When I sat down at the table there were only two other people there, and one was the dealer. In fact, every dealer for every table in the room was present and ready to go. The players, on the other hand, were only beginning to trickle in.

“It’s a bit of a ghost town, isn’t it?” I asked the woman who was the only other player at the table.

“Poker pros are never on time for anything,” she sighed.

I was happy to hear from her slight southern accent that she was a fellow American. She was in her early thirties, but still had something of a youthful girlish charm to her. She was dressed in a sleeveless turtleneck sweater and kept her nut-brown hair away from her face with a hairband. We talked a little, and she told me here name was Shirley Fey. When she wasn’t playing poker she liked to raise horses on her farm in Western Virginia, which she told me was technically farther west than any point in the actual state of West Virginia. I got a kick out of that.

Finally, the other players began to file in and take their seats, setting down their bags and exchanging greetings with each other. The eight chairs at my table filled up with people. Lucas arrived, and took a seat next to the dealer. The table, like all the poker tables, was arranged in an elliptical shape and covered in felt. A padded cushion ran most of the way around the edge of this table for the players to lean on. The only place where there was no cushion was in the middle of the table on the side where the dealer was located. The table was slightly indented here, allowing the dealer the maximum amount of reach possible to every part of the table.

I was in the middle of the table on the opposite side from the dealer, which meant that I was situated so that I’d be looking right into Lucas’s sneering mug the whole time. I wasn’t looking forward to that. It was some consolation that the other players didn’t seem to like him either, not greeting him the way they had greeted each other, but still his presence aggravated me. I found myself almost hoping that Nikita would take me out quickly so this loser wouldn’t have the opportunity to do it.

As if to answer my thoughts, Nikita Zakharov chose that moment to walk up to the table and take his place next to me. The chair protested loudly under his weight as he took his seat, He looked around the table, greeting everyone sans Lucas with a small nod. Even he didn’t seem to be fond of the Belgian. Then again he seemed to be a pretty cold person in general, although I noticed he actually got a few positive responses to his presence from the other players. Nikita may have been antisocial, but at least he wasn’t disliked the way Lucas was.

I saw Alva enter the room. I tried to get her attention, but was unsuccessful. In the middle of the room on an elevated platform there was a feature table, where the cameras would be spending most of their time. She took her seat at this table with her back to me and began chatting with her tablemates. It was frustrating that she didn’t notice me, but I decided that perhaps it was best for both of us. I’d imagine that from her perspective it would be a massive shock to the system to learn out of the blue that some mattress salesman she’d met once back in America had followed her all the way here to the highest stakes poker tournament of all time. A shock like that would be the last thing she needed right before playing one of the most difficult games on the face of the planet earth. I would need to focus up too if I wanted any chance at all of making it through the day.

The man who had addressed us earlier today when we had boarded the boat reemerged and stood in the middle of the room. He waved his hand around like he had done before and spoke into a microphone to make an announcement.

“I’m sure you’re all eager to get started and far be it from me to keep you waiting! The blinds are two-fifty and five hundred. Players, get your chips out, dealers shuffle up, and let The Mediterranean Ultimate High Roller Begin!”

As he said this several giant screens placed around the room lit up and exploded with digital confetti while a speaker system blasted a little tune that I supposed was the official jingle of the event. The screens then displayed the in large, golden letters:

BLINDS

250

500

“Blinds”, or blind bets, are compulsory bets in Texas Hold’Em. A blind is similar in some ways to an ante, which is a concept that most people are familiar with, but it is different in the sense that not every player pays the blind every hand. The blinds are only bet by the two seats to the left of the dealer. In traditional poker, cards are dealt by the players. The dealer changes each hand, moving clockwise around the table. In Tournament poker, of course, there is one dedicated dealer at all times to prevent cheating and other complications, but there is still always a player who is technically the “dealer”, and because they are not actually dealing the cards they are represented by a button that moves around the table clockwise. For this reason, this person is often referred to as being “on the button” rather than being called the dealer. The person to the left of the button is the “small blind”. The small blind is required to put in a bet, which in this case would be two hundred and fifty chips, before they even get to look at their hand. The person to the left of the small blind is the “big blind”. That player is required to put in a larger bet, usually double the small blind, in this case five hundred chips. The blinds orbit the table so that they are always to the left of the button, changing with every hand. They increase over the course of the tournament so that players are forced to keep betting a significant enough amount of chips to keep the game moving forward. The nice thing about blinds as opposed to ante, is that if you are dealt a bad hand and you aren’t one of the blinds, you can fold it and wait for the next deal without losing a single chip.

“What’s with those tiny blinds?” Shirley asked as we all opened up bags of three hundred thousand chips (in various denominations of course, there weren’t that many physical pieces) that had been set on the table for us to play with. “Are they really having us all start out with six hundred big blinds? We’re going to be here forever!”

In poker, people commonly measure the number of chips they have in terms of how many big blinds they can pay for because it's indicative of how many rounds they can safely not take any action if the cards don't fall their way. With blinds at five hundred and each of us at three hundred thousand chips apiece, that meant we could all pay the big blinds six hundred times over. It was normal to start players off with around one hundred big blinds, meaning that these blinds were almost nothing. 

“This is not poker tournament. Is reality television. Big network want to drag things out for money.” Nikita grumbled. Even through his thick accent the disdain in his voice was unmistakable. I could tell that he didn’t like the way this was being handled at all.

I had to admit I myself was pretty happy with this turn of events. I might be able to last through today after all. I didn’t know how fast the blinds would increase, but it was probable that if I folded every hand I was dealt today I’d still be able to stay in the tournament until tomorrow with a good chunk of my chips remaining. I didn’t want to play it like that, but it was still a relief to think about things that way.

