Grift

by Jason Mosberg

  Dennis sits down. A sign the game will commence. I hope I know what I’m doing.

  ***

  A three of hearts and an eight of diamonds. My pocket cards in the first hand. I fold when the bet comes to me on the first round of betting. Seconds later, the first three common cards yield a three and an eight, which means I would’ve flopped a two pair. Had I not already folded. But I can’t rattle. The move was folding.

  As I wait for the hand to play out, I recall my first few weeks playing poker. Folding a hand like this would mess up my whole game. In the next hand, regardless of the cards I was dealt, I would stay in. Then I’d lose money on that hand, and drop out of the next even if the dealer dealt me a low pocket pair. I was an amateur then, letting emotions dictate my moves. I’ve come a long way.

  Even if I have improved since the last time I played here, it might seem like a moronic idea to play in an eleven-million-dollar, winner-takes-all, fixed poker tournament. I must seem a bona fide fool.

  Dennis Cane has an advantage over us because he knows what everyone holds. But because I know that he knows what everyone holds, other than Dennis, I maintain the next biggest advantage in the room. I’m not playing against Dennis. I’m playing against the other nine players.

  I mostly only play hands when Dennis folds. And based on when he folds, I can usually tell if specifically my hand dissuades him from playing. If so, then I know I’ve got the table’s best cards. Based on when Dennis drops out of a hand, I can get a sense of who’s bluffing and who’s really holding cards.

  I don’t even try to beat Dennis at this point. My goal is to beat every other player. I won’t take on Dennis until we are the last two players left.

  ***

  There are always a couple risky players in any game and this one proves no exception. Within the first twenty minutes, on three different occasions, players go all in before we’ve even spied the flop. One of these results in a fold, but on the other two instances, a player sees the bold better. So barely twenty minutes have gone by before 11 players drop to 9. On one of these hands, I had pocket queens, and the two ladies sang for me to call the bet. Pleading that this is a great chance to double my chip count at the start. But I just can’t take risks like that. I have to play slow. And I have to play tactically.

  I become the focus of oh’s and ah’s when I draw aces and eights in an early hand.

  The two pair wins me a small pot.

  Dennis mutters, “You’re either set or screwed. That’s the dead man’s hand.”

  The moniker “dead man’s hand” stems all the way back to “Wild Bill” Hickok. A gambler shot him to death mid-hand while playing poker in Deadwood. The cards Wild Bill was holding? A two pair: aces and eights.

  Bradley chimes in, “I always say if you draw aces and eights and win, it’s a good omen. But if you draw aces and eights and lose the hand, it’s a bad omen.”

  When I shrug Bradley off, Dennis laughs. “What, you don’t believe in luck, girlie?”

  Girlie. He called me that last time I played in his game.

  “I do believe in luck. I believe it was pure luck that gave me the hand. I just don’t believe it means anything.”

  “When you get a few years older, I bet you’ll start seeing things a little different,” says Dennis.

  The guy who rigs the whole game preaching to a grifter about luck and omens. Just the other day, I was struggling to come up with an example while explaining irony to Sophie.

  When a middle-aged man with a cane wins the next hand, Bradley claps his hands together a few times condescendingly. “It’s about time, Gusto.”

  Gusto!? I didn’t even recognize him. How would I? I’ve never seen or met him before. But Gus “Gusto” Hathers is a living poker legend in Vegas. Supposedly, he was a smalltime weatherman in Chicago. But a drunk driver ran a red light and hit his car, leaving him disfigured and handicapped, and ending his career as a weatherman. Gusto took the settlement money and moved to Vegas. He quadrupled his cash in a year and has been a pro card player ever since.

  Now that I look closer, I notice a few scars scattered across his face and neck.

  “Some of us are playing with our own money,” responds Gusto.

  “Low blow,” says Bradley with a smile, not actually taking offense.

  As the dealer delivers the next hand, I watch Gusto. Living, breathing proof of a pipedream come true.

