For Richer For Poorer: A Love Affair With Poker Read online

  Until Charlie stumbles into the picture, apart from one intense, doomed love affair with an angry medical student, I spend most weekends back in London, hanging around in comedy clubs and stopping in occasionally at the Archway game to lose money I can’t afford.

  I miss the comic meritocracy. But getting older brings a self-consciousness which makes it quite impossible to go back on stage and shout ‘Good evening!’ at a bunch of sceptical strangers. I’m not scared of the idea, just embarrassed.

  By the time I leave university, comedy has changed. It has developed an unexpected cool streak. Articles in newspapers are describing it as ‘the new rock and roll’. Comedians have become sex symbols. They have groupies. They have managers and TV deals. They don’t seem to be the community of outsiders that attracted me in the first place. They have become the in-crowd.

  So, the natural path is to settle back behind a typewriter and try to craft my jokes from there. Broadsheet newspaper readers are far less demanding than stand-up comedy audiences. If you’re appearing after 2,000 words of earnest opinion about Bosnia, they’re happy if you can give them a single wry smile. And if they don’t smile, what the hell? You’re safely alone at home, not standing there like a lemon, being rubbed against the grater of public silence.

  But there’s no risk in it. No clench in the stomach as you walk to the microphone, wondering what kind of an audience they’re going to be. No euphoric high when you hear the first laugh and know it’s going to be okay.

  And how can there be any community, any belonging, when I’m alone at the typewriter? It’s a good life, but there is something missing.

  ♠

  I am standing in the doorway next to 7-11 in Notting Hill, clutching a bottle of whisky. The door is opened by a delicate, laconic little fellow with an explosion of black hair that makes him look, somehow, as if he is a Victorian street urchin who’s spent the afternoon up a chimney.

  He looks at the bottle of whisky, baffled. He seems as though he is about to say something sarcastic, but doesn’t. He takes the bottle from my hand, mutters a thank-you and puts it down on the stairs. I don’t see it again.

  He leads me up into a small room that appears very crowded with people. I can’t quite tell how they all fit round the table; it’s a Mad Hatter’s tea party with dormice slotting into teapots. They’re eating sweets, talking, dealing, swearing. Hugo, the chimney sweep, murmurs a couple of half-introductions, then gets bored and gives up. There are a few journalists, an IT man, a sleepy second-hand book dealer, a few undefined extras. And there is a slender, elegant, quirkily dressed woman, the first woman I have ever seen playing poker: Kira. A mutual friend has sent me to this game, amazed by the coincidence of knowing two female poker enthusiasts. Such unlikely specimens had to be introduced.

  But there is no smalltalk; this isn’t a dinner party. The hellos take about eight seconds before I am asked for money, given chips and dealt in. The entire conversation is about poker. There seems to be an intense group fascination for each hand, each deal, each variant, each card. If they’re not talking about the hand in play, they’re talking about a hand that just finished or a hand that was played last week. If it isn’t a hand they played themselves, it’s a hand that somebody played ‘in the Vic’.

  The game itself seems easier than the ones I’ve played before. The stakes are smaller. And although the conversation is saturated with poker, the atmosphere is more light-hearted than I am used to. No alcohol, no machismo, lots of junk food and giggling and double entendres and throwing sweets at people who win pots. There’s nothing cool about it. It’s somehow . . . silly. And yet it’s completely engaged and engaging, involving and enthralling. 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, talka
tive 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 drives me down to the Edgware Road and parks outside McDonald’s. We walk into ‘the Vic’ and 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?