I know there are probably 2,000 other topics worthier of being written about, but let me brag shamelessly about a victory I posted last week — not in a literary competition or anything so noble, but in what we’ll call a battle of wits, plus a little bit of luck.
I’ll start by confessing to a childhood longing for medals, honors, and prizes — baubles that my classmates seemed to be winning right and left, but which had a way of zipping past me for one reason or other. If you look at my CV — which I burnish to keep my mother happy and to attract prospective employers of fat, balding men — you’d think that I was one of those despicable high achievers who must’ve gotten the Best Baby award and went on to become class valedictorian, basketball team captain, ROTC corps commander, and student council chairman, but no.
I kept joining declamation contests in grade school, entranced by the gold, silver, and bronze medals that glowed at me from their boxes on the judges’ table. But for all my throaty, heartfelt renditions of John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” and Carlos P. Romulo’s “I Am a Filipino,” I never won a thing.
Indeed, I got out of elementary school with nothing more to show for my competitive prowess than a candy bar I won for shoving someone smaller off the balance beam in intramurals. Of course, my report card was strewn with stars (in our school, green stars and purple stars were given for high marks) for excellence in such nerdy subjects as Reading and Spelling, but what I really yearned for was the adulation of my peers for excellence in some guy thing. I couldn’t hit a softball even if it came at me like a soap bubble, and my flat feet doomed any chances of my becoming a track star, so I was fated for more sedate undertakings like writing for the school paper. Instead of becoming a jock, I learned big words like “adumbrate” and swung them like a bespectacled Babe Ruth.
I got into the Philippine Science High School as my batch’s topnotcher (only to nearly flunk out after my first year with a 5.0 in Math — still another story); got into UP and somehow graduated cum laude 14 years after becoming a freshman; won a raft of Palancas, CCPs, and other prizes they give you for stringing together words in certain ways. But I remained hungry for another kind of victory, one that was more fun than work.
Flash forward to late October 2009. I’ve been playing Texas Hold ‘Em poker for more than three years now, and have learned to play decently enough to win a couple of small tournaments in Manila (never mind how much tuition I’ve had to pay for that kind of education, where my PhD in English means, as Hemingway himself would have put it, absolutely nada nada nada). For all that, I’m still what they call a “donkey” in poker parlance — someone curious and dumb enough to call big bets with a pair of deuces. I’m so curious about poker that Daniel Negreanu has replaced Daniel Defoe on my reading list, and I don’t fantasize about winning the Nobel or the Booker half as much as I dream of winning the World Series of Poker in a heads-up showdown with Phil Ivey (edging out his aces full of kings with my baby straight flush).
And now I’m vacationing with my wife, my mother, and my sister in the poker capital of the world — Las Vegas, Nevada. The women are here to gaze and gape at the dancing fountains of the Bellagio. Me, I’m like that Chevy Chase character in 1997’s Vegas Vacation — wide-eyed, open-mouthed, ready to hit the tables even before I’ve unfastened my seat belt. I’ve played blackjack here before, but never poker, and I’m eager to join—perchance to win—my first Las Vegas poker tournament. I’ve done my Google homework, and of all the tournaments in town, I’ve chosen the 8 p.m. one at the Imperial Palace, which has an affordable entry fee and is closest to my shuttle stop, so I can be sure to get home even if I lose my shirt.
The Imperial Palace looks anything but. Its driveway is cluttered not with Rolls Royces but with big old taxis whose drivers are puffing away, waiting for drunken tourists to tumble out. Its “poker room” is a corral of six tables covered in a disturbingly flesh-colored felt that you almost expect to bleed if scratched badly; the poker chips look as battered and shiny as ancient Roman coins. When I step in to sign up for the tournament, only one table is active, playing 2/4 limit poker, a game guaranteed to minimize your losses. I could kill some time there, but I remind myself that I’m here to take risks, not to pose before the gondolas at the Venetian for souvenir pictures. Of course, with my floppy hat and my camera bag, I look every bit the tourist, but all that’s camouflage for the killer within — at least that’s what I tell myself to calm my nerves.
The tournament begins with 18 players at two tables — all men save one; a few locals, mostly visitors like myself, some conventioneers, an Australian, another guy I spot immediately to be a fellow Pinoy. I win my first hand at my table, checking my paired ace at the flop, or the first three table cards. It’s a good sign, and I go on to become chip leader — the guy with the most chips — after a streak of two pairs and an open-ended straight. (Never mind the poker lingo; all it means is I got lucky — in fact, those of you who don’t play poker can go straight to the end of this piece, and skip the table drama below.)
After an hour, I move to the final table — not a herculean feat, when all you have is two tables to begin with. I’m still chip leader, but I quickly run into trouble and lose most of my stack when, with me going all in with top-pair ace-kicker, my opponent sucks out his second pair on the river (translation: I thought I was going to win it all, but nearly lost it all when someone got luckier at the very last card).
But I recover and become chip leader again when I call an A-Q all-in with my A-10; I flop the 10 and it’s enough to win and to double up. We’re down to four; the other Pinoy, a billiards player named Sonny visiting from San Francisco, busts out in fourth place. After more skirmishes and a lot of safe plays, the short-stack small blind goes all in; the big blind, with a stack just a little smaller than mine, also goes all in! My hole cards are K-J suited. Tempting fate, I call.
Show cards: SB has A-Q suited, diamonds like mine! BB has pocket jacks! I’m done for, I tell myself. The flop comes out 9-K-5 rainbow; turn 10, river K! My three kings win, and I’m one happy boy who feels like he’s made up for all those bad beats at the declamation podium. I feel like singing the Philippine National Anthem, the NHI-sanctioned way.
But don’t do this at home, my young friends; if you’re going down the path of poker perdition, I strongly suggest that you learn a few useful things on the side — like editing the school paper.
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Email me at penmanila@yahoo.com, and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.