  Every day, people arrive in Vegas with a carful of possessions hoping to make it as a professional rounder. You hear about the one guy who makes it, like Gusto, but not the 34-year-old librarian who packs up his Subaru Outback and heads back to Colorado after losing his entire $26,000 bankroll in eight days.

  For every Gusto, there are thousands of failures.

  Forcing my eyes away from Gusto, I scrutinize the other players as they look at their fresh pocket cards.

  An hour goes by. Two more players gone, one of them the gum chewing puker. And then there were seven. Dennis’s pile of chips has grown to about three million dollars. I’ve only got about a million and a half.

  But maybe my stack is about to grow. It’s me, Dennis, and Bradley left in this hand. I’ve got three nines. I have no idea what Dennis has, but Bradley bets big. Big enough to set off my bluff-radar.

  With already over a hundred grand in the pot, Bradley bets sixty thousand dollars. Dennis calls the bet and puts in sixty. Time to make a move: I raise it to eighty thousand. Now it’s back to Bradley. He can either fold, put in another twenty thousand to see my raise, or raise it again himself. He raises it another twenty thousand – now it’s up to $100,000 for this round.

  Dennis discards his hand into the middle as he sits back in his chair. “I’m out.”

  His fold tells me everything. Dennis just called Bradley’s sixty grand, but after he saw I was willing to play the hand and even re-raise Bradley, Dennis folded when it got back to him. Dennis was willing to play with Bradley but not willing to play with me. Which tells me that I have better cards than Bradley. Same as Sophie’s algebra: If a>b and b>c, then a>c.

  Now Bradley and I remain the last two left in the hand. I can fold, see Bradley’s twenty thousand dollar raise, or I can re-raise him.

  I put Bradley all in. He’s only got nine hundred thousand left. He thinks about it for a while, then pushes his chips towards the middle. I show him my triple nines, and he curses. He doesn’t even show me his cards. Just hops up. “Goddammit, Piper. You little…”

  “Sorry, Bradley. A girl’s got to eat.” Bradley picks up his vest, appearing ready to leave. “You’ll stick around and cheer for me, won’t you?”

  He hesitates, eyeing the remaining players. Visibly on the fence as to whether he’ll stick around to watch the remainder of the tournament.

  “Sure. Guess I can’t be that sore a loser.”

  I exhale a gulp of air, and with it a lump of tension from my chest. It’s essential to my plan that he sticks around. And I don’t mean for moral support.

  “You need to hire a mover?” A few players chuckle at Dennis’s joke. I realize the rest of the table is waiting for me to collect my winnings. The most chips I’ve ever raked towards me. Over two million dollars in chips. A million of it was chips I put in, but that’s still a million-dollar-margin for one hand. Now we’re down to six players, and I’ve got nearly as many chips in my pile as Dennis.

  When I glance over at Bradley, I can’t help but feel a pang of remorse. I never would have put him all in if I didn’t have an edge. If I didn’t know Dennis could see our cards, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to re-raise Bradley the way I did. But Dennis is the one cheating. I’m just using his cheating to my advantage.

  And so I continue playing the same way. Taking on the other players whenever I get a sense from Dennis that I hold winning cards. Otherwise, I play it safe, fold often, and at all cost, avoid a betting duel with Dennis Cane.

  ***

  My training as a con artist might as well have been my training as a poker
player. “Con” is short for “confidence game” or “confidence trick.” The term comes from the idea that you gain someone’s confidence in order to take advantage of them.

  Same as poker. You win some hands with good cards, then you gain your opponent’s confidence that you bet or act a certain way when you’re holding good cards. Once you have their confidence, you can take them.

