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