Playing: Paul “The Cowboy” Carvill, Bend It Like Benny, Howlin’ Mad Howard, Ken “The Elegance” Middleton, Magic Mark Malloy, Stu “Nuts” McLellan, Sean “OJ” Gorman – don’t squeeze the juice, Banat “The Rock” Banat
Venue: Ashford Amateur Poker Association (AAPA) Bar ‘n’ Grill, Ashford, Tennessee.
The price of poker just went up
A piece of advice – “Never rub another man’s rhubarb.” That’s what Jack tells Michael before he shoots him in the 1989 film Batman. Another piece of advice – never bet large in poker against someone who’s never played before because you think they might not recognise a winning hand and in fact earlier in the evening they had demonstrated an inability to distinguish such a winning hand, the nuts even, from a lesser, big-money losing joke of a hand. They will invariably have the winning hand, and they will know it. They will look at you through clear eyes, their heart unfettered by carefully calculated odds and psychological jedi mind-tricks. Plainly and simply they will have become aware of their card-based superiority and your subsequent and insurmountable inferiority. Zen-like they will match you chip for chip as you push stack after teetering stack into the middle of the table, your palms clammy and your face drained. Their palms will not be clammy, they will be soft and babylike. They will not appear nervous. This is not a sign of their naivety, or their lack of poker chops, or even their astonishing chutzpah. This is the sign of a winner. Learn it, recognise it, avoid it.
Rapidly establishing itself on the amateur poker circuit, Ashfordian poker is known as much for it’s weak grasp on the thin end of the mental wedge as for it’s extreme lack of gaming etiquette. If your home game is a civilised drawing room-based clique of cigar-smoking, card-playing aristocratic dogs, the AAPA is a gin-soaked barrel of unashamedly profligate and diseased monkeys rotting in their own filth.
House manager Mr Warwick Gorman is on hand to quell any disputes that may arise. He looks like Jesus, had Jesus lived to middle-age, sired three fine children and moved out of Jerusalem into the suburbs. He also has many Jesus-like qualities – ask him to perform his miracle with a pair of underpants and a crystal chandelier! One blot on his ecclesiastical copybook is a distinctly unholy ability to ROCK! When he and his wife were courting they went to a peak-period Led Zep gig at Earl’s Court. His wife fell asleep (At a Led Zep gig? Was she deaf?) but the WG continued to rock alone, stopping only to grab a bag of chips and a carton of Quash and feed the 25,000. There’s a cool photo of them both in period costume on their wedding day on top of the stereo in the back room, if you’re an avid Warwick fan wanting to purloin a quality souvenir.
Ben’s come in the hopes of breaking his duck and pocketing some cash. These kids need coolin’, baby I’m not foolin’. We’re gonna send them back to schoolin’. That’s the plan anyway, but like all the best ones it’s goes down the crapper faster than 143 bottles of beer, at the last count.
I’m explaining the rules for the new folks, this being only the second ever AAPA poker game. Some of the new folks aren’t listening. No matter, they’ll learn – you snooze, you lose. In fact, as it later turns out, they didn’t need to listen and they didn’t need to learn. They will win big and it will change us all.
I split my crate of beer with Ben, who’s come straight from work in Soho and undoubtably spent the day removing the stretchmarks from photos of Linda Evangelista that are going out in Saturday’s Times. He’s itching to play. He is the exception to the behavioural science rule. If you let a rat choose between eating some cheese and not eating some cheese, and electrocute the rat every time it opts for the cheese, eventually the rat will avoid the cheese. Tuition through fear. Poker is Ben’s cheese. He loves it, and he loves the electricity. He is not afraid. Howard’s got three bottles of beer in front of him. He has work tomorrow and doesn’t trust himself not to drink 3 gallons of lager. He smokes 2 decks of fags over the course of a couple of hours, but complains he can’t breathe when someone sparks up a cigar. Oh, his poor tar-stained lungs. Ken’s still not sure he gets it, but hell he’s a financial adviser so he’s not even playing with his own money, just one of his high-risk accounts. If he loses he can sell his body on the streets of Ashford, where it’s exotic lustre and interesting texture fetch a king’s ransom. Opposite me is Mark, who’s been banned from bringing vodka after we had to peel him off the ceiling at the last game. I take a long look at him and wonder if he smuggled the booze in. In his belly. Next to him is Nuts McLellan, currently humming to himself and inspecting the artex ceiling while I point out the finer points of flop-betting theory. In the example flop is a K 6 2. I say that if you hold 2 kings you’re currently winning the hand. Someone pokes Stu. He looks startled, like he’s not sure where he is or how he got there. He folds. What did you fold, I say. It’s 2 kings. At the end of the table, our kind host Sean. He’s drinking lady-sized Buds. They fit between your thumb and forefinger and contain a single gulpful of refreshing cat’s-piss. Last, it’s Banat. There’s differing professional opinions on this gamer, depending on how drunk you are and whether you squint your eyes. On one hand he’s The Rock. On the other hand he’s The Origami Kid. You decide.
