A Guy Named Charlie Graced our Table

This blog is from my book “Poker, Life and Other Confusing Things.” It’s about Charlie, whom I think you’ll like.

Let me tell you about a remarkable couple of hours I spent with a guy named Charlie. The floorman who brought him over to our $15 - $30 limit hold’em table spoke to him loudly, with exaggerated hand gestures. My first thought was that we’ve got a deaf player joining our table. One of the cool things about poker is that it is a truly level playing field. Poker players can be difficult characters but in all my years at the tables I have never seen anyone give a damn about race, gender, age, sexual orientation or disabilities. I’ve played with guys with tattoos over every inch of their bodies, with dwarves, transvestites, drunks, hallelujah Christians, junkies and neo-Nazis. One of my favorite players is a victim of thalidomide. He has only a single limb, a slightly deformed but usable leg. He sits in a motorized wheelchair. He picks his cards up with the prehensile toes on his one foot. He bets with the same toes and pulls in his pots with his foot. He is funny, smart and dangerously aggressive. I’ve played with him for years now and never seen anyone treat him any differently than anyone else. We’ll take his money when we can and be grateful for those moments.

In poker all are welcome. The playing field here is as level as it’s ever going to get and for one dead simple reason: it’s a competition over money. If you understand the game and make the right decisions you’re gonna win. If you don’t you’re gonna lose. We’ll grudgingly watch you walk away with our cash if you’re good and we’ll cut your liver out and eat it if you’re not. So Charlie sat down and no one took much notice.

After a few seconds I realized that he wasn’t deaf. He could hear fine. But Charlie, who looked to be in his early forties, couldn’t speak, and he carried a small vibraphone used by people who have had their larynx removed, almost always because of cancer. The gizmo he carried amplified the vibrations in the throat and by holding it against his neck and mouthing words while exhaling he could speak after a fashion. But Charlie’s vibraphone didn’t work all that well and it was tough making out what he said. He knew this, but as I was soon to discover, it didn’t stop him from being a fascinating guy to have a ‘conversation’ with.

Charlie also sported another natty give-away to his condition, a classic French cravat made from fine silk tied to cover what I was sure were the ravages of throat surgery. When he sat down on my right I realized that he was stiff and could hardly turn his head. He clearly had had several additional surgical procedures and there were two other spots on his neck that looked like old scars that the cravat didn’t cover. “This,” I thought, “is a guy who has gone through hell.” He pulled a large sheaf of notepaper out of a pocket along with a couple of pens and wrote me a quick note.

“Watching poker on TV,” he wrote, “Want to make final table.”

“Me too,” I replied. “Stay right here with me; let’s see if we can work this out together.”

He laughed. It was a distinctly odd sound that sounded like the wind blowing through trees, but his eyes shone.

It didn’t take long for me, as well as the assembled vultures at the table, to realize that our friend had never played poker before, certainly not in an organized card room and certainly not for these stakes. I explained the nuances of posting the two blinds and, with all the patience I could muster, tried to let him know that he didn’t have to put up $15 every time the dealer said, “Fifteen to you sir.”

Well, as luck would have it, he hit a couple of hands early on and after a half hour or so was up a couple of hundred zucchinis. And, as luck would have it, he began slipping me notes. Slowly I began to realize that someone very unusual was sitting at our end of the table.

“You’re doing okay so far, Charlie,” I said, breaking every serious poker player’s vow to never tell a fish how to play the game. “But you really don’t want to call a raise, let alone a single bet with 5, 2 off.”

“I see that,” he scrawled on a sheet of notepaper, “but I REALLY want to see those 3 cards. I could flop 5, 2 and have two pair.” (Quick learner, he was talking the talk already, or at least writing the talk.)

“Yeah, true enough,” I whispered to him, “but you’re not likely to and it’ll start getting real expensive.”

“It’s only money,” he wrote and laughed that hissing laugh again. “I’m here to have fun. I want to see those 3 cards.”

“Fine,” I replied sotto voce, “but don’t let these guys know that,” as I scanned the table for his benefit. More laughter. This time he used the vibraphone and began explaining to me that he was in town for a couple of days because he really needed to get away from it all.

By now I felt like we had become friends. He was starting to listen to my advice and had at least dropped a hint about his condition. “So,” I asked, gesturing toward his neck while we waited for the house to go through the ritual of bringing in a new set-up, “what happened?” I wasn’t really sure I expected an answer. Half of me felt like I was invading his privacy; the other half was pretty sure this guy wanted to talk, at least a little.

Out came the note pad while they dealt the new cards. “3 ops in 4 yrs,” he wrote and cold-called two bets with what turned out to be J, 4 off.

“Laryngectomy?” I asked.

