Cards and Humanity
by Toni Livakovic
|
Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
part 2
“Pocket sevens now,” Derrick immediately groans, unknowingly breaking the etiquette of keeping one’s cards to himself, even after a fold. “Clearly it would be too much to ask for an ace or a king here and there, like everybody else is getting.”
Half of the men — generally the older ones — simply puff their cigars, accustomed to players behaving this way. The other half is stunned into stillness.
“Why would you fold pocket sevens? That’s a good hand,” JP eventually asks amicably.
Derrick shakes his head. “Like I said, there are aces and kings out there. How can I say I got a good hand when there are better cards that’ll beat me?”
“It’s all relative, my friend. You have six other people at this table. You probably have a better starting hand than five of them, but you’re only thinking about the one hand that is maybe better.” JP sips his beer. “And sure, someone might have an ace or a king, but what if those never show up in the community cards? What if a seven shows up and helps you?”
“That’s a lot of ifs. No way I can be confident about pocket sevens if a high card might come up, or if a seven might never show up.”
Marcus bets a few chips, chuckling at Derrick’s ignorance of one of the most obvious yet neglected elements of poker. “Well, of course you can’t. Poker is a game where nothing is certain and nothing is permanent. You can have a ’great hand’ get wiped out into nothing at any time, whether you see it coming or not.”
Derrick motions his hand towards Marcus, as if to confirm that Marcus’ point is backing his own argument. “Exactly. So how can I get any confidence in being happy about this hand until I know that it’s good?”
Marcus waves off the idea. “You sound like my son. You’ll never have that certainty you’re looking for, no matter which cards come and go. That’s how the game is, and you have to play by the game’s rules.”
“Alright, alright, I got you. Still, pair of sevens is straight up just not a good hand.”
JP abstains from reiterating his stance on the relative unimportance of the cards. “This is the problem with fellas like you.” He proceeds gently and pitifully, fixated on Derrick’s styled, non-graying hair and his uneasy twiddling with his restless smartphone. “You all complain you get dealt bad cards. The thing is, when you do get good cards, you never recognize them for what they are.”
“Are you now starting to understand why I play it in this way?” Sidney prods the table. “Every player wants the thing that is impossible: to have a better hand, not just one time, but every time.”
“I mean, Derrick’s got a point,” Hayden advocates. “Sometimes the cards you get simply suck. You gotta see it for what it is.”
A few murmurs of reluctant agreement are scattered across the table, while Marcus delivers a defiant eye roll.
JP resists: “We all get some cards that might be considered bad. In fact, I know plenty of folks that say most poker hands are bad. I’ll tell you what, though. You don’t see us getting those hands because we fold them, and you’re letting your hands that you don’t like stick out to you more.”
Derrick hunts for a middle ground in the dispute. “Maybe we’re all meant to perceive the cards differently. We each got different poker experiences, after all. There’s nothing with that.”
Sidney shifts in his seat and rubs his ears uncomfortably, internally disagreeing with Derrick yet not wanting to spark more debate.
Almost immediately after becoming the dealer, Niall stumbles over a leg of the table and the cards freefall out of his grasp. He gazes at the mess in front of him.
“Your arguments are all pointless,” he snickers, despite usually being distant from these discussions. “This is a nonsense game. Think about it: these cards are just a bunch of random colors and numbers and stupid looking faces. But then we come up with these silly little interpretations and throw money in based on things we don’t even freaking know. Nonsense!”
While the rest of the men exchange restrained grimaces of disagreement, JP shoots to the edge of his seat.
“Yeah, the cards are just a bunch of random colors and numbers and, granted, some stupid looking faces,” he laughs. He adjusts his glasses as he starts to pick up the cards from the floor, remembering that Niall can’t because of the alleged “back problem” he has had since childhood. “Yet when we’re able to look at all these cards and think about them, we can freely create a game for ourselves, and the game we choose is poker.”
“Oh, of course. It’s so wonderfully simple, you guys, we can create any game we want!” Niall mocks, twirling the curls of his mustache. “These cards can’t mean different things to different players, JP. If you can’t find one right way to use them — which, spoiler alert, you can’t — then all the games you come up with are equally nonsense.”
