he signs me in as a guest. I feel sick and shifty at the desk, like you do walking through Customs – like I did going into those Vegas casinos, when I really was smuggling something. My underage self.
But this is perfectly legitimate. All I have to do is sign my name where Matt has written it in block capitals, and we are waved in with a smile. We check in our coats, because there is a dress code (no coats, no trainers, no jeans, no T-shirts, no hats, no carrier bags, no income tax, no VAT, no money back, no guarantee) and head upstairs to the card room.
It doesn’t look like my dream. It doesn’t look like the Desert Inn. It has a garish carpet and cheap fruit machines. The air is a soupy smog of B&H cigarette smoke, Middle Eastern aftershave and non-specific Man Smell. Everybody looks miserable. This is not a holiday casino at all.
We go into the card room. A gaggle of elderly men, dressed in collared Aertex shirts, slacks and nicotine-stained sports jackets, squint at me and look away again. Nobody says hello. I shrink a little closer to Matt.
We are here to play a £20 seven-card stud tournament. I sink into my allocated seat and don’t speak a word all night. But, sticking to my traditional strategy (wire-ups, pairs above jacks, three suited connectors; fold everything else), I end up coming second in the tournament. I win about £250. I reckon I’ve got the game licked. This place may not be Disneyland, but I’m going to come here all the time.
♠
My second trip to the Vic is by myself. I’ve joined the club, which turns out to involve nothing more than filling in a form and waiting 48 hours before I’m allowed to play. Then I drive my own car down to the Edgware Road and sign myself in.
I wend my way through the siren calls of the slots, as far as the card room. I peep through the glass partition wall. There, just about visible through the volcanic cloud of smoke, is the same cliquey gaggle of old men. A couple of them peer suspiciously at me. My stomach clenches with fear. I go back down the stairs, find my car, and go home.
♠
I drive to the Vic. I park my car, I sign in, I leave my coat at the desk, I climb the stairs. I walk quickly and purposefully between the slots, up to the card room. When I get there, my feet stop by themselves. I peer in. The old men peer out. I might just as well leap over the barrier to the lions’ enclosure at London Zoo.
I retreat to the roulette table. Roulette is different. The croupiers are chatty and friendly. There are women around the table, young Chinese women, elderly Arab women. They bet fast and furious, scribbling down the numbers in their little notebooks. I throw £30 onto the baize and receive a small stack of chips in return. I play for half an hour and win about £20. I leave, satisfied.
♠
I drive to the Vic. I park in Harrowby Street, say hello to the receptionist, sign myself in, leave my coat, walk up the stairs, hurry to the card room, get to the threshold, swivel without stopping and walk back to the roulette table. I win £50. I go home.
♠
I drive to the Vic. I park outside the Marriott, wave at the doorman, greet the receptionist, sign myself in, leave my coat, walk up the stairs and over to the roulette table. I lose £100. I go home.
♠
I drive to the Vic. I park in the underground car park, leave my coat in the car, walk up to the desk, sign, say hi to Karen, take the lift to the first floor, walk to the roulette table. I lose £200. I go to the cashpoint, get another £100. I fight back to –£40 and stop.
Next time, I’ll win.
♠
I have started dreaming about roulette. At random moments during the day, I think I can hear the tiny ‘click’ which emanates from a croupier’s marker going down onto a winning chip. Wheels spin in my head. Money spins out of my bank account. I am playing, what, three or four afternoons a week now. I know that if I want to make a living as a self-employed writer, I need discipline. But I keep knocking off work at lunchtime and going down to gamble with the stake I have calculated from this week’s earnings, and next week’s and the week after’s. If I earn something once, I lose it three times. My bank statements are red. I have borrowed money from my brother, pretending it was for something else. This has got to stop.
♠
‘Try the Stakis in Russell Square,’ says The Chimney Sweep. ‘I’m in sometimes, if I’m not in the Vic. Roy Houghton runs the card room, he’s pretty friendly. We’ll be there on Wednesday night for a hi-lo tournament. Meet us there.’
And, finally, I start playing casino poker. Just once or twice a month, to supplement the weekly Tuesday game. For a while, I pop into the Stakis in the afternoons and play roulette there. But eventually it gets bad, and it really does have to stop, and it does stop, and it hurts, and I swear off roulette for ever.
But I get to know people in the Stakis card room. There are usually about thirty players in there, just enough for a tournament. I say hello to some of them, ask how they’re getting on. And I call Hugo and Kira sometimes, to find out if they are going to the Vic, and I go when they’re going. Turns out The Sweep was usually in there all along, tucked away behind a pillar or a Greek. I become one of a handful of semi-regular younger players, who are looked on by the old men with indulgent amusement. I recognize their faces now, know some of their names, but I never speak to them.
The Vic games are very tough. I’m a Stakis player, an amateur, an occasional and recreational visitor. Maybe I’ll graduate to the Vic properly one day, but not yet. That’s how it works: you play your home games, and you play for fun sometimes in the Stakis, and one day – if you don’t give up or go broke – you graduate to the Vic.
♠
Flying back into McCarran airport, this time ‘of age’ with a genuine driving licence and an adult’s right to play poker, I am determined to win more money and meet Huckleberry Seed. My friends have crushes on Robbie Williams. I have a crush on a poker player I’ve never even seen. But I have a good excuse to look for him: I can sell an interview with him to the newspaper back home.
I’m not a proper journalist. I have never whipped late copy from a typewriter and cried, ‘Hold the front page!’ I’ve never shouted information down a sat-phone over the roar of gunfire. I have once bruised my fist by thumping it angrily on a coffee table while trying to explain a joke to a bored copy-taker on a crackly mobile, but that doesn’t count. I write the light stuff, features and columns, more closely related to the crossword and horoscope family than hardline news. Certainly, I can sell an interview with a 27-year-old millionaire gambler. Poker is a tiny secret world that nobody on the outside knows about. It’s an investigative piece, like infiltrating the Bilderberg Group. Most people barely know that poker exists. If I ever mention that it’s my hobby, in a social situation, people are amazed and fascinated. Poker! Who knew that anybody plays that old game, any more?
♠
Being a rambling-gambling man, Huck Seed isn’t easy to track down. I launch my quest from a cheap room at the Las Vegas Hilton. A list of defunct telephone numbers leads eventually to an old flatmate, who is less than encouraging. ‘You know the movie Forrest Gump? You know the leaf that floats through the movie, never settling in one place? Well, that’s Huck. Last I heard, he was playing at the Crystal Park Casino in LA.’
More phone research reveals that the leaf is indeed tossing around in the Crystal Park air, obstinately refusing to settle. I could drive to Los Angeles from here in about
