Читать книгу For Richer, For Poorer - Victoria Coren - Страница 12

6

CELEBRITY LATE NIGHT POKER

There’s a shotgun in the drawer.

I riffle £1,000 through my fingers. Martin Amis clears his throat. Click-clack-click go the shiny £50 discs. I select a few hundreds’ worth and chuck them across the table. There is a pause. ‘Call,’ says Stephen Fry. And I must, surely, be asleep.

♠

It’s July 2000 and I’m playing a lot of poker by now. I’m starting to get my head round Holdem tournaments, though I still don’t know how to bet with no hand. But I’m in the Vic or the Stakis a couple of nights a week, the Tuesday game has moved to my flat, and I’ve got a new occasional Friday night school with a bunch of journalists including my great friend John Diamond.

John has cancer. The diagnosis has encouraged him to embrace hedonism: he’s bought a motorbike, figured out how to inject champagne directly into his stomach, and had a royal diamond flush tattooed on his arm. John is young, in his mid-forties, with a wife and two small children that he adores. You’d think a terminal illness would cast an air of tragedy over him. In fact, he brings an air of life-affirming joy to every party he graces. And he’s gracing a lot of parties. He has also unveiled an impressively sick love of gambling; not just poker, but generous helpings of casino blackjack on the side.

He is both a good and bad influence. I’ve been adapting his newspaper columns into a play to take to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I’m so obsessed with it, I spent Millennium Night at my desk and failed to notice the new century until it was several hours old. John is an inspiring person to know.

On the other hand, I am close enough to the line between ‘recreational gambling’ and ‘compulsive disorder’ to be better off without a friend who loves blackjack and knows he’s going to die. It is not a combination that spells caution.

Thank God, my old roulette habit has been channelled into poker, which offers the same adrenaline but can, slowly and gradually if I study the game, be controlled by skill and judgment. Poker still offers the masochist a tantalizing promise of tearing his or her money away at the whim of ill fortune, but there is a deeper pleasure in the opportunity to force chance under control: a good player will lose the minimum when fate puts on the black cap, win the maximum when it’s exchanged for an Easter bonnet. There is detective work, calculation, psychology. I have dismissed roulette as a mug’s game.

But there will always be an element of muggery in my soul. John and I have been meeting up in the afternoons to play blackjack for stakes I just can’t afford, especially if I’m going to devote this year to working in fringe theatre. The only reassurance is that I have managed to stay off roulette. Plan A was to avoid all table games, but I have decided that I’m allowed to have a spin on the blackjack as long as John keeps employing that evil twinkle and telling me it’s his last wish.

On Fridays, I’ve been organizing a semi-regular home poker game for mutual friends, all hacks with a natural attraction to louche hobbies. Most of them are new to the game. Roger, my editor at the Observer, has particular trouble grasping the principle of bluffing. He keeps flat calling on the river, then chuckling ‘I’ve got nothing at all!’

They all love poker but they turn up mainly for the opportunity to spend time with John, and because his wife Nigella, a beautiful journalist who has launched a new career as a cookery writer, occasionally sends him along with a home-made cake. Nigella comes to the Stakis blackjack sessions sometimes, which improves our edge because the goggling male croupiers are liable to pay us out by mistake. When the Dark Marilyn takes her seat, they start dropping cards on the floor and forgetting how to count. The boys are very disappointed that she doesn’t come to the poker game, but they settle happily enough for the cake.

♠

Finding myself opposite Martin Amis at a surreal celebrity poker table, I’m wondering whether my brain has been affected by all this social gambling, enough to make me dream about it. Where else but in a dream would I find myself sitting around an oversized baize oval in the middle of Wales with the author of The Rachel Papers? To my left sit Stephen Fry and the now celebrated playwright Patrick Marber. To my right are the comedian Ricky Gervais, the jetlagged royal biographer Anthony Holden, Amis the child prodigy turned fully-fledged Brit Lit star; and my hero, the pipe-chewing poet, critic and mountaineer Al Alvarez.

It is not a dream, it’s a miracle. I have been trying to save up £1,500 of my own money to buy into the new Late Night Poker series, but it’s like running up a down escalator. I win small sums at poker, lose bigger sums at blackjack. At the last minute, just when I was giving up on the hope of experiencing that magical week again, I was invited to play in a one-off ‘celebrity curtain-raiser’, with Channel 4 putting up £1,000 per player.

By July 2000, the series is widely known. I have only appeared in that one match, losing to Bambos with aces, yet already a policeman, ticking me off for a piece of illegal parking in Camden Town, has winked, ‘I suppose you’ll pay the fine with poker winnings . . .’

