Epic Game

by William Kowalski

  I’m sure it’s fake money. Nobody leaves cash lying around in Vegas. But fake or not, it has the effect it was meant to. Every once in a while I look at that table and remind myself that the money’s why I’m here.

  It’s a long evening. Around midnight they call a break. We take our chips up to our rooms and sleep. Play will resume at 10:00 AM tomorrow morning. We are all encouraged to get a good night’s sleep. We’ll need it.

  TWELVE

  I expect to have trouble falling asleep. But I don’t. I sleep like a baby.

  I’m up at 7:00 AM. I find the hotel gym and run three miles on the treadmill, barely breaking a sweat.

  Then I go to the restaurant and eat a breakfast big enough to sustain a man twice my size. A few yahoos at the buffet snicker at the amount of bacon on my plate. They think it’s funny to see a small woman put away that much food.

  They won’t be laughing when I put them away, I think. I smile inside as I imagine how pleasant it’s going to be to take their chips in a couple of hours.

  Yeah, okay. I might have some anger issues. But if I use them to my advantage, are they really a bad thing?

  “Welcome to day two,” says the announcer when we’re all back at our tables. “Shuffle up and deal!”

  I’ve been moved to a new table. They do that as more people get eliminated. Out of two thousand players, we lost a thousand on the first day. We’ll lose most of the rest today. I predict that by tonight there will only be about a hundred left. Maybe fewer. I am going to be in that top hundred. There is no other choice.

  My strategy for today is simple: sit tight and wait for good cards. I don’t bluff much. I want these people to see me as a conservative player. Someone who doesn’t take risks. That way, when I open up in the final rounds, they’ll have to think twice when I bet big. It will be easy to convince them I’ve got the nut hand.

  After all, the only advantages you get in this game are the ones you make for yourself.

  And my plan works. All day long, I grind it out. I fold nineteen out of twenty hands. When I do bet, it’s because I’ve got great cards. Meanwhile, other players are dropping like flies all around me. The longer you can hold out in a tournament like this, the more likely you are to be at the final table.

  We play until midnight again. A long day. I go to bed around one, and this time I just lie there and stare at the ceiling.

  First thing in the morning, we’re back at it. I’m tired now. We’re into day three. This is what my dad would have called an epic game. Only he wouldn’t have slept at all.

  Halfway through day three, I’m getting close enough to the final table to taste it. There are only about thirty players left. I have a very nice pile of chips—about six hundred thousand dollars. Of course, that’s not real money. It’s tournament money. But that’s what I’ll use to get the pile of cash on the table.

  And then…disaster strikes.

  This is how it happens. I’m dealt an ace-king unsuited. Some people call that hand Big Slick. My dad used to call it Walking Back to Houston, because it’s just the kind of hand to give a bad player false confidence. I’m in third position. Not a bad place to be, but not great either. I check the bet and then raise when the guy left of me calls the big blind. That’s standard. If you’re going to call, raise instead. It scares everyone.

  But then the same guy re-raises me, and this time he goes all in. He had a pretty hefty pile of chips, almost as big as mine. I realize that it’s me he’s gunning for. He wants to take me down on this hand.

  Dammit.

  I need to think.

  I feel like I’m in too far to just fold. I can work with these cards. So I call him, and we show our hole cards.

  He’s got a pair of aces.

  That’s bad news for me. I curse myself silently, wondering how I could have been so stupid. I just got sucked in like an amateur. Maybe I don’t belong here after all.

  The flop comes. Ten-queen-two. That doesn’t help me at all.

  The next card up is the turn. It’s a five.

  I’m in trouble, I realize.

  That fact is brought home when the final card, the river, is dealt. It’s an ace. That gives me a pair. But it gives him three aces. And three of a kind beats a pair all day long.

  I watch as my chips are raked into his pile. Then I look at what I’ve got left. I’m down to about twenty thousand dollars. In real life, that might be enough to start a new life somewhere. In this game, it’s peanuts.

  I may have just lost this tournament.

  What needs to happen now is that I play very tight until the next time I get set up. And then I need to go all in. People will see through this plan like I’m a pane of glass. But it can’t be helped. I’m desperate now. If I can’t build up that pile again, I have no chance. I’ll get pushed around like a kindergartener.

  And this all needs to happen very soon, before the blinds reduce me to nothing.

  Amazingly, on my very next hand, I get a pair of kings. I go all in right away. Three people call me, because they know how desperate I am. They look surprised when I show my kings. I take that pot. That gets me up to about eighty thousand. Still nowhere near enough.

  My next few hands are bad. I fold them. But soon I have to pay the big blind again. We’re up to five and ten thousand dollars now. That’s a significant chunk of my stack. I can’t afford to just let the bet go around the table anymore. I need to play before the blinds suck me dry.

