“A bloody mary, a shot of vodka, a red bull… and an apple.”

Robert Terrence had called a waiter over for the upteenth time, and he gave her his order with a slight slurring of his speech. We had now been playing for about an hour and a half, and he was becoming more and more inebriated with the passage of time. As for me, I had won a few hands here and lost a few hands there, but no swings too large in either direction. As far as I was concerned, that was a win. The idea of using my experience as a salesman to try and “sell” people on doing things that were beneficial to me had added a whole new dimension to my game, but it would need a lot more work before it could give me a shot at cashing this tournament. Against a field like this I was lucky to be winning anything at all. Still, I kept marching forward, and I was slowly gaining more and more chips as the game went along.

I had even won a hand against Alva, though I felt horrible about it. I had considered folding a pair of pocket kings against her until the little voice in my head had spoken up and pointed out that she probably would be insulted by the notion of me letting her win. I supposed that was fair enough, so I revealed the high pair and took the pot. Alva was still struggling with keeping her face in check. She was smiling occasionally now, but occasionally wasn’t enough. Unless she could smile the whole time like she normally did she would be helpless against a player like Danni. The Brazilian woman seemed to have Alva in her sights which I supposed made sense given the fact that Alva was the challenger to her throne. As she got Alva to fold again and again I heard her mutter to herself the phrase “Que decepção esta menina é”, her full, glossy lips turning upwards into a wry smile. I didn’t know what it meant, but her tone was unmistakable in any language. It was the self-satisfied confidence of a woman who was clearly superior to her opponent and knew it. I was beginning to worry about Alva. Why was she still not able to conjure up her normal, beaming expression? She and I had made up, at least that’s how it seemed, so she shouldn’t have any reason to feel unhappy anymore. Was it because she was losing? Unlikely, I’d watched a lot of her old videos and that had never bothered her in the past. Nonetheless, I got the sense that something was still not quite right with her. I just wasn’t sure if that thing had to do with me or not.

Robert received a tray with his order on it and wasted no time in pouring his vodka into the bloody mary, which had been served with vodka already in it. He then downed his red bull with such speed that I thought he would surely suffer a heart attack, took a large bite out of the apple, and finally went to town on the bloody mary. His play was becoming more chaotic with every drink he put down. When I had played my hand against him and Lucas there had been little about his playstyle that was remarkable, but now he was like another man entirely. He was betting erratically, doing things like betting on the flop, checking on the turn, and betting even higher on the river. While there were certainly hands of poker where this sort of bet would make sense, the frequency with which this occurred was high enough that it seemed unlikely for them to be the result of a clear thought process. People who made the mistake of assuming that Robert was simply bluffing belligerently, however, often regretted it. Robert managed to bust the Estonian player by revealing a two pair hand of jacks over fives. Even Danni had gone a round with him and lost. I could only imagine that whatever process her brain used to identify body language was scanning his side-slumped posture and squinting eyes and returning only the assessment that he was drunk. If even Danni couldn’t figure him out, there was little hope for the rest of us.

“Forty thousand,” Marek declared, sliding some chips into the center after a new hand had been dealt.

Robert looked sideways at Marek with an awkward drunken half-smile on his face. “Whatcha got… got over there buddy?” he asked, pausing in the middle of the sentence to suppress some bodily function that might either have been a hiccup or a burp, but never escaped from his body so that it might be identified. He played around with his chips for a few seconds and then said “Eh, why not”, and called. He then turned to one of the cameras behind him and asked the man holding it “Excuse me, could you get that thing out of my face?”

This being the feature table, there were naturally cameras surrounding us at all times. I was impressed by how easy the camera crew made it to forget they were there, and their presence hadn’t really bothered me. The drunker Robert got, however, the more the cameras seemed to get on his nerves. I didn’t know if it had to do with his appearance (he was not an ugly man but not an attractive one either, short and carrying a few extra pounds), or if he didn’t want his drunkenness televised. At any rate, he wasn’t happy with being filmed.

“They really ought to kick rude, annoying people out of the tournament,” said Lucas, the patron saint of self-awareness, in a loud enough voice that Robert could hear him. Robert didn’t seem to notice, however, and stuck his tongue out at the camera rather than responding. “Whatever. I call,” Lucas said, reaching for his chips.

I myself folded and settled in to watch the three-way race. The dealer set down the flop, and spread the three of spades, the jack of clubs, and the five of diamonds across the board. Marek tapped his hand to check, and Robert placed a fairly large bet. Lucas, whose stack had grown steadily shorter over the course of the day, seemed a little miffed that Robert was taking over his role as the player forcing the action. Still, he decided to call, rather than going for one of his usual raises. Marek called as well, and they went to the turn. The nine of diamonds came up, and Marek checked again. This time Robert checked as well, and Lucas looked at his stack.

“You know what? I don’t really feel like going into tomorrow with this short stack. I bet all in,” Lucas declared.

“Is he seriously planning to buy into the tournament again?” I whispered to Alva, “That’s a total investment of almost a million dollars!”

“He’s the son of some big billionaire,” Alva informed me under her breath. “Why do you think he’s willing to make such risky plays? Money isn’t an issue for him. Poker is just his hobby.”

“I guess affluenza would explain a lot about him,” I muttered.

Without skipping a beat, Marek called. Instead of going all in himself, however, he simply put in enough chips to match Lucas’s stack. If Marek went all in, Robert called, and Marek lost, that would be disastrous for him, so it seemed that not pushing was the right move here. Robert looked sideways at Marek again, scrutinizing him through his squinting lids.