  Poker players have what are called tells. Subconscious behaviors. Visible subconscious behaviors. For instance, many people put a hand near their face when they’re bluffing. It could be a knuckle under their chin or a fingertip on their eyebrow. I remember the first tell I ever noticed was in a casino game when I was 15. It was late at night in the Wynn. This Indian man had been buying hands all night. Then I caught his tell. He tended to massage his palm with that same hand’s thumb whenever he was bluffing. The next time he tried to bluff, I took him for half his chips.

  Recognizing opponents’ tells can help a decent player become good. A good player becomes great when she uses that process of identification against her opponents.

  A nine of diamonds on the river gives me the straight flush I was chasing, landing me my best hand of the night. The old Asian man sitting on the other side of the table is the only other one left in this hand. There’s about four hundred thousand in the pot. I have the cards. I don’t need to bluff. But, I want this guy to suspect I’m bluffing so that he stays in the hand. To milk him for as much as possible.

  The bet is to me.

  “Thirty thousand,” I say as I push the chips towards the middle.

  Then I put a hand under my chin and scratch the side of my face. He bites. He thinks I’m bluffing.

  “I don’t think you hit it. All in,” he says.

  It’s $250,000 more than what I just bet. I see his re-raise immediately, flipping over my straight flush.

  He slams his fist on the table when he sees my cards top his.

  What I just did would compare to a short con had I improvised on the spot and put a hand on my face to suggest I was bluffing. But the move better compares to a long con. Earlier in the night, I had nothing on a small pot. I put in $50,000, and then scratched my face in a subtle motion that only observant players would notice. Another player raised me to half a million, and I immediately folded, a sure confession of my bluff. I gave them confidence that when I scratched my face I was bluffing. Long con.

  I notice the Scandinavian lady tends to bet quickly when she’s bluffing and slowly when she has the cards, a pattern that helps me eliminate her an hour after I send the Asian man home. Max gives me a hard time for spending so much time playing online poker, but playing online gave me an excellent poker education. When playing in person, I relied on watching people’s faces and body language to help figure out the cards they were holding. But online, you can’t see the person. You can’t hear their voice or watch their hands move chips. You have to observe their betting and recognize patterns in how they play. Had I not spent nearly a thousand hours playing online poker, I wouldn’t have picked up on the subtle difference in the time it took the Scandinavian lady to bet.

  The dealer deals hand after hand, each hour passing faster than the one before it. Many a dilemma could dominate my mind. But to observe everything inside the game, I must clear my mind of everything outside of the game. If I were caught up wondering what would happen between Jesse and me after I get Sophie back from the mob and then break ties with Max, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the Scandinavian lady’s timing patterns.

  ***

  About halfway through the game, Gusto ends up in a one-on-one betting duel with Dennis. I suspect from Gusto’s face that he holds a great hand. But I also know Dennis wouldn’t have stayed in if he didn’t know that he had the superior cards.

  It pains me to watch Gusto, this poker legend, deliberate the hand and eventually put everything on the line.

  “Okay, Cane, I’ll see you.” Gusto pushes his chips towards the center, matching Dennis’s all-in bet.

  “You first,” says Dennis.

  Gusto flips over his cards. His pocket hearts grant him a flush.

  Dennis flips over his cards. His four sixes trump the flush.

  Gusto slams his fist down in frustration. I wonder what percent of Gusto’s bank account he just lost.

  As Dennis pulls all the chips towards him, Gusto stands up and walks out of the room. Doesn’t appear he plans to stay and watch.

  ***

  Down to three.

  After four total hours of poker, it’s only me, Dennis, and a twenty-something black man clinging to life with only forty thousand in chips. I don’t care if you’re Doyle Brunson. If you drop down to forty thousand in chips, you ain’t coming back.

  Twenty minutes later, he goes out, and that leaves Dennis and me. Of the $11 million on the table, Dennis has $6.6 and I have $4.4. I’d prefer we were even, but this is close.

  Until this point in the game, I haven’t really played against Dennis Cane. I’ve been using him to survive. And to win hands. Now, no one else remains. I have to face him head on.

