by Cassie Cole
But even the most entertaining games became chores when you did them for hours at a time with minimal breaks. I lost more times than I could count. Not just individual hands, but entire games where Bryce took all my chips. It must have been so easy for him playing against a beginner like me. Michael Jordan dunking on preschoolers. But I knew it was for my own good, that I had to learn quickly so I could at least hold my own during the tournament.
It might have been Bryce going easy on me, or it might have been genuine improvement, but I started winning more and more hands. Still not as many as Bryce. Every fourth hand, then every third. I wasn’t as talented as him in making decisions but I was getting a feel for the rhythm of the game.
After an hour, Bryce dealt cards out to four players instead of just two. Then he played the hands for all three of them so I could get used to playing at a fuller table. Multiple players complicated things a lot. Now I was analyzing three potential opponent hands along with my own. I considered myself a smart cookie but it was a lot to try to process in only a few seconds.
“The more opponents at a table, the more chances for you to lose,” Bryce warned. “That means you’re going to want to be more conservative since the odds of you randomly having the best hand are now 25% instead of 50%. Remember that this game is a marathon, not a sprint. You’re in it for the long haul. Players lose on one big hand sometimes… But they also have their money chipped away over several hours until they don’t have enough weight to throw around. When that happens, a player’s options are limited.”
“Got it.”
We ate stale cinnamon rolls for lunch because we were too focused to pause for longer than that to make a real meal. Slowly but surely I was starting to get the hang of playing against multiple people.
Finally, after three hours, I won an entire game. I knocked out one of Bryce’s players when he got too aggressive on a hand, then I went all in with a pair of Aces and was lucky enough to get three of a kind of the turn. After that I only had one opponent left, but he had a tenth as many chips as me so it was easy to wear him down.
When the last of his chips were mine I jumped up and danced. “I’m the best! I’m the best!” I shouted, shaking my booty back and forth.
Bryce leaned back in his chair and applauded. “That was really good. You went on a hell of a run and played it perfectly. You took advantage of your strong cards. I’m impressed.”
“Deal ‘em again!” I said, smacking the table. “I’m ready to kick some more ass.”
But he stood and stretched. “It’s time you graduated to something a little more intense.”
I grinned. “Strip poker?”
He narrowed his crystal eyes at me. “As much as I would love to peel away your clothes one by one, no. We’re going to play poker online against real opponents.”
“Oh.”
He dragged an extra chair over to his computer desk and we both sat down. He had a really nice setup with three widescreen monitors arranged in an arc. He opened a browser and pulled up an internet gambling website. His balance was displayed in the top-right corner.
“Holy moly! You’ve got $12,000 just sitting in your account?”
“Uh huh,” he said as if that wasn’t a boatload of money. “We’ll join a small table though. One where the max you can join with is $100 in chips.”
He scrolled through a list of tables that reminded me of the old AOL chat rooms. When he found the one he wanted he double-clicked and it popped up on the screen. It was a top-down graphic of a green poker table with a dealer at one side and four other player avatars around the outside. Five players total.
“Neat,” I said.
He quickly showed me how it worked. There were buttons to check, raise, or fold. I had a running total on the left side of the screen, currently at the buy-in price of $100. The bottom of the screen showed what my best hand was.
“I’m going to disable that feature,” he said as he clicked through the settings. “You won’t have that feature in the tournament tomorrow, so it’s better if you don’t get used to it.”
I knew he was right, so I didn’t argue.
The screen was a whirl of graphics and computerized card noises as the dealer dealt the first hand. I had a Two of Hearts and a Ten of Spades.
“Oof, bad start,” he said.
It wasn’t much different than playing with Bryce. I went through several hands, not winning any but never betting very much.
“It’s harder when I can’t analyze their faces,” I complained. “Shouldn’t we be playing somewhere I can work on that?”
“You won’t need to because I’ll be doing that for you, remember?”
“Still though…”
I played three more hands. All of them were weak deals, and I folded as soon as anyone raised.
“It’s tougher with real money,” I said. “Even though it’s only a dollar or two each hand, it’s nerve-wracking losing your money!”
“That’s something you need to get over,” he insisted. “If you let yourself be intimidated by how much you’re betting, your opponents are going to walk all over you. I want you to be more aggressive, the way you were when it was just us. Okay?”
“I’ll try.”
I played for half an hour. I won every now and then, but overall my chip total was gradually dwindling. Bryce gave me tips after each hand, explaining what he would have done, but he didn’t help me during the hand itself. He gave me the room to figure it out on my own, making mistakes and then learning from them.
“Why didn’t you bet more there?” he asked after I folded on the river card.
“Because I only had two pair, and that guy kept raising.”
“But I told you to be more aggressive,” he said gently. “Remember?”
“I’m trying! Like I said, it’s hard with real money. When he raised $20 there, all I could think about was how that was almost half my remaining stack, and that’s your money. Like a physical $20 bill yanked out of your wallet.”
