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The Deerfoot Casino, somewhere near Calgary. We are staying in the “Jacuzzi suite,” aptly named because it has a Jacuzzi in it. In the bathroom. A Jacuzzi tub. We fl ew out to participate in The Canadian Open Heads-Up tournament. A bunch of our friends were going, we had a pocket of time available, and it sounded like fun. So... here we are.
I was in Calgary ten years earlier fi lming Hide and Seek. I’m not sure of the exact location. “It was really cold and fl at and there were railroad tracks,” I say trying to explain. Everybody laughs. “All of Alberta looks like that!” they exclaim.
The casino is full of cowboys. Real cowboys, not fake cowboys like me. They are wearing hats that are designed to keep the rain off their heads and belt buckles they won themselves in the rodeo. I dated a bull rider once, and one of the major stops on the circuit was the Calgary Stampede.
The fi rst night we arrive, there is a Maxim party at a club called Snatch. The go-go dancers in the huge cages are all different shapes and sizes, and they are wearing huge “woolly mammoth” pink furry boots with their hot pants. It is a sight to behold.
In the VIP area, there are more cameras than VIPs. Everywhere you go you are surrounded by bright light. When the local TV stations ask questions, they seemingly have unlimited time to listen to the answers. Phil and I talk and talk and talk. In between interviews we fend off civilians who hurl themselves at us proclaiming they are our biggest fans. We try to approximate the appearance of people who are having a fantastic time.
Eric Cloutier and the gang are doing shots. I think maybe I should have one to get over jetlag. Phil pries it out of my sticky fi ngers. “Jennifer and I are not drinking tonight,” he informs Eric. “We don’t want to be hung over for the tournament tomorrow.” Antonio, his friend Vicki, and her roommate are all dancing by the bar. Everybody is laughing and happy to be in Canada.
I feel like there is something wrong with me. I am so drained from the fi ve days straight playing the LAPC, followed by the NBC Heads-Up and the Celebrity Invitational. I just want to be back at the hotel. “Phil,” I whisper, “Can we go?” And Phil wants to go too. We manage to snag Gavin’s taxi as it is leaving, and then we are back in our room where it is quiet, except for the refrigerator that makes a tremendous rattling noise.
I wonder if I have an inability to have fun. Is it just getting old? Back in the nineties I would have been thrilled to be in a hip club with good food and free drinks. Now I’m like a cranky old grandpa. “It’s too loud, I’m tired, I want to go home.” I don’t even drink much anymore because I can’t deal with the headaches the next day.
I remember a party at the Playboy Mansion. The girls outnumbered the guys something like eight to one. They all just stood around looking bored, picking at their nails until they saw the video camera coming. Suddenly they were laughing and French kissing and dirty dancing... until the camera passed. And then they all looked bored again. Thatís how I felt tonight.
The day of my fi rst match I am so sharp and lucid I can literally hear the other guy thinking. I see him look at his cards and like a thought bubble over his head he wonders, “Should I play these?” Post fl op, clear as a bell, I hear “Jesus! I never connect”... followed by “Well, nobody connects... I might as well try to bluff.”
And then when I call, he thinks, “She’s probably fl oating the fl op, I’ll bet the turn.” I swear I hear this. I am like Dr. Doolittle or something that can understand the inner monologue of the poker player. I win two in a row to advance. I feel sort of sad that I have such a superhuman ability. It almost seems unfair.
Cut to... the following morning. You know how in movies when the heroine has a nasty knock on the head and is going in and out of a coma? They portray this by making the picture fuzzy around the edges, everyone swims in and out of focus, and when people talk you can’t understand them. That’s my second game. Never mind hearing my opponent think, I can’t even hear myself think.
Every move I make is wrong. My opponent is getting cards up the wazoo, and I am bitter about that too, because I came down fi rst and had my choice of seats. I obviously sat in the wrong chair. But it wouldn’t matter if I sat on the roof the way I am playing. After my opponent dispatches me in about seven minutes on the fi rst match, I fall into such a funk, I don’t even notice when I river a straight TWICE!
At two o’clock there is a $1,500 6-handed tournament. I feel battered and bruised from my morning encounter, but there is not much else to do here, I fi gure I’d better get back on the horse. There is a crazy guy at my table with a mustache who reraises everybody (when the blinds are 25/25) 2,000 DOLLARS! He is pretty entertaining. I am always trying to get in pots with him. If he is giving away money I want my share before he fl ames out. After he expires, the table is more sedate. There is a tight conservative cowboy, a twittery lady who keeps wandering away from the table, and a really old guy who keeps complaining he doesn’t get any hands and how tired he is.