  I look at what’s in my hand. It’s garbage.

  It’s now or never, I think. If David were here, he’d know what to do.

  So I decide to just play it David-style. I’m going all in.

  I got their respect back with that last pair. Now people think I’m serious once more. When I go all in, everyone else drops out. I buy that pot, which brings me back up to about a hundred fifty thousand. Sounds nice. But I still have the smallest pile at the table.

  The next cards are more garbage, but I’m committed now. I go all in again. Once more, I buy that pot. People either must be scared of me or are just waiting for me to flame out.

  I can’t keep this up forever, I think. At least, not without good cards.

  “Players, congratulations,” says the announcer. “You’ve made it to the final table.”

  I look around in astonishment. I was so focused, I didn’t even realize it’s already almost midnight. Almost everyone else has been eliminated. It’s just nine of us left now.

  We break for sleep. Nobody wants to, but rules require it.

  I don’t really sleep. I just lie there and grit my teeth. Maybe I fall unconscious for a few hours. Then I get up in the light of early dawn and stare out the window at the blistering desert.

  THIRTEEN

  Day four. This is when the game becomes about mental toughness. Some people just want to give up at this stage. They’re tired. They’re homesick. Their backs hurt. They want to go home. They made it this far…and that’s good enough, isn’t it? For the rest of their lives, they can tell the story of how they almost won.

  Not for me. I have no home to go back to. This is it for me. This is the first day of the rest of my life.

  I sit there staring at my first hand of the day, a four and a nine. Pure crap.

  You know what to do, David says in my head.

  And I do indeed.

  All in.

  Everyone calls me. Everyone.

  This is embarrassing. I’ve been caught out bluffing.

  The flop brings a miracle—two nines. There is some grumbling around the table. I win this hand on pure luck. No
t the way I hoped to. But I’ll take it. Especially because I just eliminated another player.

  Now we’re down to eight.

  I sit tight until the blinds come around to me again, because I don’t want to bet unless I have to. Eliminations are coming surprisingly fast. Three more people get knocked out by noon. There are just four of us now.

  It’s time to get seriously aggressive. I bet hard when it’s up to me, but I’m not afraid to back out if someone re-raises and I don’t have what it takes. I have to make the most of my good cards.

  And I do.

  I watch a showdown between two of the remaining four. One is a guy from California, a computer professional named Rakesh. Like me, he qualified online. The other is an old-fashioned cowpoke from the West. The cowboy goes down. He’s gentlemanly about it. He tips his hat to us and saunters out like he was just passing time here.

  I’m the only woman at the table. That’s usually the way it is. I don’t mind. I think it helps me. Now it’s just me, Rakesh and a kid from New York who wears a hoodie and sunglasses. He does that so no one can read his face. Me, I don’t worry about that. I never show a twinge of emotion. I’m the ice queen.

  Rakesh and New York duke it out now. Rakesh takes a hard loss. I knock him out in the next round with a pair of tens. We shake hands. I liked him.

  Now it’s just me and New York.

  He looks at me, expressionless. His eyes are invisible. I stare back at him. Now is when we’re supposed to shake hands. But we don’t. We just look at each other. Then it’s back to the game.

  I’m not going to draw this out, I think. I want to cut his head off as soon as possible. Our stacks are about the same. I don’t want this to turn into an endless back-and-forth.

  My next cards are a pair of tens. Not the best hand out there. Not total garbage. But serious cards. At this stage of the game, you gotta work with what you have. You cannot afford to wait.

  I go all in. My whole stack. Over a million dollars in tournament chips.

  New York looks at me for a long time.

  “You bluffing?” he asks.

  I don’t say anything. It doesn’t matter what you say in poker; it matters how you say it. A really excellent player is a master of psychology. He can tell what you have in your hand by the way you blow your nose. So if I answer, I’m giving him information.

  Of course, if I don’t answer, I’m giving him information too. But it’s better to keep your mouth shut.

  “I’m gonna call you,” he says, just to see how I react.

  I stare into his sunglasses. I don’t twitch. My poker face is the best in the business. I could make a hangman nervous.

  New York licks his lips. That means he’s nervous. I have no idea what he’s thinking. I want him to fold. I don’t want to show these cards. I just want to suck him dry. If I can keep pounding on him, I’ll win by bleeding him to death.

  But New York is not going to allow that to happen.

  He calls me.

  We show. This is it.

  New York has a pair of kings.

  I gulp.

  He smiles.

  “Weren’t expecting that, were you,” he says.

  The flop is nine, four, king.

  That gives him three kings.

  “Nice dress, by the way,” he says.

  “Nice hoodie,” I say. I have nothing more to hide now. This is it. I just lost the tournament.