He sighed. I could tell he was getting frustrated, although he wasn’t an asshole about it. “We need you to get used to it by tomorrow. If you’re squeamish over losing $20 you’ll probably faint when you have to call someone’s $5,000 bet.”
“Give me some more time,” I said. “We’re going to be here all night and tomorrow morning. I’ll be better by then.”
Bryce stared at the screen for a few moments, lost in thought. “I have a better idea.”
He took over control of the computer and exited our current table. Then he scrolled way down the list of available tables, searching for something. Finally he found what he wanted, double-clicking to bring up a new table.
A table with a $10,000 entry.
“What—what are you doing!” I stammered.
“You need to get used to big numbers.”
I gasped at the screen. “The starting ante is $100!”
“And the bets will go much, much higher than that.”
I shook my head. “Bryce, this is insane…”
“You can do it.”
“No, I can’t! I’ve only been playing half a day. Look at my hand!” I held my palm out flat in front of me. It trembled like I had Parkinson’s Disease.
He leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “Play at the big kids table for an hour and I’ll give you a surprise.”
That got my attention. “What surprise?”
He winked and said, “You’ll just have to play to find out.”
Ultimately, he was right. We were short on time. And I did need to get used to big dollar amounts before I was playing at the same table with real people in the Volga poker room. But still, $10,000 of Bryce’s money?
I closed my eyes and counted to three while taking slow, deep breaths.
I can do this, I lied to myself.
“Here we go,” Bryce said.
Tick tick tick, went the noise of the cards being dealt, just like the smaller table. I had an Ace and Jack, both Diamonds.
“
Good start,” Bryce said.
A strong hand helped me muster the confidence to toss my $100 ante in. But then another player raised $150. One hundred and fifty dollars! I couldn’t stop looking at the big number.
Bryce stared at me until I clicked the button to call the raise. More chips went into the pot.
This isn’t so hard, I told myself. Just ignore a zero or two. Pretend it’s a $0.15 raise instead of $150.
The flop came out: Ace, Jack, Two, all different suits. Two pairs for me off the flop.
“There we go,” Bryce said.
It was my bet. I hesitated, then raised $50. The same person as before raised it another $150. I mentally moved the decimal place over and called the raise.
The turn came out… Another Jack.
Another Jack!”
“Full house!” I shouted. “Boom!”
Bryce laughed and shook me by the shoulders. “Hell yeah! See how easy poker is when you get the cards you want?”
I took another deep breath. We were in the driver’s seat now. “What do you think the other guy has?”
Bryce shrugged. “You tell me.”
“Umm. Probably an Ace or a Jack.”
“Exactly,” he said. “He probably landed a solid pair on the flop, and maybe three of a kind when the other Jack came out on the turn, but that still doesn’t beat you. Now tell me: what hand can beat you right now?”
It only took me a moment to think. “If he has pocket Aces, then he’ll have a full house as well. And his will be stronger.”
“Yep, his will be Aces over Jacks,” he confirmed. “But the odds of that are awfully low. Let’s milk him for as much as we can.”
I raised, and called his next raise. By the time the hand was over the pot was up to $850. Sure enough, that guy had an Ace, giving him two pair.
“Holy shit, I just won $850!” I exclaimed. “Let’s quit while we’re ahead and go somewhere expensive for dinner!”
Bryce laughed, but didn’t budge from his chair. Which was too bad because I was halfway serious.
It was still nerve-wracking playing with so much money, but that first hand bolstered my courage. Up and down I went, yo-yoing with my pot as I won and lost hands. Soon I wasn’t thinking about the money at all.
One player quit sometime later, and then another was wiped out. Soon it was just me and one other player, and our chip stacks were about equal.
I was dealt a King of Hearts and a King of Spades. I pumped my fist and said, “Here we go.”
The other player immediately raised $1,000.
“Holy moly,” I said.
Bryce sucked in his breath. “That’s interesting. But you’d better call it. I doubt he has pocket Aces.”
I called the bet, wincing as the pot amount leaped up to $2,200.
The flop came out: Four, Seven, and a Jack. All Hearts.
“Hey, I’m one heart away from a flush,” I said.
“He might be too,” Bryce warned.
The guy bet another $1,000.
“Jesus…”
Bryce leaned close and rubbed his jaw. “I don’t think he has the flush. He’s been pushing the pot around all night. Call it and raise.”
“Raise? Are you sure?”
“Yep. Another thousand.”
I obeyed. A large chunk of my chip stack disappeared, and the pot total grew to $6,200 as he called my raise.
The turn came out: Ten of Hearts.
“Yes!” I hissed.
“There’s the flush,” Bryce said with a deep sigh. “The good news is you have the second best possible flush, with King high. The bad news is the Ace is still out there. If he has it…”
“What are the odds of that, rain man?”
“2 out of 46,” he said without hesitation. “About four percent.”
“Pretty low.”
“Yep. The odds are in your favor, Katniss.”
We stared at the screen, waiting to see what the other player would do. 10 seconds dragged on, then 20.
Finally he checked.
“Huh,” Bryce said. “Either the flush possibility scares him, or he nailed the flush himself and is slow rolling you.”