In the early games I stir up a shitstorm, laying wicked bets and representing wondercards amidst a flurry of chipstacking and wisecracking. It’s a spectacular display of smoke and mirrors and sleight of hand. It’s the way I would do things forever if only I didn’t underestimate the rookies and get in over my head. It’s one thing to bet too big, but another thing entirely not to back down when you know you should. The board shows a 7, a K and a 2, unsuited. I’m holding a K and pile in a fiver. 4 seats fold round to Stu, who deliberates like he doesn’t know an ante from his elbow, the lying, hustling scumbag. Someone tells him I’m holding 2 kings and to fold. He calls. Shit. If I had been holding 2 kings he’d have been an idiot. But I’m not. Next card is a 10. And now I’m feeling like an idiot as I watch myself put another fiver in. It’s just me and him now. He calls. I’m fucked. I check. He checks. Next card is a 4. I check. He checks. Could I have won? I’ve got one scrap of hope left that says he’s been overly keen, until he flips over his pocket pair of 7’s to make trips. He rakes in over £20 and I go weak.
That’s the pattern for the evening. Nuts McLellan gets dealt pocket pairs, Aces, Kings, all face cards, he bets, he wins. It’s the second coming of Cornelia, as the scriptures prophecied. Once every 2000 years a child shall be blessed with the poker nuts.
I don’t know how it happened but the next time I check out Ben’s stack it isn’t there. He’s blown the lot. Thinking back, he was in nearly every hand. No discretion. That’s no way to play, not if you wanna mess with Jimmy White, Ben’s ambition. Howard’s playing like he’s on Late Night Poker, i.e 5 hands a night. He wins all 5, mind, and I’d say one or two of them were big brassy bluffs. Ken ventures some old sod’s pension on trips, and makes it. From then on he’s not even playing with someone else’s money – he’s playing with someone else’s money’s ill-gotten gains, a fact I will exploit at around 4am when he’s drunk, probably on someone else’s booze. Mark loses everything, but not before swearing at someone in Ireland down the phone – an expensive habit.
Nuts McLellan breaks the bank at Monte Carlo, pocketing £70, soured only by his lordly, effete handshakes proffered to everybody who beats him in a hand, and also by his Timmy Mallett-esque co-opting of the dealer chip for use as a monacle whilst yodelling his way through Doolittle and performing chip-spitting like a Tourette’s sufferer with Attention Deficit Disorder. He starts work at a mental home next week and I fear that the proverbial inmates have indeed taken over the asylum. But he schooled us. He sent us back to the juniors. He caned our arrogant asses by taking the game back to it’s nuts and bolts. 7 cards, 8 players, 1712304 possible hands. Best hand wins. The BEST hand WINS.
Sean’s all spent, wondering whether he can persuade Warwick to ante-up the deeds to the house. That’s 2 out of 2 for Sean, who’s gotta be feeling the pinch now. I’d forgotten Banat was even sitting next to me, until I hear a mouselike voice pipe up. Can I cash out now? He’s trying to bank about 40p’s worth of chips. Can you heck! The Origami Kid has worked out 29 ways to fold a hand, and none of them is a waterballoon. He ends up, I think, evens.
It’s 4am, everyone’s cashed out except me, Ben and Ken. Ben’s inexhaustable and hungry for action. Ken’s up to the eyeballs in borrowed Blue Nun. Wanna play some more? I say. Yeeeeeeppp, comes the reply. Sweet. I’m £20 down and down to about a fiver from my next buy-in, about £35 down altogether. I play slow and steady and manage to seperate Ken from someone’s ISA downpayment, bringing myself back to evens. Ben also scrapes a few quid back. Ken hits the sack, safe in the knowledge that his bank balance has remained untouched. Howard’s away in a cab, Stu and Mark are asleep, the house is quiet. Quiet, that is, except for a mouse scratching about in the kitchen. A mouse that turns out to be big and Banat-sized and sniffing around for gin.