“Yup,” he said with the vibraphone. “That was the first. Then ‘it’ spread and they had to go back two more times; two bouts of chemo and one of radiation. There isn’t much left around here,” he said, pointing to his neck and betting out when the board came down J, T, 4 rainbow!

“Charlie,” I asked, “would you like to join me for dinner later? I’ve got enough comps for both of us.”

“Might be fun, can’t eat,” he wrote. “No real food 3 yrs. Die for a greasy ch’burger. Juices and chalky chocolate liquids all,” he scribbled and bet out again when a 9 came on the turn.

“BORING !” he put down in block letters, and bet out again (don’t do it Charlie!) when a K hit on the river. “God, for visit to McD’s!”

Bang, the guy in the cut-off raises and, sigh, Charlie calls. He saw my dirty look and pulled out the note pad. “I wanted to see if he really had the straight,” he penned in the now familiar blue ink.

“Why’d you bet?” I asked.

“Don’t know. Wasn’t thinking,” came back the note.

“Hmm,” I thought. “Maybe he’s learning.” And I can feel the heat coming my way from the guys at the far end of the table who don’t really understand who has graced us and don’t like my giving him advice.

“Why poker?” I asked. “Why now?”

“Why not.” He scrawled hastily. “Found another tumor yesterday.”

We played another hand and Charlie actually discovered that he can push his cards toward the dealer rather than call.

“You know,” out came the pen again. “I died last year in the OR. Revived me. That was good, don’t you think. Maybe enough time to learn this game. Yes?”

Before I could answer, he grabbed my wrist and pulled out another broad tipped felt pen. “HEY!” he wrote, all caps, “I’M NOT TALKING TOO MUCH, AM I?”

“No, Charlie,” I said. “Not at all.”

“When my wife wants me to shut up, she steals my pens,” he wrote. This time his hissing laughter was part of a chorus from the four of us at our end of the table who were now all reading Charlie’s notes and basking in his presence.

“See the Carib Stud JP?” he scrawled.

“Yeah,” the guy to my left said. “I heard it’s up to a quarter of a million.”

“Higher,” came the blue-inked response. “Over $400,000! I don’t think I’ve got the time to learn this game. Gonna go hit it. Gotta leave something for my family.”

With this he got up and shook all our hands. The smile never left his face. He didn’t have much of his original stake left but off he went to invest it on a jackpot. My buddy Anthony watched Charlie’s back as he left and looked over at me with moisture in his eyes. “I think my priorities just shifted a bit,” he said as a warm smile spread across his face.

I picked up the last piece of notepaper Charlie left behind and wrote on it. “Yeah, I think they did for a lot of us.”

Lightening in a Bottle (poker version)

Every once in a while some really weird shit hits the fan that makes you smile. Here’s one of those moments that took place in this year’s WSOP (that’s “World Series of Poker” for the uninitiated). A professional poker player named Christian Pham plunked down his $1,500 for an upcoming no limit Hold ‘em event. Unfortunately (though you may want to amend that) he gave the wrong information to the clerk and was handed the entry card for a Deuce to 7 no limit event. Of course, he didn’t realize this. I’ve played in more than a few WSOP events (and cashed in a couple) and, trust me, you don’t check the entry cards. You just stick ‘em in your pocket and go to your assigned seat and assume you’re in the game you signed up for.

But, you need to understand. These two games could not be more different. In Hold ‘em you get two cards to start and, using five common cards on the board, try to make the best high hand. Deuce to 7 is a “low” game where you are dealt five cards, get one shot at replacing the ones you don’t like and try to make the lowest hand — provided it isn’t an “accidental” high hand ‘cause what you might think is a great hand like 2,3,4,5,6 is a straight and just sucks at this game. And Ace is a high card, not a low one. If you’ve never played this game before it can drive you bat shit crazy.

So what did Pham do? He sat there for the first hour or so in a puddle of confusion and frustration. He’d never played this game before. He’d been making his living as a Hold ‘em player with the no limit version his preferred game. Once the first hand was dealt he couldn’t get a refund and, as he put it, he was totally, utterly confused. So he did what any good poker player would do. He sat quietly. He watched and learned and slowly began to understand what he was stuck in.

Remarkably over the next three days he played a game he was unfamiliar with against a couple hundred folks who had actually signed up for the tournament knowing what they were doing — and beat them all. He won the coveted WSOP bracelet and the biggest cash of his career. A remarkable achievement.

Yes, he got lucky a couple of times — but, trust me, you can’t win any poker tournament without a couple of lucky breaks. But he played solid, pro-level poker and in a game he’d never played before.

