Ghosts Of Poker - Chapter 1: A Brief Encounter

Come here, I’ll tell you all the things you find out about being under a spotlight.

First, there’s the light. Of course, there’s light, dummy; otherwise it’d just be a spot, wouldn’t it? As it was in the beginning, so it is at the TV table. Let there be light, fine. But so much? You can’t see far past it. Try to gaze out there and you’ll feel like you’ve just tried to watch an eclipse the stupid way.

Then, heat. Television lights put off plenty of British thermal units, my friend, and they put them right onto your shoulders. Most of these guys feel the sweat rising up from their shoulder blades, tickling down their backs in little runnels and dampening their undies. It’s twitchy feeling, right at a time when you’d do well not to twitch.

Next, there’s them. You know . . . them. This is the one you really don’t ever think about. They can see you, and you can’t see them. It’s not like this at home. How you deal with it is what matters. Remember, you can’t see them. But you can feel them; they are out there in numbers you can’t discern, out on the periphery of all your senses. Relax, there’s only a hundred of them. A hundred fifty tops. This is what the logical part of your mind is telling you, but that part is busy calculating pot odds right now and can’t be bothered to mollycoddle you. Meanwhile, the reptilian part of your brain has swelled that half-bored crowd into an ocean. Hiss of breath, murmur murmur murmur, an odd scent, desultory motion out of the corner of your eye, the inescapable sense of anticipation; that at some point – perhaps at this point – you’ll make a misstep and fall, or have a tantrum, or a breakdown, or perhaps do something brilliant. They’re looking for something they haven’t seen before. The pressure of them, the weight of them, you can feel it, and in that moment they really are an ocean, and you are deep beneath them, and the pressure of that is all you can bear.

Also, Phil Ivey’s eyes are trying to drill into your brain, right through the skull and into the brainpan.

I’ll confess to you, that last one isn’t a common attribute of the spotlight, but it absolutely is an attribute of this particular one. Ivey. He’s like some malignant alien intelligence. He wants to get into your mind and feast on all your tender nuggets. People who are caught up in the banal and the merely superficial call him the Tiger Woods of Poker, but in truth he’s the Dick Cheney of Poker: He’s got all the information and he’ll never give you any of it, but he wants all your secrets. Also, he’s completely heartless. Also, he’s the devil.

I made that last one up. Ivey’s not the devil; he doesn’t want your soul, just every one of your chips.

Now . . . we’re not really talking about spotlights anymore. This is a more specific thing. A simple hand of poker. A situation to address. A problem to solve. You have two overs and a flush draw with two to come, and the Dick Cheney of Poker has just re-raised you for nearly a third of what you have left. It’s push or fold time.

And we’re not actually talking about you. I should be clear about that. I'm just trying to help you feel it. The “you” is me. My name is Goat, which sadly doesn’t preclude me from being a donkey. I have no idea what is about to happen. I barely even know how I got here.

Well, that’s not true. Of course I know how I got here. And of course I remember what the ghosts told me. But now I have to remember what it means. It won’t be too long before Ivey calls the clock on me.

* * *

How did I get here? I got here on a TWA people-carrier. It flew, believe it or not. A 400-ton aluminum tube shoots up into the air and stays there, which is almost as baffling a thing as twenty-seven relative strangers, some in their underwear, all playing poker from twenty-seven different locations for the chance to ride that tube.

The impartial Martian observer who has silently watched our planet since the beginning of the universe asks himself: How could such a thing as this be? And, more importantly, why?

We don’t know why, but sure, online poker is as real as any airliner. I won my way into the Tournament of Champions and then I took the thing down. Suddenly I was going to Australia. I was the one. Crazy. Unfathomable. Fuel couldn’t believe it, either.

“I guess donkeys can do anything,” he wrote in the chatbox, and now, under the spotlight, I would have to agree. How could this be happening? This is the Aussie Millions near the end of the third day, and we’re well past “in the money” time. We’re three-tabled. I busted Sam Farha earlier today. I keep thinking I busted Sam Farha and it doesn’t take. That sentence cannot possibly be connected to reality. It’s like thinking, I just opened up an omelet sandwich on your left chin, Harpo. Total gibberish. But still, it’s true. It was one of the few times in the last few days I’d gotten my money in behind, and I thought I was crippled for sure. Then I caught one of my five outs, and Sam was done. He looked at me as though he wanted to open an omelet sandwich on my left chin, I promise you. I think he was thinking the same thing as Fuel. Donkeys can do anything.

We writers call that ‘felicitous synchronicity.’

No, we don’t. I just made that phrase up, or at least I think I did. Maybe it will catch on.

Don’t worry. The impartial Martian observer doesn’t understand me, either.

* * *

The first day had been madness. I was just learning to handle my chips, and that’s not a euphemism. Somehow I’d survived, and more than survived. I’d grown my chips to an above average stack. The nerves had kept me from any of my normal stupidities.

