Game on
“Oh no!” Twelve-year-old Reid stares at the television in dismay. An Atlanta Braves batter has jacked a pitch deep into the left-center power alley. Reid holds his breath, watching the white dot arc toward the stands…then he sighs, relieved, when the ball plops into the mitt of a Boston Red Sox outfielder.
“Reid, you need to get your bags packed for the trip tomorrow,” says his father, Cleve. “Do it between innings, O.K.?”
The backyard of Cleve’s Ivy home resembles an athletic complex, with a paved basketball court, a batting cage and a lacrosse goal. For rainy days, there’s a ping-pong table, wiffle bats and Nerf footballs in the garage.
Tonight, however, Cleve, who requested his last name not be published, is leaving the kids at home to enjoy some playtime for himself. He pulls a half-full bottle of Maker’s Mark from his kitchen cabinet, and a bottle of Seagram’s ginger ale from the refrigerator. It’s Friday, it’s poker night, and the game is on.
Cleve plays poker about twice a month. He’s a regular in two different games—one he dubs the “Farmington” game, because most of the regulars belong to the Farmington Country Club in Ivy. Tonight, however, is the “Boar’s Head” game, or, as the group is officially known, “The Ivy-White Hall Poker Society and Shit Talker’s Club,” or simply “Trash Talkers.” Cleve winds his Toyota SUV through an Ivy subdivision and pulls into a driveway, where tiki torches flame next to an open garage converted, for this evening, into a casino.
Bettor living
Cleve and his fellow Trash Talkers are among the estimated 50 million to 80 million Americans who play at least one of the myriad forms of poker—more people than play baseball and softball combined. Television executives, too, have discovered poker’s allure: ESPN televises the five-month World Series of Poker Tournament, while the Travel Channel also airs high-rolling games on its “World Poker Tour” series. On Bravo, you can watch B-grade celebrities bluff and call for charity on “Celebrity Poker Showdown.”
With legions of players, celebrity cachet and a foothold in the marketplace, poker is a truly national pastime. Poker even has an Internet presence. Thousands of players compete on sites like Partypoker.com, where a $50 deposit allows you to saddle up to virtual tables or compete in big-money tournaments. Last year’s WSOP champion, Chris Moneymaker (yes, his real name), turned a $40 deposit on Pokerstars.com into the WSOP’s $10,000 entry fee.
Local poker enthusiast Josh Stafford says he’s up about $6,000 in the past four months on various Internet poker sites.
“I play because I can win. I like winning,” says Stafford, an engineering graduate student at UVA. “In a huge tournament, with 1,000 people in it, you get into the top 100 players and the top prize is enough to buy a BMW…that’s excitement.”
But it’s not just about money. “If I want to win money, I play Internet poker. If I want to have a good time, I play live poker,” says Stafford.
Poker also touches on a completely different component of the American Dream, one that the middle-aged, mostly married men who make up the Trash Talkers are more interested in pursuing one Friday a month—sitting around a fold-out table, catching a beer buzz in a suburban garage filled with the sweet stink of cigars and the strains of classic rock, telling off-color jokes and littering conversations with “man,” “dude” and the f-bomb.
When there are games to be played, trash to be talked, and nary a spouse or child in earshot, who cares so much about the money?
Call of the wild
Poker’s mainstream appeal reflects the Wild West aura still surrounding the game—yet in Charlottesville, gamblin’, cussin’ and drinkin’ remain taboo enough that the doctors, psychologists and real estate brokers in the Trash Talkers, like Cleve, prefer to be identified only by their first names.
Tonight, it’s Mike’s turn to host the Trash Talkers. Nicknamed “The Chef,” Mike prepared for tonight’s game by pulling his car out of the garage, and setting up a circular folding table surrounded by two desk chairs, three folding chairs, a camping chair and one of the wooden chairs from his dining room. He turned on the Christmas lights covering one wall, and tuned a dusty boombox to 3WV’s “All-American Weekend,” which is blasting the Doobie Brothers’ “Rockin’ Down the Highway” as Mike lights a huge Dunhill Esplendido cigar while the players trickle in.
First to arrive is Flip, who organized the Trash Talkers game three years ago, and who occasionally types up “minutes” the night after a game, for regulars who couldn’t make it. “Shit talking, cigars and beer have been integral from the beginning,” he says. Flip comes with a cooler of Budweiser, wearing a Trek bicycle cap and a fanny pack holding plastic sunglasses, which he dons when the action gets hot.
“Sunglasses help minimize the ‘tells,’” says Flip, “like when your eyes get big with a good hand, or when you look like you want to cry.”
Another regular Trash Talker, Chris, brings comic relief instead of beer. “Wow,” he says, as the mellow strains of “Comfortably Numb” come through the speakers. “Just listening to Pink Floyd makes you feel stoned, even though you’re not.”