“There is no ’right way’ to use them. If you think poker, or blackjack or rummy or whatever it might be, is the best way for you to personally play, then great. You’ve figured it all out.”
“No, you think you got it figured out. We don’t know squat about what we want in our game, about the cards, about anything. And how can we? We’re honestly lying to ourselves by making up some game to play.”
“You’re right that there’s a lot we don’t know. That doesn’t mean we don’t know anything.” JP’s comment is countered with a silent, doubtful eyebrow raise from Niall. “Niall, we have to make our best individual judgment on how we should play with the cards. It can take time for us to figure out which game is best for us, but eventually we get there.”
“Well, then, who’s to say that poker is any better than some mind-numbing game like war or go fish? These are not all equally good choices. They can’t all be the right choice.”
“You might not think war or go fish are worthy games, although they can be to someone else. It’s totally subjective.” With a shrug of his shoulders, JP continues, “Even if we never find the best way to spend our time at the table, the search is a worthwhile process we can embrace.”
Niall rubs his hands against his face. “You don’t get it, genius. It’s a process towards nothingness. We can make up these fun, happy games that make us feel good, but they’re meaningless ways of wasting our time. There’s no real use to these cards, JP.”
Suddenly, a gust of wind thrusts itself against a break room window, cracking the glass like a spider web as it seeps its way through.
Silently hopeful, Marcus sees his king and ten of diamonds become a flush draw as Niall deals two diamonds to the community cards. His unwavering facial expression, largely aided by his robust, curly beard, guards any entranceways into his inner emotions. Following his usual style, Marcus controls the play with an aggressive opening bet, which a couple of the other men match. By the time the final community card lands, he successfully hits his flush. He pushes half of his bountiful stack of chips into the middle and peers up at Derrick, the final opponent still left in the hand.
“I call.” Derrick flips over his cards to reveal a very unlikely ace flush, the only possible hand that could beat Marcus’.
Quickly subduing an emotional reaction, Marcus shrugs his broad, commanding shoulders. “It is what it is. Nothing I could do there.”
Derrick smiles, gleaming with confidence. “I’ve been telling y’all the whole time, it’s the cards that decide the game. You got wrecked by them, Marcus, the same way I have been all night.”
“Plays like that, they are unfortunately always going to happen at times,” Sidney contemplates, sipping an increasingly lukewarm water. “Accepting them for what they are is what you must do. Once you realize that you will eventually lose chips, you suddenly stop being so overly concerned about them.”
With his scarred left hand, Marcus wipes a few beads of sweat off his wrinkled brow and tips his military cap towards Sidney. “We may be from different sides of the world, Sid, but we sure have some things in common.”
“But doesn’t this make you angry?” Derrick interrupts. “The fact that you did all the right things and you happened to be the one who lost a ton of chips from the unlucky odd chance?”
“No, sir,” Marcus responds coolly. “It only matters if I let it matter. Before I even placed my bet, I came to terms with the possibility of an ace flush beating me. Anything can happen in poker, so nothing should come as a surprise.”
“Yeah, true. Anything can happen. I guess that’s what makes this such a cruel game.”
“I don’t think it’s cruel. It’s a zero-sum game. For all the money that’s lost, money is gained elsewhere. That’s just the cycle of how the game flows. And hey, if you think it’s cruel, it’ll end eventually.”
“Well, until the next one,” Sidney revises.
Marcus chuckles dismissively.
Pete protectively thrusts his hand onto Derrick’s shoulder. “No offense, Marcus, but I’m happy to see Derrick get those chips from you if you weren’t going to do the noble thing and give him some. He barely had any before that play.”
“No offense taken, although the chips don’t matter. Everyone is so focused on getting chips, like that’s what determines who’s a good poker player. People don’t even do it to try to please themselves anymore. It feels like they do it to prove that they’re better than everyone else at the table.”
“Isn’t the whole point of the game to get a lotta chips?” Hayden challenges. “How else would you even decide how good someone is?”