That does not make me a celebrity. But poker, although it is now popular viewing on TV, remains an unusual hobby. Many people are watching, nobody is actually playing. Asked to come up with a celebrity special, the production company had trouble finding seven people who write, or do the odd bit of television, and know the rules of the game. They weren’t expecting to get Madonna.

Al Alvarez and Anthony Holden can travel by bus without undue attention, too, but they’ve both written poker books. They are old cronies (Holden’s Big Deal is dedicated to Al) and I know they are danger at the table.

Ricky Gervais is a young comedian from Reading who appears on The Eleven O’Clock Show. I’ve met him a few times before, through friends who work on that programme, but I never heard that he played cards. I find this reassuring as I assess the opposition: truly devoted players can usually sense each other in a room and fall into poker chat. Like gaydar, they pick up the vibe and within minutes they’re onto the flops and bad beats. If I have met Gervais several times and poker has never come up in the conversation, I decide he must be the least serious threat.

Indeed, Gervais’s first words when we arrived in the lobby of the Cardiff Hilton were: ‘I’ve never played this Holdem game before.’ I smiled conspiratorially at Patrick Marber and murmured: ‘That’s what we like to hear.’ Gervais seemed genuinely annoyed, so I knew he wasn’t hustling, and we sat down in the bar for a quick whip through the rules just to be sporting.

I played with Patrick Marber in the old Archway game and a spin-off version at Chris Colson’s house. He was in that gang of sharks who gobbled all my college money. But Patrick finally finished that play he was going to write, and it went very well. These days he is back and forth from New York, acting, writing, winning awards and directing his own work on Broadway, so I reassure myself that I have more chance to beat him now. He is far too busy to spend his nights playing cards in a smoke-filled basement full of sick gamblers and stale egg sandwiches, which is where I have the advantage over Patrick Marber. If you don’t stop to think about it.

♠

The real celebrities at the table are the two that I have never met before, but deeply admire, Martin Amis and Stephen Fry. With nothing to go on but Amis’s public image, I decide to put him down as a loose-aggressive player. I am guessing he likes poker for the atmosphere and fellowship, so probably enjoys a gamble. I assume from newspaper stories about his book advances that he is probably comfortable with high stakes.

I know that Fry has played socially at the Groucho Club in London. My instinct is that he would take the game (and victory) less seriously than Amis, but his razor-sharp brain could be cause for concern. When I raise in middle position with A♦ 10♦ and Fry calls, I realize my problem immediately: having no idea what standard of player he is, I don’t know what he’d call with. Is he dazzled by weak aces? Would he slow-play a big pair? It’s a mystery.

The flop comes 5♣ 10♠ 3♥. This looks like a great flop for me. I bet my pair of tens strongly to protect them, but Fry calls. What on earth does he have? It could be anything. And I’m not exactly a Holdem tournament specialist myself. When the turn card pairs the three, I check nervously and so does Fry. The river is a blank; I check that, too, and Fry makes a small bet. I have to call, and he turns over a pair of fives. The Jeeves & Wooster star has a full house! If he had raised on the flop (when he hit his set), I might well have folded. In flat calling and betting small on the end, he squeezed another couple of hundred out of me. So either he undervalued his hand or he’s a much craftier player than I’ve given him credit for. Still, it’s funny how tight we both play with someone else’s money.

Ricky Gervais, meanwhile, clearly loves action and calls with almost anything. For a time, his confidence pays off as the more experienced players fold against him. He calls with 62 offsuit, hits sixes and deuces on the flop and makes money. But, probably not knowing why he’s winning, he doesn’t know when to change gear. If you keep calling with 62 offsuit, you’re going to start losing. Sure enough, his chip lead is gradually whittled away and he’s the first out. He doesn’t seem happy about it.

‘What am I supposed to do now?’ he asks.

‘There’s a shotgun in the drawer,’ says Stephen Fry.

♠

Things seem a little prickly between the two comics. Stephen Fry is the next player out and the two of them end up in a cash game back at the hotel. I hear that Fry gets the better of Gervais again, is not above a few cheeky put-downs when he wins the pot, and Gervais snaps, ‘I might be bad at poker, but at least I’m not gay.’

You hear some pretty sharp gibes at the poker table, and when word of this barb gets round the professional players, they are surprised and amused to hear that the celebrity game threw up as much needle as a real one. But these players are not familiar with the ironic trend in late-night Channel 4 comedy. Gervais must have been joking. He must have been.

♠

I get unlucky with AQ against Anthony Holden’s AT. The inevitable ten comes down to seal my fate, and I walk away wondering whether to be a pessimist (I had two bad beats on Late Night Poker!) or an optimist (I had two free shots at Late Night Poker!).