Kevin, co-founder of the Trash Talkers, looks boyish with his Red Sox cap covering his crew-cut red hair. He’s wearing Teva sandals and jean shorts, and the red vest over his white t-shirt is pinned with a button that reads “Repeal the 19th Amendment.” Susan B. Anthony—and, presumably, Kevin’s wife—would not be proud.
He passes Cleve a black Dominican cigar called an Onyx, which Cleve ignites with a butane Pocket Torch. “Cleve, you’re the dude. You’re the man,” says Kevin.
Cleve is, indeed, the man—at least on the first hand. Pale ales and Budwiesers have been cracked and carefully placed on napkins, to keep the cards from landing on wet spots. The whiskey is poured, the cigars are smoldering, and the players have traded wads of dollar bills for blue, white and green chips, each worth a dime.
The game is straight seven-card stud. Each player places an ante, a minimum bet required to join the game, and is dealt three cards—two face down, one face up. Then there’s a round of betting, during which each player decides whether to call the bet, raise the bet, or fold. Players who stay in the game get three more cards, each face up, and each followed by another round of betting. The seventh card is dealt face down, followed by a final round of betting.
After the last card is dealt, Mike reveals a pair of jacks. Cleve shows three sixes, yet he wears a rueful expression as he rakes in $9, about a third of the typical Trash Talker pot.
“Rule No. 1—never win early,” Cleve says.
Chips ahoy!
The lure of riches, the rush of making a nerve-shaking wager with crossed fingers and an educated guess, knowing that only the strongest (or best liar) will survive, with nothing for the rest—it’s the story of generals, stock traders and baseball managers, and it’s sure to outlast the run of “Celebrity Poker Showdown.”
The history of poker is murky, but poet and author James McManus includes a fascinating summary in his 2003 book Positively Fifth Street, a must-read for any poker enthusiast. Long story short, French soldiers brought a three-card bluffing game called poque to New Orleans around 1820. As it spread North on Mississippi riverboats, “pokuh” quickly replaced three-card monte as the most efficient method (aside from pistols) from separating suckers from their money.
Please allow me to introduce myself/ I’m a man of wealth and taste…
“Great song,” says Flip, mumbling the lyrics along with Mick Jagger.
The game has switched to a version of Midnight Baseball, in which the players with the highest and the lowest hand both win and split the pots. Fittingly, it’s near midnight. The coolers are nearly empty, the stogies have burned down to dark nubs and June bugs crawl through the dollar bills in the middle of the table. Flip finally pulls his sunglasses from that fanny pack and slips them on over his regular spectacles.
“The basic strategies and advice I go by now is to play honestly, but to learn
other players’ tells, and use that against them as mercilessly as possible.
“My other rule of thumb,” says Flip, “is to never tell my wife how much I lose, but to take my family out for brunch…most of the time…when I win.”
Most experienced poker players have an “easy come, easy go,” attitude about money. It’s a prerequisite for this game, where fortunes rise and fall.
“It’s a gentleman’s game,” says Cleve. And that, to him, seems the most important thing. No matter how hard people compete for individual glory, the games won’t last without enduring friendships.
“The only thing worse than losing,” says Flip, “is being out of the game.”
Poker pics
Ante up to these classic card scenes from cinema history
The Cincinnati Kid
Not rated, 102 minutes, 1965
Directed by Norman Jewison
This cinematic treatment of Richard Jessup’s novel, about an up-and-coming ’30s poker champ, benefited from screenwriting contributions by Ring Lardner Jr. (M*A*S*H) and Terry Southern (Easy Rider). However, it’s the film’s stellar cast, along with a gritty narrative and stylized direction, that makes The Cincinnati Kid the best poker movie ever. Hotshot poker player Eric Stoner, a.k.a. “The Kid” (Steve McQueen), goes up against old-guard poker master Lancey Howard, a.k.a. “The Man” (Edward G. Robinson), in a marathon game of five-card stud that will decide if The Man will be replaced. Roguish Rip Torn plays Slade, a spiteful local tycoon with a vested interest in seeing Howard beaten after being “gutted” in a poker game by The Man.
The film’s characters are clearly defined by their actions leading up to the final poker scene so that we comprehend Stoner and Howard as serious poker competitors who view money as a tool to poker as “language is to thought.” When the final hand is played, Stoner has cleverly quelled Slade’s attempt to fix the game in his favor with a cheating dealer (Karl Malden), and has worn Howard down in spite of The Man’s various attempts to psyche him out. McQueen and Robinson exhibit perfect poker-faced control in the scene as they each go “all in” with the makings of a full house against a straight flush. The big poker lesson here is that “sometimes the cards fuck you.” Neither Hollywood nor poker gets any truer than that.—Cole Smithey
The Sting
PG, 129 minutes, 1973
Directed by George Roy Hill
Probably the best-acted poker scene you’ll find anywhere, and one of the longest. The game is the centerpiece of a vignette title-carded “The Hook,” one of the critical puzzle pieces in David S. Ward’s elegantly complicated screenplay. Paul Newman’s con man Henry Gondorff has to lure mob boss Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw) into losses so big they inspire a vendetta. But, in a nice wrinkle, the object of the game is more than just to win the dough, it’s to get Lonnegan so pissed off that he cheats.
