The Poker Report

It happened to Rome. It happened to the NASDAQ. It happened to Steve. I arrived late, but not too late to witness it. The players were the host himself, Monica (a poet from New York), Ben (sporting an A's cap), Donahue (who would do anything for Fox), Cooney (sporting an A's cap), David the Publisher (who loves Steve's books but wishes they'd sell more), Erik Jensen (who is gaining a rep as an early leaver), and myself (who as of yet do not figure in any local poker mythology). The cheerleaders, Tina and Padma, shook their pom-poms with gusto and nibbled Steve's and my ears, respectively, every chance they got.

The turning point for Steve came when, after a long and sweaty summer, we left Texas and went north to Omaha. At first he looked like the Steve of old, the self-described Victory-Channel Steve: all victory, all the time. But then came the defining hand of the evening. I don't remember what I had because what I had didn't matter. But Steve had something that mattered, and he started shedding blue chips like it was 1999. He drove me out early. He knew he had the cards, I knew he had the cards, we all knew he had the cards. But still he didn't drive everyone out. And then at last it came down to him and Jensen, going mano a mano for the low hand - I'm a newcomer to this game, but even I know how that match-up is supposed to end.

Somebody, maybe Ben, maybe Donahue, won the high hand, but that was the featherweight bout on the undercard - all eyes were on Jensen and Steve. When the last blue chip clattered into the heap on the green felt, Steve flipped his cards over - it was a brisk fall morning, and he was up early and eager to rake his nice green lawn. Jensen, though, was in no hurry, turning his cards over one by one. He was calm and deliberate, as if there were - indeed, as if there had never been anything other than world enough and time. He even held onto his high card, the 6, for a few seconds longer than was sporting, daring anyone to doubt him. The rest of us then were carless 15-year-old Midwestern kids drinking Pabst, smoking Kools, and mixing our metaphors by the parking meters, and there was Jensen crawling down the main drag of Omaha in his 64 muscle car, going so slow that you knew he must be fast, while Steve's bright-ass 65 sat on the side of the road, hood propped open, smoke gushing from the engine. Steve himself looked like a kid whose dog had just been fucked by his best friend's dog - he was never the same after that hand. Oh sure, for a while he kept pushing his chips in like before, as if the economy hadn't undergone a fundamental shift, as if the NASDAQ were still a $5000/night Manhattan call girl and not a crack whore working the corner of 16th and Folsom in the Mission District. But no one was fooled, and even he eventually started to play a little scared.

It was a new day, a new century even, and Jensen was up $4. And what do you think he did? He cashed in, of course. We all wanted him to stay, in part because he was at that moment the coolest of us all and we needed him so that we might see ourselves reflected in his coolness, but mostly because we wanted a shot at his fat stack of blue chips. But it wasn't to be - he mumbled some crap about having an early morning, and since he knew I was writing the poker report he quietly reminded me that he was up $4 for the night. Then he left. And it's hard to blame him really.

I myself got good cards and had a good night - in fact, I won a dollar more than Jensen, despite losing hard in the biggest hand of the night to David. I could write pages about that hand, a heartbreaker of a hand, the kind that could make a man like me turn his back on a town like Omaha forever - but it wouldn't matter. Little mattered by that point: the cheerleaders had become players, and Steve was shaking their forgotten pom-poms and nibbling softly on David's ear. And someone else, I forget who because it doesn't matter, won even more money than I did. But his winnings and mine were all form and no content - Jensen's was the only win that mattered.

© Geoff Brock Guest Editor,
Mean Guy
The Poker Report

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