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Vegas
by SmartAZ

The year was 1989. I had a van, lots of money, and lots of time, so I was driving around the country doing things I had always wanted to try. One of those things was playing poker in Vegas. Mind you, I had not played poker much before this, but I had read a book about it and thought it was something I wanted to try.

So I drove into Vegas with nothing important to do for a few weeks. I parked the van and walked around, sizing things up. Vegas is relatively small. After a while I realized that I was dragging my feet because I didn't actually know how to get into a game. I knew some tricks I could do after I got into one, but I wasn't sure where to start. I noticed one casino offered a class. I went. I learned Texas Hold'Em, not the game I had studied, but near enough. I had studied Stud Poker, a game based on a great deal more psychology. Hold'Em is based more on tallying the highest possible hand and getting out if you don't have it.

I played Hold'Em for a week. It seemed to be a somewhat boring game, needing none of the psych tricks I had learned. I was doing well for a beginner. Counting meals and souvenirs versus winnings, my week in Vegas had only cost me fifty dollars. Of course, I was sleeping in the van. I spent my idle hours trying to figure out why I was not doing any better. I bought more books, but they were all technical analyses of the game -- what I was missing was also missing from the books. Every way I figured it, I came to the same conclusion: what I was lacking was some players who wanted to play hard. (I have since learned that a player who wants to play hard is called a "pigeon" by experienced players.)

I finally found him. It was near four o'clock in the morning, at the Sands. We had both been playing most of the night. I was ready for some breakfast, he was ready for some action, any action. There were a lot of people around the table and bidding had been brisk, but eventually all had dropped out except this guy and me. I hadn't even noticed him before, but when we were the only two left in the game and he raised, I glanced over to see who I was playing with. I sized him up in an instant: young, energetic, brash, eager, just wanted some fun.

As I mentioned, Hold'Em is a game in which you can look and see what is the highest possible hand. I had it. I figured this fellow either hadn't looked, or he was trying to bluff. No, that can't be. It is very rare to bluff in Hold'Em. What had really taken over his mind was that he had a fairly good hand and he wanted *SOME ACTION*! Since I had "the nuts", I could certainly afford to give him *SOME ACTION*!

I jerked my face toward him and demanded, "Who's that? What do you mean raising me? I raise you back!"

He responded like a kid who had just hooked his first fish. He raised again.

This is the part of Hold'Em that can be a lot of fun. There are no limits on raises when only two players are left in the game, and if one or both of them think the other is bluffing, the game can suddenly become as exciting as a dogfight. Everyone loves it.

"You want to play, huh?" I said. "Ok, I reraise you!" He really liked my flippant manner. I thought he would, that's why I was using it. For that matter, I really liked his flippant manner too, but for a different reason. I had "the nuts".

We went on like that for several raises, both of us laughing and having a heck of a good time. Suddenly his face changed. It doesn't take much experience in the game to see a change of attitude, if you know to watch for it. It's like seeing someone get a drink of water and twitch: you know immediately that he got something besides water in his mouth. That is how I knew his thoughts: he had realized that there was a lot of money in the pot, and that I must have had a pretty good hand to bet so much, and it was just possible that his hand was not as good as he first judged it to be. He called. I went to breakfast with an extra $200 that morning.

Now you might think that was an emotional experience, and it was. It was not only my first big win, it was the first time I had read another person and used what I had read. But there was another, slightly less emotional but more deeply significant aspect to that occasion.

All my life I had felt that real people did not want me trying to play their games, that I did not understand their games, that if I played anyway they would prevent me from winning, and if I won anyway they would steal it from me. As I walked toward the door I felt a bit uneasy. I was not used to winning. I half expected a suited bouncer to stop me at the door and say, "You didn't think we would let you actually leave with the money, did you?" I walked through the door and was outside.

Suddenly, and all at once, nothing happened.

I had entered a new world.