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On the way to the top floor, my nerves get the best of me, but I shake that shit off. I don’t have time to be on edge and need to get my head straight. The room is at the end of the hallway, and there’s a bodyguard standing outside of it.
“ID?”
I pull my wallet from my back pocket and hand him my license. He looks it over, then hands it back to me before opening the door. Inside is a suite that’s larger than my entire house. Where a conference table should go is a poker table, and the other players are already there. A dealer, a pit boss, and three bodyguards stand against the wall, waiting for this to officially start. Everyone’s quiet, and the only sound that can be heard is our collective breathing.
“Any weapons?”
I shake my head as a man dressed in all black pats me down. I lift my arms and allow him to search me.
“He’s clean,” he tells the other guy who’s obviously in charge. I glance over and see a table with Glocks and knives placed on top. While I should be concerned, I’m not, considering some of the shady situations I’ve been in with my job. These players are millionaires, so of course they’re carrying weapons.
The pit boss introduces the game and the rules. Texas hold ’em, regular tournament rules, which means we’ll play until one of us is left. As I look around the table, I notice a guy I played with yesterday but don’t make eye contact. We’re given our chips, and we start with what we paid to play. The blind is five thousand, which means this game could be over fairly quickly. The dealer shuffles the cards, and another person cuts the deck. It’s much harder to play it safe with a six-person game, but I try to be as conservative as possible.
I’m up twenty grand, then down again, and I realize that I’m on a level playing field with them. JJ said they weren’t good players, and I’m calling bullshit. Not one of us is better than the other, and it’s going to come down to who’s smarter. After hours of playing, we’re given a fifteen-minute break to piss. Three guys have already been eliminated but they can’t leave until the game is over. No one comes in, and no one goes out until the end. They’re annoyed as fuck but don’t test it.
Two of the guys I’m playing against are older, more experienced, and I can tell they play games of this caliber regularly. One of them is like a robot, completely unreadable, and I can’t wrap my head around him. The other seems to chew on the inside of his mouth when he has a good hand, and I’m positive he doesn’t realize he’s doing it. The dealer passes out the cards, and I fold before betting, but the other two have a showdown. Cheek chewer goes all in, and Mr. Robot calls him, which was a horrible mistake because Cheeky lays down a full house. Even after losing so much money, the guy is completely emotionless. Then it’s just the two of us left, and I can feel my blood pumping in my neck.
I don’t have nearly as much money as my opponent, but I have enough to make a comeback if I pick and choose when to bet. But when it gets down to two players, we’re forced to. This round, I put in the big blind, and Cheeky matches it. The dealer flips over the first three cards, and I have two pairs, sevens and threes. It’s not the best hand, but it’s certainly not the worst, and I could still get a full house. I’m not exactly oozing confidence at the moment, but I don’t see his tell, so I bet ten thousand. He calls me, and the dealer turns another card. I’m still holding steady with my two pair but notice I need a diamond to possibly have a flush. There are so many possibilities here, but I bet the minimum, knowing I’ve put a lot of money into this round. Cheeky goes all in, forcing me into a showdown.
I nearly hold my breath as we show our cards, and he only has a pair of eights, but I don’t get excited yet. The final community card is dealt, and it’s an eight of spades, giving him three of a kind.
I lost. I lost half a million dollars.
The blood drains from my face, and I feel like I’m going to be fucking sick. The guy shakes my hand and tells me it was a good game, and then we’re all escorted out of the room. It’s so anticlimactic for what just happened the past seven hours. I’m in shock, upset, and angry with myself for going all in. Pulling my phone from my pocket, I call JJ.