“No, the winnings don’t mean anything because they’re mostly down to the cards we get handed to us.” Marcus turns to Derrick. “Only part of the game is decided by the cards, but that part doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is what we control, which is making the right decisions.”
Derrick bites his lip in thought. “I don’t know, man. Even if you’re right that we got control over our decisions, it seems really...idealistic to not be fazed by everything that happens in the game. All the cards that come up and the wins or losses they cause naturally make us feel good or bad. I don’t know how you can say those things don’t matter just because you didn’t cause them.”
Sidney replies, “You are no longer affected by the cards and the results once you build up a strong poker mentality. It is something that takes much time and practice.”
Marcus nods. “You can’t play poker freely until you surrender yourself as a hostage to the cards.”
“Alright, Marcus, if your focus should only be on your own moves, how do you know which ones are good ones?” Derrick inquires.
“All it takes is some rational thinking, and bang, you have your uncompromisable principles on how to play. And because I know you gentlemen are curious, I’ll tell you one of mine: avoid bluffing.”
Mumbles of agreement buzz across the table.
“If you try to bluff your opponents, you’ll usually end up bluffing yourself even worse,” JP validates. “Only when you play authentically can you truly play the game your own way.”
Hayden’s glare darts across the table, failing to find anyone sharing his level of confusion. “Am I missin’ something here? Everybody bluffs in poker. Isn’t that one of the most basic parts of the game?”
“It does feel like everyone bluffs, especially in the modern poker,” Sidney admits. “I cannot figure out why. I feel like it is much better to play with the cards as they are.”
The men meditate on the idea for a moment.
“I think it’s because players chase the chips too aggressively. If they realized how many chips they were actually losing by playing that way, I don’t think they would do it,” JP suggests.
Hayden stretches his forearms out onto the table and hunches over to rest his chin on his arms. “Well, nobody wants to be seen as the clown with the dinkiest stack of chips.”
After a few more hands of reckless betting, Hayden’s collection of chips fades into nothingness. Conscious of Marcus’ earlier points, Hayden combats the urge to sneak a handful from Marcus’ nearby pile and reaches under the table for the chip set.
The lightbulb suddenly shuts down for about three seconds, imposing an awkward standstill of complete silence and darkness in the room before it revives itself.
“You won’t always get that lucky,” JP warns. “If you keep playing the way you do, you might not always get a chance to buy back in.”
Unconcerned, Hayden licks his lips and rubs the palms of his hands together before counting the additional chips he is buying. “It’s time for the king to win his money back.”
“There’s no such thing as winning money back,” Marcus assays in his deep, gruff voice. “The money you lost was in the past, and it’s gone forever now. Any money you make now is new money, a completely separate entity.”
Hayden fiddles with his glistening, incessantly ticking watch, a late birthday gift from his banker father. “If I make up for my screw-ups, though, they don’t matter anymore, no?”
“I disagree, they do matter. For starters, instead of ’making up’ for them, you could very well keep losing money. Even if you do regain the amount of money you lost, your losses are still there. There will always be a hole in your pocket compared to where you could’ve been.”
Hayden heaves out a sigh. “Well, that’s depressing. What am I supposed to do then? Just feel lousy about it?”
“Feeling bad about it isn’t the point. It’s about confronting the fact that whatever happened, happened.” Marcus looks at Derrick, remembering his failed flush draw, and adds, “Even when it’s not your fault.”
Marcus catches Hayden staring blankly into the floor.
“Listen, it goes the other way too,” he consoles. “All the good plays that you make can’t be undone, either. And while you can lose the money you make, you can’t lose the time you spent enjoying those earnings. Instead of focusing on the past plays, though, you should simply keep playing one hand at a time and use the lessons you learned to prevent mistakes.”
“I guess the only thing that’s permanent is the past,” Hayden mumbles.
“Roger that. And no matter how much you struggle, the only direction you can move is forward,” Marcus comments, smiling sympathetically to confirm Hayden’s point.
Copyright © 2022 by Toni Livakovic
