reds were five, blues ten and yellows twenty-five.
“Okay, Tony, listen up. I’ll be telling you the rules as we go along. Now—”
“I know the rules,” Tony interrupted. “Everything according to Hoyle.”
“No, everything according to
“Whatta you mean? He wrote the rules for all the games,” Lasky countered.
“No, he didn’t,” Keller said. “That’s what people think. But Hoyle was just some Brit lawyer in the seventeen hundreds. He wrote this little book about three bullshit games: whist, quadrille and piquet. Nothing else, no Kankakee, pass the garbage, put-and-take stud or high-low roll ’em over. And try going into the MGM Grand and asking for a game of whist…. They’ll laugh you out on your ass.”
“But you see Hoyle books everywhere,” Wendall said.
“Some publishers kept the idea going and they added poker and all the modern games.”
“I didn’t know that,” Tony said distractedly. He shoved his geek glasses higher on his nose and tried to look interested.
Keller said sternly, “Sorry if we’re boring you, kid, but I got news: It’s knowing everything about the game — even the little shit — that separates the men from the boys in poker.” He looked him over carefully. “You keep your ears open, you might just learn something.”
“How the hell can he hear anything even
Tony took his time removing the hat and tossing it on the counter. He pulled the lid off his Starbucks cup and sipped the coffee.
Keller examined the messy pile of chips in front of the boy and said, “Now, whatever Jimmy Logan told you about playing poker, whatever you think you know from Hoyle, forget about it. We use the big boys’ rules here, and rule number one: We play fair. Always keep your chips organized in front of you so everybody at the table knows how much you’ve got. Okay?”
“Sure.” The kid began stacking the chips into neat stacks.
“And,” Wendall said, “let’s say a miracle happens and you start to win big and somebody can’t see exactly how many chips you have. If they ask you, you tell them. Down to the last dollar. Got that?”
“Tell ’em, sure.” The boy nodded.
They cut for the deal and Wendall won. He began shuffling with his fat fingers.
Keller gazed at the riffling cards in pleasure, thinking: There’s nothing like poker, nothing like it in the world.
The game went back nearly two hundred years. It started as a Mississippi river boat cheaters’ game to replace three-card monte, which even the most gullible slickers quickly learned was just a scam to take their money. Poker, played back then with only the ten through the ace, seemed to give them more of a fighting chance. But it didn’t, of course, not in the hands of expert sharks (the innocents might’ve been more reluctant to play if they’d known that the game’s name probably came from the nineteenth-century slang for wallet, “poke,” the emptying of which was the true object of play).
“Ante up,” Wendall called. “The game is five-card draw.”
There are dozens of variations of poker games. But in Keller’s games, five-card draw — “closed poker” or “jackpot” were the official names — was what they played, high hand the winner. Over the years he’d played every kind of poker known to man — from California lowball draw (the most popular poker game west of the Rockies) to standard stud to Texas Hold ’Em. They were all interesting and exciting in their own ways but Keller liked basic jackpot best because there were no gimmicks, no arcane rules; it was you against the cards and the other players, like bare-knuckle boxing. Man to man.
In jackpot, players are dealt five cards and then have the option of exchanging up to three in hopes of bettering their hands. Good players, like Keller, had long ago memorized the odds of drawing certain combinations. Say he was dealt a pair of threes, a jack, a seven and a two. If he decided to keep the pair and the jack and draw substitutes for the other two, he’d have a one-in-five chance of getting another jack to make a two-pair hand. To draw the remaining threes in the deck — to make four of a kind — his chances dropped to one in 1,060. But if he chose to keep only the pair and draw three new cards, the odds of getting that four of a kind improved to 1 in 359. Knowing these numbers, and dozens more, were what separated amateur players from pros, and Keller made a very good living as a pro.
They tossed in the ante and Wendall began dealing.
Keller focused on Tony’s strategy. He’d expected the kid to play recklessly but on the whole he was cautious and seemed to be getting a feel for the table and the players. A lot of teenagers would’ve been loud and obnoxious, Keller supposed, but the boy sat back quietly and just played cards.
Which wasn’t to say he didn’t need advice.
“Tony, don’t play with your chips. Makes you look nervous.”
“I wasn’t playing with them. I—”
“And here’s another rule — don’t argue with the guys giving you rules. You’re good. You got it in you to be a great player — but you gotta shut up and listen to the experts.”
Lasky grumbled, “Listen to him, kid. He’s the best. I figure I bought his friggin’ Mercedes for him, all the money I lost here. And does he bring it into my shop to get the dings out? Hell, no…. Call you.” He shoved chips forward.
“I don’t get dings, Lasky. I’m a good driver. Just like I’m a good poker player…. Say hi to the ladies.” Keller laid down three queens and took the $900 pot.
“Fuck me,” Lasky snapped angrily.
“Now there’s
“Excuse me for breaking the rules,” Lasky muttered to Keller. “I meant to say fuck
Twenty minutes later Tony’d had a string of losses. On the next hand he looked at the five cards he’d been dealt and, when Stanton bet ten dollars, shook his head. He folded without drawing any cards and glumly toyed with the lid of his Starbucks cup.
Keller frowned. “Why’d you fold?”
“Losing streak.”
Keller scoffed. “There’s no such thing as a losing streak.”
Wendall nodded, pushing the cards toward Tony to deal. The resident Mr. Wizard of poker said, “Remember that. Every hand of poker starts with a fresh shuffle so it’s not like blackjack — there’s no connection between hands. The laws of probability rule.”
The boy nodded and, sure enough, played his way through Stanton’s bluff to take a $850 pot.
“Hey, there you go,” Keller said. “Good for you.”
“So what? You in school, kid?” Lasky asked after a few lackluster hands.
“Two cards,” the boy said to Keller, then dealing. He replied to Lasky, “Been in computer science at the community college for a year. But it’s boring. I’m going to drop out.”
“Computers?” Wendall asked, laughing derisively. “High-tech stocks? I’ll take craps or roulette wheel any day. At least you know what the odds are.”
“And what do you want to do for a living?” Keller asked.
“Play cards professionally.”
“Three cards,” Lasky muttered to Keller. Then to Tony he gave a gruff laugh. “Pro card playing? Nobody does that. Well, Keller does. But nobody else I know of.” A glance at Stanton. “How ’bout you, Grandpa, you ever play pro?”
“Actually, the name’s Larry. Two cards.”
“No offense,
“And two cards for the dealer,” Keller said.
The old man arranged his cards. “No, I never even thought about it.” A nod at the pile of chips in front of him