The second day was when the wheels nearly spun off. It had been bad from nearly the start. I’d gotten my money in with a set and jammed and a maniac with a half-stack had called me faster than our modern technology can measure. He was on a pure inside straight draw, and the turn was cruel to me. And just like that, I was the half-stack and he was a grinning monkey.

“Nice hand,” I hissed at him. You can say those words and mean so many things. The Inuit have dozens of words for different types of snow. Poker players have dozens of ways to say ‘nice hand’, and one of them even means ‘nice hand.’

I chose the one that meant, “How do you even see the cards with no oxygen going to your brain, you embarrassment to all living mammals, you?”

I got up to walk off the steam and found myself in the lobby. I sank into one of the deep sofas there and was considering ordering a quick drink when I saw a familiar face through the window. By this I mean a face familiar to me, though I was completely sure that he had no idea who I was. There was no mistaking it, though, for this was one of the bright stars in the dim sky of poker bloggery, this was the guy who had dropped the hammer in every continent, a fellow Phish fan and jam music junkie, this was the one and only Dr. Pauly. I’d been wondering if I’d see him; it was public knowledge that he’d be covering the event. He was standing outside and enjoying a smoke. I decided to make valor the better part of discretion and went out to introduce myself. By all accounts, he’s a nice guy, by any standard he’s a fine writer, and I'd always wanted to tell him how much I liked what he'd written about Phish's final performance of Slave to the Traffic Light. And besides, why not?

He looked up as I approached.

“Hey,” I said.

Pauly nodded politely, but that was all. He was waiting for the next move.

“You don’t know me, but I’m the BBT winner if you’ve heard of that. My name’s Andrew, but you’ve played me a couple times as –“

“Goat,” he said. I blinked at him, surprised. He grinned.

“I do think I read something a little something about the BBT on one or two of those blogs, you know. Well, good job getting here. You enjoying Oz?”

“I was until a few minutes ago.” Suddenly I was fuming. “You’d think the level of play would get a little better at a major tournament, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t believe what just happened, I had tens in middle pos…”

“Oh NO. OH GOD NO!” Pauly was transformed. The mild-mannered, friendly chap with whom I’d just been conversing was gone. He deftly barrel-spun what appeared to be a two-hundred pound ashcan between me and him. “You’re going to try to tell a goddam bad beat story, aren’t you?” He huddled in the corner like a dog that had been thrown into acid too many times. “I thought you read my stuff I thought you were a friend I thought you KNEW how AWFUL bad beat stories are WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME??”

“Look, I know, but this was a hand I played perfec—“

“Listen,” Pauly said, jerking his thumb back toward the casino ballroom. “If you listen closely, you can hear seven bad beats just as rancid as yours happening right now. Right now. And there’s another. And there’s another. And another. And another. And they all want to come find me and tell me all about them, every one of them. This is the nexus of bad beats on this continent, man. If you wanted to avoid them, you should have stayed as far away from poker as possible. Don’t you know where bad beats come from, you lummox, you moon-faced dummy you?”

“I guess, but . . .”

Pauly took another drag and looked at me. At that moment, I thought I saw pity in his eyes. “You need help, bud,” he finally said. “And it’s more than I can provide.”

All I could think to say was this: “Sure, maybe.”

“Maybe? Within ten seconds of meeting me, you’re reliving your bad beat for me. I ask how you’re enjoying Australia, and you tell me about some cards. Have you looked around? Do you realize where you are? This happens to be something close to paradise. You need to think about it.”

“Well, I need to get back there and defend what’s left of my stack, anyway,” I said, more than a little peeved. Who did this guy think he was? So you’re a bigtime blogger, whoop dee do. Doesn’t give you the right to be so holy high-and-mighty.

But when Pauly spoke again, his voice had changed completely. It was low, and hoarse, and it seemed to be coming from all 360 degrees at once.

“I have been doomed, doomed, doomed,” he said, and the way he said it shut me right up. “Dooooomed to hear bad beat stories. Dooooomed. But that fate need not be yours, Goat. I can send aid to you that you will not at first welcome. You will be visited by three Australians. Listen to them well, for they will not come again.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They will visit you. They will teach you if you will learn,” Pauly said, and then he put on his shades and shut his mouth. I took the hint and went back inside.


* * *

I caught fire after returning. My first double-through after I got back was utter luck. I caught quads and the other guy had a boat. Set up hand all the way. My next one was a very nice concealed straight against a top pair donkey. My next one was another set, and this one held. By the time we broke for the day, I had a nice healthy stack, and returned to my hotel room ready for sleep.

But as it turned out, sleep was not ready for me . . .


NEXT: THE GHOST OF POKER PAST


This story has been broken into four parts, both as tribute to Charles Dickens and in honor of those who like to start and finish all in one trip to the john.