Numbers
Numbers. It’s always numbers. I think of almost everything in terms of numbers. Let me explain.
It’s 11:42 AM as I step off the 9:05 bus in terminal #4 of the Atlantic City Bus Terminal. I call an Uber to the poker room. It’s four minutes away and will cost eleven dollars to take me three miles but I’m not that concerned about the cost. I’m about to put down $250 to enter a tournament, and my competition will be about three hundred and thirty players. Forty-five get paid. I think I’m good enough. The driver drops me off and I give him five stars, one for each turn he missed along the way. I wonder if my attempt to be kind to him will cost someone else, if some unfortunate person who’s on their way to the hospital to give birth will choose this driver because of his undeservedly high rating and end up having to ad-lib. That’s a $200 fine. I brush the thought aside as I walk up to booth #2 to get my entry ticket. They seat me at table fourteen, seat seven. Some would say “lucky number seven”, but I don’t believe in luck, just making the right decisions. The two tens in my hand make me feel fortunate, however, and I put three-thousand of my twenty-thousand chips into the middle. It doesn’t work out. Neither do the next several hands. The first break comes and I glance at my phone. It’s 1:30 and my phone is on thirty-percent and emotionally I’m at about twenty. Not because of the poor start to the tournament as much as much as other stuff. Perhaps the stuff that caused me to be there in the first place. I thought about her. I told her once that everything in life is a gamble. She told me that fifty-percent of marriages end in divorce and I told her they don’t if you give it one hundred-percent. But that was then, and now I’m ninety-percent certain I’ll never see her again. That’s sad, but life is about experiences, so I’m glad I had that one.
I stare across the table at my opponent. I think stereotypes are harmful, usually, but when you’re looking at a guy you’ve known for two hours and have only heard speak twice and your tournament life is in his hands, a stereotype is all you have to work with. I guess his age, probably twenty-seven. No ring, obviously. No rings here. Paid too much for his clothes, probably shouldn’t have. Keeps his cash in a rubber band. He keeps his cash in a rubber band. Bingo. People with their cash in a rubber band don’t have cash anywhere else. He’s not prepared to lose this tournament. He shouldn’t even be in it. All-in. He folds like I knew he would and I take the chips. Back in business. Two more hours and three more all-ins and three more folds and one hundred thousand more chips and only one table left. Final nine. I know I’m not the best player at the table now, but I don’t have to be. I just have to get it right a couple more times. My roommate thinks I always think I’m the best. That’s not true. He thinks I’m cocky. That’s not true. I just have a lot of admiration to share, and right now I don’t have anyone to share it with. That might not make sense, but it sounded cool in my head, so it’s what I told him. He’s definitely going to think I’m cocky when I pay our rent in cash. Whatever. Back to the game.
Everything is numbers. Before I make any decision of any significance, I think about the numbers. The number I got in the last math class I took wasn’t a good number. It was a C-. That’s not a number, it’s a letter, but once you start to combine the two together is when I start to lose focus and get grades like that. I could’ve gotten a better grade, but when I calculated the number of hours it would take me to incrementally increase my grade and how that increase would factor into my overall GPA and how that overall GPA would factor into my marketability as a potential hire and how that increase in marketability would increase my overall earnings as an employee, I decided not to waste my time. Whatever. Back to poker. Poker is all numbers, poker makes sense. Just make the right decisions and hope for the best.
There are only two of us now. I look at my cards. KK. Nice. I raise. He reraises. I pause. Reraise. He pauses. All-in. I don’t have to do the math this time; I know the math. There’s only one hand better than mine right now, and its aces. There’s a 1/211 chance he would have those, 1/203, after accounting for my two cards. Of course, he’s acting like he has ’em. I don’t care. I call. He flips his cards over and I see my least two favorite letters in the alphabet, AA. I sigh and grab my backpack. I had a nice run. Second place isn’t too bad. He grins in glee as the dealer goes through the motions. Nothing to see here. Then it happens. King. On the river. Two cards, out of the whole forty-eight left, and the card I wanted, the card I needed, came. It came. He tosses his hands up in disgust as I laugh in relief. I pick up the winner’s check and stare at that number. It’s a good day.