  There are still two more cards to come.

  The turn is a ten. That gives me three.

  That’s nice. That’s encouraging. But it still won’t let me beat him.

  “And the river,” says the dealer.

  He throws down a ten. That gives me four.

  I just won the tournament.

  Sometimes you need a little luck. And today, luck was on my side.

  I don’t remember much of what happened after that. It’s all just a blur. I have a few pictures of myself that somebody took. I look like a robot in a blue dress. I didn’t change clothes once throughout the tournament. Somebody asked me if that was my lucky dress, and I must have said yes, so that was the caption of the picture in the paper: Lucky Dress Does It for Lady Poker Star.

  Of course, they couldn’t admit I won because of my skill. It had to be my dress, right? And they couldn’t just call me a poker star. They had to point out I’m a female.

  Whatever. The money is still mine.

  That’s another big deal. I’m the first woman to win that tournament. So suddenly all these so-called feminist groups are getting in touch with me, wanting me to do stuff with them.

  Sorry, I say. I didn’t win that tournament because of my gender. I won it because of who I am as a person.

  They don’t like that much. But then, I’ve always lived by my own rules, and I don’t care who it pisses off. It’s my life, after all, not theirs.

  Besides, I’ve always had a secret dream of my own. A poker school for girls. There are a lot of girls out there who need help finding themselves. And you can learn a lot from this game. The skills you get at the table can help you in other areas of life. I don’t need to join a group to make that happen, although they are welcome to help if they want.

  Someone asks me, “Does it bother you that you won on a lucky river card?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “It bothers me all the way to the bank.”

  People.

  There’s a big party that night, and about four thousand different people want to shake my hand and have their picture taken with me. I enjoy the attention. But I’m dying to get out of there. As soon as I’m able to, I sneak upstairs to my room and lock the door. Then I lie flat out on the bed.

  The first thing I do is cry. Not that there’s anything wrong. Just that for the last four days, things have been pretty full on. I’ve built up a lot of tension. I need to let it out.

  The next thing I do is have a hot tub.

  And finally, I’ve got a phone call to make.

  It’s two in the morning in Vegas, but it’s nine AM in London.

  The telephones in England have that funny double ring. It’s picked up right away.

  “Hello?”

  “David?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s me, Kat.”

  “Aunt Kat!” he says, delighted. “Where are you?”

  “In Las Vegas,” I say. “I have some good news.”

  “Did you win?”

  “I sure did.”

  “Wahoo!” David yells. “Dad! Come to the phone!”

  I hear another extension get picked up.

  “Kat, did I hear your name?”

  “Hi, Charlie,” I say. Just the sound of his voice is enough to send a warm feeling throughout my whole body. I can hear David flipping out in the background, running around and yelling.

  “Sounds like good news,” Charlie says. “How are you?”

  I was intending to tell him all about it. But now that I’m actually talking to him, I feel like the tournament is ancient history. Suddenly, it doesn’t even matter.

  “I’m doing pretty good,” I say. “What about you?”

  “Never better,” says Charlie, “except David hasn’t stopped talking about you since we got here.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Really. And since he’s always on about you, naturally you’re on my mind as well.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes. Really. So
…”

  “So.”

  “So congrats on the big win.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What are you going to do with all that money?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Whatever I want, I guess.”

  “You don’t have a plan?”

  “I had a plan. But now it seems kind of silly.”

  “I see,” says Charlie. “So, are you open to ideas?”

  “I might be.”

  “What if someone suggested some travel?”

  “That would depend on who that someone is,” I say.

  “David, come here,” says Charlie. I can hear him whispering something. Then David gets back on the phone.

  “Aunt Kat,” he says, “you need to buy a plane ticket and come to London right now, okay? Because I miss you and my dad thinks you’re totally hot and—”

  “Aaaand that’s quite enough out of you, young man,” says Charlie, grabbing away the phone. “You didn’t hear that, I hope.”

  “Not a word,” I say.

  “He does miss you terribly, you know.”

  “I miss him too. A lot.”

  “So…”

  “So.”

  “Are you coming?”

  “Well,” I say…

  I don’t want to give away the entire ending, because that might ruin it.

  I’ll just say this: That rule about playing only with your head and not your heart? That might work for poker, but it doesn’t work in real life. That’s what Josie’s voice was saying in my head as she told me it was okay to go for it.

  Yes, okay, I asked a dead woman permission to be with her ex-husband. Crazy. I know. I don’t care. I play by my own rules.

  There’s another thing too. I know now why you’re not supposed to play with your heart. It’s not because it’s stupid. It’s because you’re playing for the highest stakes of all. And now that my heart is full, I don’t ever want to gamble with it.