Within an hour I am not just playing poker, I’m debating poker, arguing about poker, laughing about poker, inhaling poker. I even win some money.
‘Thanks for having me,’ I say, very sincerely, on the way out. ‘I had a great night.’
‘Come again,’ says The Sweep. ‘We play every Tuesday.’
A SUITED ACE
A♦ 6♦. That’s a pretty hand. I’m fourth to speak, and I should probably raise. But I would have to pass for a re-raise, and I don’t want to waste chips.
New players get very excited about lone aces. In the past, doing TV commentary on amateur or celebrity tournaments, I’ve invariably found myself shaking my head in despair as yet another player fritters his chips away by refusing to pass any hand with an ace in it. Just like me, as a kid, playing in that old teenage game with the boys, waiting for aces.
The problem is, everybody likes aces. If you bet with an ace, someone else will call or raise with an ace. In that situation, with A6 or A7, if you miss the flop you’ve got nothing, and if you hit the ace you’re probably still losing. What a mess.
AK is obviously a big hand, though not as big as some kids seem to believe. It’s no pair! But it carries a strong promise. Everybody loves AQ, too. AJ is moving into tricky territory – and A9 is not just a poisoned chalice, it’s a goddamn beaker of arsenic.
Suited wheel cards, I like those. A2, A3, A4, A5 of a suit: you’re drawing to a straight and a flush as well as two pair. And with the wheel cards, you don’t tend to get all feverish if you only hit the ace. I love those ‘spokes’.
Very big aces, great. Very small aces, focused goal. Middle-sized aces: like plastic lobsters in a Chinese restaurant window, they aren’t nearly as tasty as they look.
So what shall I do with this A6 I’m looking at, then? If I’m going to raise, I won’t want action. The ace is not just a plastic lobster, it’s a red herring: I might as well raise with any cards at all. A6 could be a particularly bad choice, because my cards might well be counterfeited by any hand that chose to get stubborn. So I opt to be conservative, and pass.
Emad Tahtouh makes it 50,000 to go out of the small blind, and Michael Muldoon calls in the big blind.
Flop comes 8♥ A♠ 5♦.
I should feel regretful: my hand would probably have been good here. In fact, when Emad comes out betting 70,000, I’m relieved.
He’s super-aggressive, this Emad. Probably the biggest threat on this table. He is a pro, making most of his money in the high-stakes games on PokerStars. I remember him from the World Series of 2005, he was one of the Lebanese-Australian crew who came out with Joe Hachem. I played a bit with Emad on the cash tables that year. Very nice guy. But I know his playing style.
A couple of days ago, in this same tournament, I made a deliberately small raise with AQ to trap Emad on the big blind. He was short of chips, but had just enough to make me pass for an all-in re-raise if I had a medium-strength hand. And I knew he knew it. I knew he’d move in if the maths were right. So I made the maths right, and he stuck it all-in with an 89 offsuit. To his annoyance, I called immediately – and to my annoyance, he hit a nine. The best-laid plans . . .
So now I feel like he’s made this tournament on borrowed time, with my chips, and sooner or later it will be my job to knock him out. Like Batman in a multi-way fight, when it comes to the biggest challenge, with the personal twist – ‘Leave this one to me.’
And this could have been the hand. If I had raised with my A6, and he had played back, and I had called, then I would probably be winning on this flop. My tactic with Emad is definitely to try and use his own aggression against him.
The problem is, just because he’s a good, strong, aggressive player, that doesn’t mean there’s a law against him being dealt a good hand. Why can’t he have a bigger ace than A6? Sure, if everyone passes to his small blind, he can raise it up with any two cards – but everyone on this table can play, everyone knows that you can raise with anything from the button or small blind when the others have folded. Poker double-think suggests, therefore, that people would actually be raising with real hands in these spots. Would I have wanted to play for all my chips, for my entire tournament, with a weak paired ace? I’m relieved that I passed. Michael Muldoon also passes.
On the very next hand, Peter Hedlund (a tall, tipsy, talkative Swede, who has seen his massive chip lead whittled away with each fresh beer) moves all-in with KQ, and is unlucky enough to find Michael Muldoon with AK in the small blind. No dramas on the flop, and Peter’s out in seventh place. He wins £36,600. The next prize is £44,000 – so that pass of A6, however girlish and weedy, might have won me £7,400.
And we’re down to six.
3
PIRATE SHIPS AND CACTUSES
‘The lowest pool hustler in the business is four times more respectable than some of those humbugs in Washington.’
– Minnesota Fats
They talk about ‘love at first sight’, but who needs to wait so long? I am in love before first sight: the new world champion of poker is twenty-seven years old, six-foot-six, from Montana, and his name is Huckleberry Seed. Word has come back from Las Vegas of this lanky superman, who has beaten a field of 295 runners in the 1996 World Series and won $1,000,000. Huckleberry Seed? Can he really exist, or is this a daydream spread across the Atlantic by a fan of Damon Runyon?
I need to find out. I imagine a poker champion as an ageing Texan, body like a sack of sand, hands hairy and heavy with jewellery, voice like a waterfall of cigarettes. This isn’t conjured from the air; that’s what most poker champions are like. I’ve read about them. But I’ve never met any. I want this glamorous young pro to be my first.
I may have met some professional poker players without knowing it. Who are those people in the Vic? Shadowy, gravelly, never a smile. I daren’t speak to them. I have no idea what they do for a living, if anything.
♠
Ever since I came back from that first trip to America, five years ago, I’ve had an occasional recurrent dream that there is a magic walkway between my house and the Desert Inn card room. In the dream, I am lying asleep in bed at home, but I wake up. That is, I dream that I wake up. And in my dreaming-awake state, I remember about the bridge. I don’t need to save money, I don’t need an aeroplane, I don’t need fake ID. I just walk over the bridge and find myself in the card room. Even though it’s the middle of the night, the place is buzzing and lively. I sit at a candle-lit bar, sipping a Martini and kicking myself for forgetting the bridge was there. I don’t play poker. I just sit at the bar, excited to be there, anticipating action to come. It is a very, very happy dream.
And then my brother’s friend Matt, who knows Al Alvarez, tells me about the Victoria Sporting Club. It is just across London, with a real-life poker room.
Matt
