘I don’t get dings, Lasky. I’m a good driver. Just like I’m a good poker player. . . . Say hi to the ladies.’ Keller laid down three queens and took the nine hundred dollar pot.
‘Fuck me,’ Lasky snapped angrily.
‘Now there’s another rule,’ Keller said, nodding at the body-shop man, then turning to Tony. ‘Never show emotion – losing or winning. It gives your opponent some information they can use against you.’
‘Excuse me for breaking the rules,’ Lasky muttered to Keller. ‘I meant to say fuck you.’
Twenty minutes later Tony’d had a string of losses. On the next hand he looked at the five cards he’d been dealt and, when Stanton bet ten dollars, shook his head. He folded without drawing any cards and glumly toyed with the lid of his Starbucks cup.
Keller frowned. ‘Why’d you fold?’
‘Losing streak.’
Keller scoffed. ‘There’s no such thing as a losing streak.’
Wendall nodded, pushing the cards toward Tony to deal. The resident Mr Wizard of poker said, ‘Remember that. Every hand of poker starts with a fresh shuffle so it’s not like blackjack – there’s no connection between hands. The laws of probability rule.’
The boy nodded and, sure enough, played his way through Stanton’s bluff to take an eight hundred and fifty dollar pot.
‘Hey, there you go,’ Keller said. ‘Good for you.’
‘So, what? You in school, kid?’ Lasky asked after a few lackluster hands.
‘Two cards,’ the boy said to Keller, then dealing. He replied to Lasky, ‘Been in computer science at the community college for a year. But it’s boring. I’m going to drop out.’
‘Computers?’ Wendall asked, laughing derisively. ‘Hightech stocks? I’ll take craps or roulette wheel any day. At least you know what the odds are.’
‘And what do you want to do for a living?’ Keller asked.
‘Play cards professionally.’
‘Three cards,’ Lasky muttered to Keller. Then to Tony he gave a gruff laugh. ‘Pro card playing? Nobody does that. Well, Keller does. But nobody else I know of.’ A glance at Stanton. ‘How ’bout you, Grandpa, you ever play pro?’
‘Actually, the name’s Larry. Two cards.’
‘No offense, Larry.’
‘And two cards for the dealer,’ Keller said.
The old man arranged his cards. ‘No, I never even thought about it.’ A nod at the pile of chips in front of him – he was just about even for the night. ‘I play all right but the odds’re still against you. Anything serious I do with money? I make sure the odds’re on my side.’
Lasky sneered. ‘That’s what makes you a man, for Christ’s sake. Having the balls to play even if the odds’re against you.’ A glance at Tony. ‘You look like you got balls. Do you?’
‘You tell me,’ the boy asked and laid down two pairs to win an eleven hundred dollar pot.
Lasky looked at him and snapped, ‘And fuck you too.’
Keller said, ‘Think that means yes.’ Everyone at the table – except Lasky – laughed.
The play continued with a series of big pots, Lasky and Tony being the big winners. Finally Wendall was tapped out.
‘Okay, that’s it. I’m out of here. Gentlemen . . . been a pleasure playing with you.’ As always, he pulled a baseball cap on and ducked out the back door, looking hugely relieved he’d escaped without being arrested.
Keller’s cell phone rang and he took the call. ‘Yeah? . . . Okay. You know where, right? . . . See you, then.’ When he disconnected he lit a cigar and sat back, scanned the boy’s chips. He said to Tony, ‘You played good tonight. But time for you to cash in.’
‘What? I’m just getting warmed up. It’s only ten.’
He nodded at his cell phone. ‘The big guns’ll be here in twenty minutes. You’re through for the night.’
‘Whatta you mean? I want to keep playing.’
‘This’s the big time. Guys I know from Chicago.’
‘I’m playing fine. You said so yourself.’
‘You don’t understand, Tony,’ Larry Stanton said, nodding at the chips. ‘The whites go up to ten bucks each. The yellows’ll be two fifty. You can’t play with stakes like that.’
‘I’ve got . . .’ He looked over his chips. ‘. . . almost forty thousand.’
‘And you could lose that in three, four hands.’
‘I’m not going to lose it.’
‘Oh, brother,’ Lasky said, rolling his eyes. ‘The
voice of youth.’
Keller said, ‘In my high-stakes game, everybody comes in with a hundred large.’
‘I can get it.’
‘This time of night?’
‘I inherited some money a few years ago. I keep a lot of it in cash for playing. I’ve got it at home – just a couple miles from here.’
‘No,’ Stanton said. ‘It’s not for you. It’s a whole different game with that much money involved.’
‘Goddamn it, everybody’s treating me like a child. You’ve seen me play. I’m good, right?’
Keller fell silent. He looked at the boy’s defiant gaze and finally said, ‘You’re back here in a half-hour with a hundred Gs, okay.’
After the boy left, Keller announced a break until the Chicago contingent arrived. Lasky went to get a sandwich and Stanton and Keller wandered into the bar proper for a couple of beers.
Stanton sipped his Newcastle and said, ‘Kid’s quite a player.’
‘Has potential,’ Keller said.
‘So how bad you going to hook him? For his whole stake, the whole hundred thousand plus?’
‘What’s that?’
‘“Rule number one is we play fair”?’ Stanton whispered sarcastically. ‘What the hell was that all about? You’re setting him up. You’ve been spending most of the game – and half your money – catching his draws.’
Keller smiled and blew a stream of cigar smoke toward the ceiling of the bar. The old guy was right. Keller’d been going all the way with losing hands just to see how Tony drew cards. And the reconnaissance had been very illuminating. The boy had his strengths but the one thing he lacked was knowledge of the odds of poker. He was drawing blind. Keller was no rocket scientist but he’d worked hard over the years to learn the mathematics of the game; Tony, on the other hand, might’ve been a computer guru, but he didn’t have a clue what his chances were of drawing a flush or a full house or even a second pair. Combined with the boy’s atrocious skills at bluffing, which Keller’d spotted immediately, his ignorance of the odds made him a sitting duck.
‘You’ve also been sandbagging,’ Stanton said in disgust.