Asked later about this he said something like “I guess I’m a fast learner.” This fast learner, who was born in Saigon and now lives in St. Paul, MN, said he did the only thing he could think to do. He folded almost every hand at the beginning until he began to understand how this quirky low-ball draw game was played.

There’s a bit of wisdom in that.

Congrats Mr. Pham; you’re a special guy and we should all applaud.

I’m off to my annual WSOP pilgrimage next week. If I catch lightening in a bottle like Pham, I’ll be sure to post it here.

Cruzian Irony

Another delicious dollop of irony…. Ted Cruz is running some promo where the winner gets to go hunting with Cruz. Okay, on the surface this seems reasonable. Cruz is a gun guy; his supporters are likely gun guys. Seems like a cool way to spend the day. Then the infusion of irony: Cruz insists that whoever wins the promo has to be given a background check before allowed to go out with Cruz.

There really is no need to say anything at this point.

Krugman Right; Krugman Wrong

In another of his insightful columns in the NY Times, Paul Krugman noted that “… events in Texas and other states — notably Kansas and California — are providing yet another object demonstration that the tax-cut obsession that dominates the modern Republican Party is all wrong.”

Yes, it is all wrong — for the country. It is all wrong for the average citizen, for the working class and for what remains of the middle class. It is all wrong if you care about having a reasonably funded, effective government.

But what Krugman (and almost everybody else) misses is that the people who run the modern Republican Party don’t want governments to succeed. The disasters in places like Kansas and the downturn in others like Texas are making the puppet masters behind the GOP smile. They don’t laugh out loud though, fearing that someone might hear and wonder and start asking the kinds of questions that few in the media are asking.

As Thom Hartmann put it, there are three kinds of Republicans (I do love it when folks find “three” kinds of people instead of the cliché’ish two):

•The wealthy

•Those with sufficient power and influence to have been bought by the wealthy

•The duped

Those governing in Red States like Kansas and Texas are among the bought and were elected by the duped. Together they do the bidding of their oligarch masters. There’s a damn good reason that the Koch brothers have promised to funnel nearly a billion dollars into the 2016 campaigns — all of it to support Republicans.

As Krugman points out, the states where the one percenters haven’t been able to buy their very own politicians, like California, are doing fine. In fact, more than fine. California raised taxes and, mirabile dictu, is now running a surplus, boosting salaries, funneling more money into the economy and, as any good Keynesian could tell you, businesses are thriving — to the annoyance of folks like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers.

These guys are not stupid. They know that if government succeeds they lose their edge. It is when government fails, when the infrastructure crumbles, when education lags and the economy sours that they gain. Their ultimate goal is simple: force government to privatize services. Squeeze it to the point where both state and federal agencies will have to seek buyers. And they are the only ones with enough cash to buy.

Yes, I know that some think this line is evidence of an aged paranoid mind. I wish it were. I can’t recall ever wanting to be wrong as much because, if I’m right, and the GOP takes the White House in 2016 you can kiss this country good-bye.

2016? Think SCOTUS

The presidential election is 17 months away and is clearly shaping up as a real donnybrook. It’s going to be Hillary Clinton against one of the more “moderate” Republicans — though that label doesn’t mean what it used to. If any GOP hopeful were to campaign on the platform of a Nixon or Ford he/she wouldn’t stand a chance. Heck, even Saint Ronald would have to move rightward to be acceptable these days.

But that’s not the point. The serious point is that many of my progressive friends are annoyed with Hillary. They are getting excited over Bernie. Since Elizabeth Warren has finally gotten her message across that she is not a candidate they’ve started swarming around Sanders.

I would love to see a President Sanders at the end of next year. But it’s not going to happen. Hill will be the nominee and she should win handily. The only thing that could keep her from a landslide is either some unforseen disaster (unlikely) or a self-inflicted (and more likely) one, the one where many progressives are so annoyed with Clinton that they stay home or write in “Sanders” or “Warren.”

If anyone is thinking along there lines stop and consider the damage, the historical, long-lasting and irremediable damage done by the appointment of Alito and Roberts to the Supreme Court. Think who’d be sitting on the bench if Gore had won (yeah, I know, he did win ….).

Think Citizens United, think the gutting of the Civil Rights Act or go here for a full analysis of the drift of the Court over the last 80 years.

Bader-Ginsburg is 82, Scalia is 79, Kennedy 78, Breyer 76. It is likely that the next president will get to appoint up to four justices.

Frankly, I’m sufficiently satisfied with Hillary’s stance on most issues even if she waffles a bit on Wall Street and has a tad too much muscle in her foreign affairs. But just the thought of a Jeb Bush or Scott Walker making four appointments to the SCOTUS is terrifying.

This is not a time for Idealism. It is one for Pragmatism.