  I know I said I’d beat Dennis with one hand, but I can’t do that. Well, I will beat him in one hand, but not until we’re evened up. It’s impossible for one player to beat another player in one hand of poker unless she has at least as many chips as her opponent. I can’t put Dennis all in until I can match his chip count. Right now, he’s got about $6.6 million, and I have $4.4.

  Sweat forms on my brow, my armpits, and every other little nook that tends to perspire while under times of duress. I was confident in the process up to this point: Use Dennis’s cheating to beat everyone else. But now I’ll have to employ my next set of strategies, and some real nerves hit me. Eleven million dollars worth to be exact.

  “And then there were two,” Dennis says.

  He smiles at me, but I refuse to grant him a friendly end to this epic (and corrupt) game of cards. Besides, he’s probably smiling just to loosen me up. Loosen me up so my guard’s down.

  “Soon to be one,” I say.

  Bradley nods at me as if to say, “You can do it, girl.” Though Dennis doesn’t allow spectators to sit in the room, once a player gets eliminated, he or she is welcome to stay to see how the game shakes out. Six of the nine players who already lost have stuck around. They all look too bitter and defeated to enjoy watching. Curiosity over who wins the tournament is the only incentive keeping them around. Except Bradley, who seems to be rooting for me.

  The dealer slides me my first card. Then deals Dennis his first card. As my second card slides towards me, I quickly slip it directly on top of my first card. It’s not something I’d been doing up to this point, but I try to play it off like there’s no rhyme or reason as to why I suddenly do it now. My nonchalance aside, I can’t help but notice a knowing twitch in Dennis’s gaze when he sees me do this.

  I pick up the two cards and pull them up towards my face. Only then do I slide them off one another. I have a queen of spades and a four of diamonds. When I put them back down on the table, they again sit directly on top of one another. This way, the camera that’s built into the table will only be seeing my bottom card, which I (and Dennis) now know is a queen of spades.

  If the table were clear glass, it would be easy to get a glimpse of my second card before I slid it directly on top of my first card. But because the table is a murky green fiberglass, it takes a moment to locate and zoom in on the card, and it’s still fairly difficult to see what the cards are. By the time the lady in the back room locates and zooms, to her, it will appear as if I only received one card.

  The bet is to me. I put in a hundred thousand dollars.

  “A hundred,” I say.

  Dennis calls me. Based on the speed and confidence of his call, I suspect he’s holding pocket aces or pocket kings.

  After he puts in his hundred thousand, the two of us make eye contact. I can see him suffering on the other side of the table. He looks deep into my eyes, but not to figure out my top card. H
e’s curious of a greater unknown. Curious if I know something. If I know about his camera hidden in this fiberglass table. Curious if I know that the whole game is rigged.

  The pot’s already over two hundred thousand dollars when the flop lands. A king of hearts, ten of spades, and a five of diamonds. If I was right about Dennis, and he is holding pocket kings, then that means he’s got three of a kind. Meanwhile, I’m on a straight draw. With the queen in my hand, and the king/ten that are on the table, I need a jack and then either a nine or an ace to complete a straight. And Dennis knows I have that queen, so he knows I’m on a straight draw. What he doesn’t know is that the other card I’m holding is a four. For all he knows, it could be that jack, or an ace, or a nine.

  My bet. I put in $1,000,000. I can see Dennis’s curiosity shift from whether or not I have knowledge of the cameras to what my second card is. It amuses me to watch him play when he doesn’t know what I hold. Instead of just waiting for his deception to play out, Dennis Cane now experiences what everyone else experiences at his table. Actual emotions. Fear. Excitement.

  After a minute’s contemplation, Dennis sees my $1 million, bringing the pot to $2.4 million.

  The dealer gives us the turn. It’s a six of clubs. Shit. I needed a jack, ace, or nine. A six does nothing for me. And Dennis knows this. He settles back into his seat as he awaits my play.