After a few hours I have most of the chips. I am starting to feel this is a good idea: to get back on the horse. That’s right I’m Jennifer Tilly, goddamn it! I know how to win tournaments.
Then the energy changes. A hotshot young kid is seated to my left, the kind that says “Nice continuation bluff” when you take down the pot, the kind who repops you every time you raise with nothing. On the rare occasion he doesn’t call me, his comment of “Nice button raise” is enough to upset the delicate balance of the table. I am forced to slow down.
After an hour of this, I notice my chips have been severely depleted. Now there is a new player at the end of the table. A big goofy-looking kid sitting on a short stack. I raise his blind with, 4-5 of diamonds. After much conjecture he calls. Flop: ace, 4 6. Two clubs. He checks, I bet, he goes all in.
$7,000 and change. It’s a lot of money. “You have an ace?” I ask doubtfully. I don’t think he does. I always fi rmly believe nobody ever has anything on the big blind. I count it out, not sure if I am going to call, and then glance up to catch him holding his cards ready for the reveal with a sheepish expression on his face. I suddenly realize he is on a fl ush draw and push in my chips.
I am right. He has K-3 of clubs. My fours are good. Blank on the turn. Ace of clubs on the river. Goodbye, chips.
A few hands later this same kid limps on the button. I am the big blind with ace-king. I reraise. He calls. The fl op: ace, jack, rag. Two hearts. I check so he can bluff and I can raise. But he just checks.
A heart on the turn. I am tired of slow playing. I bet three thousand. The kid leaps out of his seat, “I’LL PUT YOU ALL IN!” he yells dramatically. I guess he made his fl ush. I eyeball his chips. They are scattered all over the place; there are couple of grey (1,000 dollar chips}, a handful of green (25 dollar) and he has a few chips in his hands that he is playing with. It looks like he maybe at most has a thousand or so more.
“Oh... all right,” I say wearily. “I call, I guess.” He pushes his chips forward, and the dealer counts them out, and holy shitballs, he doesn’t have just a dab more! His chips come to over 14 thousand dollars! If I had known that I never would have called.
He rakes in his chips, chortling, and now he looks up. “Hey, remember when you said a big chip stack turns into a donkey little stack real fast? Looks like you made that come true.” Okay, now I hate him.
The hotshot to my left suddenly becomes my champion. “What was he thinking about calling a 2,000 dollar raise with that shit?” he whispers indignantly. He raises his voice across the table. “Dude!” he yells. “Is that the kind of hand you play?”
The kid looks up from stacking his chips. “I had a fl ush!” he says self-righteously.
Two hands later he enters in early position, I look down at pocket sixes and push. He practically lunges across the table. “I call,” he yells excitedly. Never mind there are still two people to act. When he opens his hand it isn’t as bad as I thought. A-K. A race. Which I lose.
He comes around to shake my hand. I don’t want to touch him, but he’s being a mensch so I shake his hand and trudge off to my room. The hotshot kid has already started to berate the one who got my chips. Their voices recede in the background. I am happy to be away from that unpleasant table. I never win.
Phil says my goal of becoming one of the best poker players is unattainable. “There is no such thing as ‘The Best’ he argues. “That’s a myth perpetuated by the casinos to fi ll their tournaments. You can only achieve a certain level of excellence and then you’re all crowded in together with a whole bunch of other people who are all trying to win tournaments too.”
That’s probably true. Last night Phil lost his entire stack to a guy who was only 10% on the turn. I used to like poker because I thought I had control over my future. Now I realize we are all just buffeted by destiny. We are cannon fodder. Remember that shot in Saving Private Ryan where everybody is charging the shore? The ones who survived were lucky, that’s all. They were not better soldiers. They just didn’t run into any bullets.
The whole poker landscape has changed. The giddy pre- Frist boom was like the roaring twenties. When I started there were all kinds of poker shows and freerolls, poker leagues were being formed, and opportunity was around every corner. Now, post legislation, that optimism has been replaced by the Great Depression. The money is gone, the poker community is being victimized by the government, and the few surviving poker shows are thinly disguised ads for websites.
After Calgary, we go to San Jose and then the Wynn, but I fi gure I might skip the Wynn. I’m tired. I’m just tired. I’m tired of traveling and I’m tired of making bad decisions. I’m tired of hotel rooms (even ones with Jacuzzis in them). I’m tired of getting criticized for checking to Patrick Antonius on the river.
Maybe I’ll become spiritually enlightened like Andy Black. Maybe I’ll go to Italy for two years like Daniel Day Lewis and learn how to make shoes. There’s a whole new herd of poker lemmings roaring up behind me, and if I don’t get out of the way I am going to get trampled.
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