“Either way, it’s time to raise,” I said. Another $500 went into the pot.
My opponent called.
I held my breath as the river card was revealed on the screen. A Two of Clubs. Nothing consequential.
“Okay, the winning hand is the flush,” Bryce said. “We almost certainly have the—”
The opponent raised $3,000.
I gasped at the amount. That was more spending money than I had in an entire year! The thought of losing it on one hand…
“Okay, this is it,” Bryce said.
“You think I should call?”
“No,” he said. “I want you to go all in.”
My mouth was suddenly dry. I licked my lips and said, “But that’s $13,000!”
“Yep.”
“If I lose…”
“You probably won’t.”
“But still…”
My heart was pounding in my temple. This was an astronomical amount of money for someone like me who lived paycheck to paycheck. Actually, I’m unemployed now, the voice in the back of my head said. That made it worse.
“You have to click the button, Sage,” Bryce insisted. “This is important.”
I moved the cursor over the raise button. Click. I hit the MAX button. Another click. The color of the wager changed from green to red to show that I was going all in.
My mouse hovered over the confirmation button. I trembled as I clicked the mouse one final time.
The screen flashed and the computerized sound of chips filled the speakers, followed by a little fanfare of trumpets.
Bryce squeezed my shoulder. “Good. Now he’ll probably think it over for a few seconds…”
Everything happened very fast.
The opponent called the bet without hesitation. The screen flashed again as his chips flew into the pot, forming new stacks and increasing the total in the pot. My cards flipped over and my hand was displayed: FLUSH, KING HIGH.
And then, dreadfully, my opponent’s hand flashed next. An Ace of Diamonds and an Ace of Hearts.
FLUSH, ACE HIGH.
The chips re-stacked in front of the other player, and then the words “THANK YOU FOR PLAYING,” filled the screen. I stared in disbelief. He had the Ace after all.
In the table chat, the other player wrote, “Tough loss LOL,” and then exited the table.
Neither of us spoke for a long, uncomfortable moment.
“I just lost $13,000,” I whispered. “All of it gone in the blink of an eye.”
Bryce sighed, then forced a shrug. “That’s how it goes sometimes. Like I said, you don’t lose money on a bad hand…”
There were tears in my eyes. I didn’t want to turn to face him. “Bryce, I’m so sorry…”
He laughed. Not the nervous or uncomfortable laugh of someone who had just lost five figures. A genuine laugh. “It wasn’t your fault. I told you to do it.”
“But still…”
“I’ve had worse losses,” he said. “And at least we got a good lesson for the money. Now you won’t be as squeamish about losing hands during the tournament. Hey, seriously, it’s okay Sage. What does $13,000 matter when we’re stealing $16 million tomorrow evening?”
“If we pull it off,” I said.
“We will. I believe in the power of a positive attitude.”
“Will a positive attitude magically make your money return?”
“If we use that attitude to win it back, absolutely!”
One thing his positive attitude did was cheer me up. It was tough to be gloomy about losing his money when he didn’t seem to care.
“Hey. So what’s my surprise? You promised a surprise if I played for an hour.” I tenderly put my hand on his chest.
“I sure did.” He hopped up. “But get your head out of the gutter. The surprise is I’m making you my famous carbonara f
or dinner. From scratch this time!”
I grinned from ear to ear. Sex was all fine and good, but just then I was starving. Food beat sex any day.
Well, most days.
“It’ll take some time to make,” Bryce said while fishing pots and pans from the kitchen. “Join another table and start playing without me. Something smaller this time. $100 max.”
“With pleasure.”
While the smell of food filled the apartment, I focused on the cards flying across the computer screen.
31
Sage
Playing by myself while he cooked was simultaneously easier and harder. Harder because I obviously didn’t have his expert commentary, but easier because I could relax since I didn’t have someone watching over my shoulder. I did well at the next few tables, holding my own until people decided to leave, and I even won one table. The total winnings was $450, and although it gave me a feeling of satisfaction I couldn’t help but feel that it was only a drop in the bucket compared to the money I’d lost at the big table.
I enjoyed watching Bryce cook dinner while I played. He hummed to himself while chopping garlic, and had a professional method of tossing the pasta in a pan. Plus he had a cute butt behind those jeans. It was mostly the butt that did it for me.
“Tell me,” I asked while waiting for my slow opponents to make their wagers. “What’s a guy like you doing robbing a casino?”
He answered without looking over. “What do you mean?”
“I agreed to join the heist because I need the money. Badly. But you look like you’re making a very good living playing poker. Why risk all that to knock off Yegorovich?”
“Why not?” he said. “There’s a big difference between making a living playing poker and having enough money to retire.”
“So you’re going to quit playing poker if we pull this off?”
He laughed. “Yeah right. I’d go nuts if I stopped playing poker altogether. But there’s a big difference between doing something for pleasure and doing it for work.”
“I don’t think there’s much of a difference when it’s your passion,” I said. I paused to fold my hand on the computer and added, “Money isn’t going to change how much I sing.”