“Dealers, deal out those first hands!” the event runner yelled, and the sound of cards being flicked around tables filled the air.

I looked at my cards. A five and a deuce. No reason to play that. I folded, and watched as most of the rest of the table did the same. The very last player of the hand was Lucas on the button, who pushed ten thousand chips into the middle of the table.

“Let’s make this interesting,” he said with a smirk.

The small blind folded. The big blind looked at his hand, and then folded as well.

“All yours, man.” he said.

The dealer slid the chips over to Lucas, then moved the button to the next player. The next round Shirley got in on the action, pushing a thousand chips into the center, but Lucas pushed twenty times as many and Shirley decided she wasn’t willing to call. Lucas collected another pot of chips.

“This table is just sad,” Lucas sneered, “Doesn’t anybody here have a spine?”

I was having trouble figuring out what the strategy here was. Lucas was winning hands, sure, but the pots he was collecting were comprised almost entirely of his own chips and the risks he was taking for very minor gains were substantial. At this rate if Lucas lost even one hand then the gains he had made would be entirely inconsequential in the face of the chips he would lose.

Sure enough, the next hand rolled around and one of the players, some Englishman whose name I had overheard as being Oliver Davenport, called an even larger bet from Lucas. The flop came down, but no sooner did Lucas see it than he folded, giving Oliver the biggest pot of the game so far. I thought that this might wipe the smirk off of Lucas’s face, but all he did was say, “whoops, lost a big one there. Guess you win this time, champ.” with a sickeningly sarcastic tone in his voice. I was already getting fed up with Lucas, but Oliver seemed surprisingly even more heated up. For a guy who had just won a big hand, he didn’t seem to be happy at all. He looked like he wanted to rip the Belgian’s head off.

Oliver decided to play the next hand as well, and Lucas didn’t slow down even a little bit. He raised to fifty thousand and Oliver, still hot under the collar, called. The flop came down, revealing the trey of hearts, the ten of hearts, and the nine of diamonds. Oliver checked to Lucas who shoved another fifty thousand and leaned back in his chair with his arms folded, smiling like the cat who got the cream. Oliver looked at his hand, thinking. I was pretty sure he had a good hand, but another fifty thousand was daunting. Still, he clearly wanted to squash Lucas once and for all, and called. The turn came down as the nine of clubs, pairing the board. Oliver checked again. Lucas leaned in, looked him dead in the eye, and with the sides of his mouth stretching into the most pronounced, insufferable smirk I had ever seen on a human face he uttered two little words:

“All in”

This phrase, which meant that Lucas was betting every chip he had left in his possession, gave Oliver some serious pause for thought. Lucas was playing recklessly, but was he really that reckless? Was he really just bluffing every hand, or did he actually have the winning cards here? Those nines on the board were frightening. A nine in hand would be fantastic if Lucas had it, and even though Oliver technically would have enough chips to still be in the tournament if he called and lost, doing so would leave him as a short stack. After that he would run the risk of having the other players bully him out of the game with their bigger piles of chips. It would take a miracle at that point to get him back into a good position. Oliver decided he didn’t want to run that risk so early in the tournament, and with a defeated look on his face he folded.

Lucas cackled as he added the huge pot to his pile of chips. He flipped up his hand, revealing the six of diamonds and the five of spades. He was playing with absolutely nothing.

“Look at this! Look at it!” He howled. “You gave up on all those chips and I wasn’t holding a thing!”

There was no requirement that Lucas reveal his hand or the fact that he was bluffing to Oliver. Conventional wisdom held that giving your opponent information about whether you were bluffing them or not was a bad idea, since they could use that information to read you better in future hands. The only purpose of turning up that hand here was to break Oliver’s spirit, and from what I could tell it was working. Oliver was visibly fuming. He was completely tilted.

Play had now rotated to the point where I was now the small blind. I put my required bet in the pot. After Oliver huffily followed suit in the big blind, the dealer dealt the cards. I looked at my hand, and to my surprise I saw pocket Aces. My face lit up. I realized what I was doing too late to stop it and had to fight to regain my neutral expression. I looked around. Had anybody noticed? I hoped not. I resolved that no matter what Lucas bet here I would play this hand. After all, if I wasn’t going to play a pair of aces, then what hand was I ever going to play?

Lucas predictably bet big again, pushing yet another fifty thousand chips. Play worked its way around the table until it finally got to Nikita on the button. The gargantuan Russian turned and looked at me, scrutinizing me.

“You have something good. What is it you have?”

I blanched. Of course, Nikita had noticed my screw-up.

“Is pair of kings? Nyet, I do not think so. Aces perhaps? Yes, I think aces.”

I was trying to remain impassive, but he was reading my face like a book. I wanted to crawl under a rock and hide. Nikita nodded slowly and played around with his chips, lost in thought. He then turned his attention to Lucas.

“Pair of aces is best possible pocket. Very scary. Your hand not so scary, I think. Still, maybe see good flop…” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

Despite his broken English I was captivated by every word that came out of this man’s mouth. I had always known there would be an incredible gap between us, but I had not been prepared for just how broad that chasm was. Even with all these other seasoned pros at the table, he had an aura of absolute power to him that made him seem completely superhuman despite not having played a single hand. Even Lucas looked to be a little on edge with Nikita staring him down. I wondered if I would have to face the first real hand of my tournament poker career against both Nikita and Lucas, which was not an appealing prospect, but Nikita finally decided to push his cards to the center of the table.

“I will fold this time.” he declared.

I exhaled. Play was now passed to me. I reached for my pile of chips, counted out the amount I needed to call, and prepared myself to do battle with the insufferable but frightening Lucas Carlier.