Among poker scenes, this one is unusual for its claustrophobia, as it takes place in the cramped confines of a railroad berth. The tight spaces let Newman stretch for glorious ways to protect his hand from prying eyes, real or imagined.
But besides its beautifully realized conceit of cheating the cheater, the scene works because it pits two great actors against one another at the top of their form. Newman is pulling double duty here playing a character (Henry) who’s playing a character, a half-drunken bookie calling himself Shaw. This is Newman at his loose-limbed best, barking, obnoxious and entirely without vanity. And Robert Shaw is fully Newman’s equal here, wrapping Lonnegan’s fury and malevolence tightly inside the good manners and expensive suits demanded by the decorum of this “legitimate” game.
The stakes for the character are as high as they can be—life and death, really. But Gondorff’s uproarious play-acting lets the scene be hilarious and harrowing and the same time.—Patrick Cribben
Rounders
R, 121 minutes, 1998
Directed by John Dahl
The showdown in Rounders between Matt Damon, playing a poker prodigy, and John Malkovich, as a Russian mobster, is like the culminating contest in any great sports movie—the underdog has an early, but minor, victory, gets beaten down severely, but finds a way to pull it out at the end. Of course, the game they’re playing, No Limit Texas Hold ’Em—the Cadillac of poker—lends itself nicely to such reversals of fortune.
How does Damon do it? He wears his opponent down, “checking,” or passing, each time he is first to bet. Checking can be a sucker’s play, but sometimes, when you’re holding the nuts, it’s the best way to trap your opponent. You hope he picks up the card he wants and then makes the mistake of moving “all in” against you. The downside is, you risk winning nothing with your strong hand if your opponent checks back at you.
Having studied his poker (earlier in the film, Damon’s character watches the World Series of Poker match in which Johnny Chan beats Eric Seidel in exactly that way), Damon boldly checks at Malkovich with what he knows is the best hand. Malkovich falls for it, moving all in, which leads to one of the more bizarrely articulated lines of any poker movie: “He beat me. Pay heem. Pay dat man his mon-eee.”—Paul Henderson
Quiz Show
PG-13, 133 minutes, 1994
Directed by Robert Redford
One of the best poker scenes of the past 20 years, and maybe the best, period, in a film not directly about cards, or casinos, or confidence men.
Congressional investigator Richard Goodwin (Rob Morrow) has been sussing out the culpability of famous game show contestant and blueblood Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes) during the quiz show scandals of the late 1950s. But Goodwin is charmed, also, by Van Doren and the erudite Brahmin world his family lives in. At a key moment late in the film, the working class but Harvard-educated Goodwin finds himself in a poker game at Van Doren’s place—the only one at the table not to the manor born. Screenwriter Paul Attanasio’s dialogue shuffles between the usual (though Ivy-league sharp) banter about the game at hand and Goodwin’s parries about the scandal itself. When Van Doren makes a large bet and the hand comes around to Goodwin, he looks into Van Doren’s eyes and says, “I think you’re lying.” Van Doren knows what Goodwin really means, but after the subtlest of pauses, he says, “Bluffing. It’s called bluffing, Dick,” covering beautifully—but not well enough.
For the way it lets the poker game parallel and illuminate the much higher-stakes themes at the heart of the film—the matching of wits, the class envy, the art of the disingenuous—this is the royal flush of modern movie poker scenes.—P.C.
House of Games
R, 102 minutes, 1987
Directed by David Mamet
The poker scene in House of Games begins with an overhead shot on a vast expanse of green table. No faces, just hands, playing with chips, moving money, tapping cigarettes into ashtrays. We hear lots of poker clichés, muttered in the clipped, fragmented rhythms Mamet is so famous for—“You’ve got to give action to get action,” etc.
The game is five-card stud. Joe Mantegna’s character, Mike, is losing to a high-roller. Mike has spotted his adversary’s tell (playing with his ring), but the high-roller knows it and has stopped. So Mike has enlisted the help of psychiatrist Margaret Ford, played by Mamet’s then-wife, Lindsay Crouse, who is there on behalf of one of her patients, a gambling addict. When Mike goes to the bathroom, she’ll keep an eye on him—does he play with his ring? If so, Mike will take him down.
Mike’s got three aces, and bets $1,500, but the high-roller comes over the top at him with a $6,000 raise. So Mike goes to the bathroom, and sure enough, the high-roller twiddles with his ring. When Mike comes back, the doctor is emphatic: “Call the bet.” The high-roller has a club flush—game over.
It’s a bad bet. Mike didn’t have $6,000, and you don’t call a raise that empties your roll unless you know you have the nuts. But the game is part of a con, and as we learn later, it’s not Mike who ultimately holds the losing cards. The moral? Stay out of other people’s poker.—P.H.