Poker

I vividly remember the first time I saw Las Vegas. It was decades ago, and a friend and I did the classic LA-Vegas mini-road-trip, across the burning desert, arriving in Nevada around dusk. As we crested the final sandy hill, I saw this thing. This glittering neon jewel-box of a city, glowing in the twilight. I fell in love at once, a love that was only confirmed when we actually entered Vegas, and I realized I was motoring down Hugh Hefner Way.That love didn’t quite last, however. Not long ago I returned, and something felt very different. Sadder, somehow. Yes, I was shown a Damien Hirst-designed bedroom with a fridge full of diamonds, but I also saw too much druggy homelessness, and too many stickers that gave me a shock.

I played my last hand of poker on an innocuous Saturday afternoon in October. My pocket Kings lost to 4-7 offsuit. They shouldn’t have been in the hand at all, but I still did everything wrong at the end, and there went $500 to some sweaty moron directly to my right. “Clock me out,” I said to the dealer, my hands shaking. They’d seated me at the table right by the door, so I at least was able to contain my temper tantrum until I got outside. “FUCK,” I screamed loudly enough so they could hear me inside — and also probably down the block. “SHIT SHIT GODDAMN IT FUCK!” I bashed my lunchbox against the wall. It tore at the handle. I kicked a post. It bent my toenail back. And I kept screaming, cursing my luck, damning the gods, destroying my lunchbox.

Late on a Sunday night in May of 2022, I found myself playing heads-up poker with a hoodie-wearing small-town Texas high-school basketball coach for $70,000, plus a trophy. Well, technically, we were playing for $10,000, since the final five players in the tournament had agreed to a chopped pot an hour earlier, guaranteeing us each $45,000. Regardless, it was a lot of money, and somehow, I was in the mix. This was the “Monthly Monster” at the Lodge, a club in Round Rock, just northwest of Austin. The spot is the epicenter of the Texas poker boom and I’d staggered into this situation more or less by accident. The $600 buy-in was a lot more than I usually spent; I’d never paid more than $200 for a tournament before.