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 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