“Called that… pretty fast, huh?” Robert clumsily pried. Marek, as always, sat with his sunglasses on and said nothing, not even turning to meet Robert’s eyes. Robert played with his chips some more, which I was starting to notice was a very common habit for players while they were thinking. Thinking seemed to be causing Robert some degree of physical pain, however, and so after attempting it for a few seconds he gave up and simply called as well.

The river revealed the seven of hearts, and now it was Marek’s turn to think. He didn’t play with his chips at all, however, but simply sat like a statue until I began to entertain the silly thought that maybe someone hadn’t charged his batteries for long enough and he had run out of juice. Finally, he placed a bet of fifty thousand. It seemed like a value bet to me, and if I had been sitting in Robert’s chair I wouldn’t have called it. After another failed attempt at going into the tank, however, Robert decided to call. Without showing any signs of emotion, Marek revealed a jack-nine suited in hearts, giving him two pair, jacks over nines. Robert looked through his heavy lids at the cards on the table, then mucked is hand, pushing his cards to the dealer without turning them up as an admission of defeat. “Oops”, was all he said.

Lucas mucked his hand as well, all but throwing his cards in the dealer’s direction. Clearly he couldn’t beat two pair either. He grabbed his things and strode angrily out of the room, fuming at the loss that he himself had intentionally set up. His behavior never ceased to amaze me. I could hardly wait for tomorrow, when he could finally be busted for good. I hoped that I could be at his table when it happened, just so that I could see the look on his face.

With Lucas gone, we were now down to just five players at the table. With the acquisition of Lucas’s pile of chips, as well as a substantial portion of Robert’s, Marek now had the second-largest number of chips at the table. Only Danni, who had entered the day as the largest stack at the table and had made a net gain over time, had a larger number of chips than he did. One would think that Marek would be thrilled about his success, but the sides of his mouth didn’t even twitch. He simply collected his pot and settled back into his unmoving expression. I was becoming more and more convinced that I was playing with an actual robot.

“Cocktails, TV table!” Robert cried out trying to get a waiter to come over to the feature table and give him what could only be another bloody mary. “And you can… buzz off!” he said, flipping a bird to the camera. It seemed that the loss hadn’t lessened his mood or his thirst one bit. Now under the gun, he took a look at a new pair of cards that had just been dealt to him, drained the remainder of his bloody mary, and called the big blind, sliding a few chips into the center. I looked at my hand and found the queen of spades and nine of diamonds sitting there. I decided to call. Danni and Alva folded, leaving Marek still playing in the big blind, and the flop came down revealing the six of clubs, nine of hearts, and eight of hearts. Robert checked, and I, having paired the high card on the board with a nine in hand, decided I was in a fantastic position to place a bet. It was time to do my salesman thing.

“Well, I hope I won’t scare either of you fine folks off with this.” I said, pushing a rather large bet into the center. It was the kind of thing that would imply I had a good hand, which I hoped would make the other two assume that I was trying to bluff them when the reality was that I actually did have a good hand.

Marek, unfortunately, seemed to see right through it, and folded his cards. Robert, on the other hand, raised. Perfect! Now I had the drunkard right where I wanted him. I called his raise, saying “Whoa! Now that’s a man who’s working with some great cards!” while I did so in the same manner that I might compliment a customer on his tie.

The river came down as the king of spades. Robert, true to the erratic patterns he had been following before, decided not to check this time, but rather bet. This was somewhat worrisome. Did he have a king? Maybe, but his patterns of play hadn’t really reflected the cards being dealt for a while now. Even as I scrutinized him, considering whether I should call, he received another bloody mary, poured not one but two extra shots into it, and took a large swig. No, I would stay the course here. My hand was still fine, and I doubted that Robert was thinking all that clearly. I called.

On the river, I was ecstatic to see the queen of diamonds come down. I now had two pair! This was perfect! Now all I had to do was sell Robert on staying in the hand so I could squeeze some sweet, sweet value out of him. He bet again, holding back a little more this time. Maybe the queen scared him? Still, no reason not to try to get myself a few more chips. I raised.

“I sure hope you don’t have a king-queen right now. That would be brutal!” I commented, as I pushed double the number of chips he had into the center.

“Naaah… I don’t have that,” Robert said in his stilted, drunken tone. “Hey, uhh… you… dealer? Could you help me count this out?”

“I’ve got you man,” the dealer told him, and helped him count out enough chips to call.

There it was. Time for the showdown. I turned over my hand and happily revealed my two pair. Robert squinted at me, then flipped over his own hand. For a moment, I rejoiced, he hadn’t paired a single card! Then, however, I looked again. My spirits plummeted.

Robert had turned up a ten-seven suited in clubs. With the six, nine, and eight on the board he had been playing with a six-seven-eight-nine-ten straight since the flop! I was dumbfounded. Robert hadn’t been playing like his hand was this good at all! And yet, because he was playing while under the influence, and because I knew that fact, I had ended up playing right into his hand when I thought he was playing right into mine. He was like a drunken wushu master, using his strange, stumbling motions to his advantage. Just like that, a serious chunk of the chips I had earned over the course of the day were lost to me. I held my head in frustration as I watched all that progress I had made go straight into Robert’s pile, with the dealer helping him stack it up properly. I had done everything right on paper, but I had still lost.

Poker was a fickle mistress. The very salesman technique that had allowed me to defeat Robert before had been useless against this newer, drunker version of Robert Terrence. The very same odd behavior that had lost him a major hand against Marek had won him a major hand against me. That was when I came to realize that I wouldn’t be able to win this game by trying to maintain a holding pattern and slowly gain chips. I would need to win big hands, which meant I would need to know when to play and what to play, but more importantly against who to play. Some players, it seemed, were well-suited to beat others and different players in turn were well-suited to beat them. If I was to have a chance I would need to figure out this game of rock-paper-scissors. I still had a long way to go.