Amis is hitting ace after ace, but he’s also drinking a fair bit and the two old muckers Alvarez and Holden soon have the novelist’s chips off him and play on heads-up until Holden emerges triumphant. But Amis certainly wins the prize for looking most like a Hollywood movie gambler, having mastered the art of rolling cigarettes in one hand while holding his cards with the other. Everybody smokes on Late Night Poker, but Amis does it best.

♠

When the celebrities leave town, I hear that Stephen Fry did not notice the difference between me and Kate Szeremeta, daughter of Nic the commentator. He chatted to her in the cash game, assuming she was the same girl he played with in the tournament. Fair enough: two gambling blondes, we’re similar enough. But we have different tastes, admire different men and express our admiration in different ways. I’m a little embarrassed that Stephen Fry has left Cardiff thinking that it’s me who has Ben Elton’s face tattooed in four colours across her stomach.

♠

I’m definitely sticking around for the rest of the week to watch the main tournament. Since I’ve been away, the Tuesday night players have organized a satellite game so that one of them (apart from me) will represent the others in the TV series. Ten of them put in £150 each, and James wins the satellite. I’m so delighted to see him when he turns up. This high-stakes world is still daunting for me, and it’s lovely to see a fraternal Tuesday face.

James does great, getting heads-up with Mike Magee to finish second and make the semi-final. Sadly, he is knocked out of that pretty early. But in the commentary, Jesse May pays James several compliments – while also referring to him throughout by his surname, which Jesse mispronounces. The Sweep loves the mispronunciation. It makes his year.

♠

Once the celebrities leave town, it is business as usual. Cash games on the side, yelps of protest about going into make-up, nerves about being filmed. Bambos, Howard Plant, Peter The Bandit, they are all back again for the new series. Malcolm Harwood has returned, having had a heart bypass and been warned by the doctor to ‘avoid too much excitement’. We all hope he doesn’t flop quads.

Malcolm’s wife and fellow player Somkhuan has taken to phoning the temple back home in Thailand before big games, pledging money to Buddha if she wins and asking the local priests to curse her opponents with misfortune if they knock her out. The night before her heat, she pops into the bar to check the spelling of Ram Vaswani’s name. Luckily, Ram gets knocked out before she does, thus saving himself from a plague of frogs.

But when Dave Devilfish Ulliott turns up, in his trademark red shades, I think: that fellow seems like one of the celebrities, not the normal players. He has a certain charisma, a certain air of expectation, of droit de seigneur. That’s as well as being a memorable character, a funny storyteller; I think he’d be right at home on Parkinson. I am pleased to see him, even though he stares immediately at my chest and says, ‘There’s a couple of things I wanna talk to you about.’

When I say ‘celebrity’, he’s more of a Bernard Manning than a Cary Grant.

♠

Devilfish is not the first to test me with cheeky puns and saucy comments at the poker table. I’ve lost count of the number of players who try to turn the conversation round to ‘big pairs’. But few of them make actual passes and I’d never accept. I’m not a one-night-stand kind of girl, and I’m certainly not looking to get romantically involved with one of these shady gamblers, all questionable cash payments and sunglasses indoors.

I love the game, but full-time poker is a different world and I’m perfectly happy with the divide. I don’t want to screw any of them, date any of them or marry any of them. I have no interest in embracing life as a gangster’s moll, a gambler’s bit of totty; I don’t even want to play bigger myself. I am happy to be here among the high rollers again, but I remember my comfort zone when I see them joined by James from the Tuesday game. He and I are recreational players, hobbyists, in it part-time for the fun, not the money.

I know there are tournaments around the world, but they cost too much, they happen too far away and I’m just a writer who likes playing poker in a couple of local London casinos. A small profit on my hobby, that’s all I want. The rest is Wonderland and it can stay there.

♠

At the end of the week, a black Porsche 911 draws up outside the hotel. The number plate is JOE 911. Its driver, Joe ‘The Elegance’ Beevers, is a cocky young Londoner with slick hair and an Armani suit. I smile to myself at the number plate, smile to myself at the nickname, shake hands with this new player, and tumble down the rabbit hole.

JACKS AGAIN

Here it is again: the Botox hand, looks better than it is. Lovely on its own, but hard to play after the flop when there’s an overcard, which is more likely than there not being one.

I find JJ under the gun this time. When I found this hand earlier, I raised, Sid Harris went all-in and it worked out pretty nicely for me. But I want to mix my game up, so now I decide to limp. I flat call the big blind, 16,000.