The Five Diamond was not actually Jimmy Spain’s first tournament since leaving prison, nor was it Kat’s.
At the beginning of the year Kat started bugging Jimmy about playing in an actual tournament. There were all kinds of different events at local card rooms in California. Big and small. To groom her properly he had her enter numerous tournaments in the upcoming months. Most of them were small, one-hundred- to two-hundred-dollar buy ins, but she gained invaluable experience. Overall, she and Jimmy made a little money, Jimmy making a few final tables. But they were studious. They would analyze into the wee hours different hands they had each played and how they could have otherwise played them. She was getting good, especially because she had a coach like Jimmy. Jimmy also advised her to make a log of all the big-name players she’d be going up against in the bigger events. This was essential, to know your competition, to have it down on paper, like a bible.
The next stop for both of them was the WPT event at the Bellagio. It would be a five-day event. It would take stamina, great play, and a lot of luck to be a winner.
She was ready.
Killing time was never a problem in a Las Vegas casino. After breakfast they walked through the Bellagio, passed the crowded penny and nickel slot area, and stopped briefly at the poker room. The side games were still going strong. They had everything there, ranging from two- and four-dollar games packed with tourists back up to Bobby’s Room, the millionaire’s game, which was empty now. Legends didn’t play before a major event.
Spain recognized the player who was coming toward him with a confused but happy look.
“Man, I thought you were dead,” the man said in a cowboy drawl.
“Not quite,” Jimmy said, shaking his hand.
“You playin’ today?” Jimmy said he was. “Well, good luck.”
As the man walked away Kat asked, “Do you know who that was?”
“Yeah, T. J. Cloutier.”
“You knew that was T. J. Cloutier?” Kat said. “How could you just shake hands with him like that, dude?”
“I played against him in the old days once or twice,” Spain explained. “He’s very good.”
Kat stared at Spain as if seeing him for the first time.
“Very good? He’s one of the best. And you know him? Dude!” The “dude” thing was starting to get to him. He winced.
“I’ve been around, kid,” Spain pointed out, “just not recently.”
They had never discussed what Spain had done for the ten years before they’d met. All Kat knew was that Jimmy Spain had been away from the game for a while and was now coming back. But having a past champion like T. J. Cloutier treat Spain with obvious respect raised the kid’s eyebrows.
“You know, before poker was plastered on every TV, if you played the game they looked at you like you were crazy. You didn’t brag about this, Kat. Poker was survival then, not glam-orous.”
“Okay, dude, chill. I think they’re startin’.”
“Okay,” Jimmy said, “I’m coming.”
They reported to the poker room, checked in, got table and seat assignments, then milled about with the other players until it was time to be seated at one of the poker room’s thirty-nine tables. The place was a madhouse of players itching to get started. Several players his age and older approached Spain, shook his hand, and asked where he’d been. One man who he recognized and remembered quite well was considered the godfather of poker, Doyle Brunson. In his seventies now, Brunson had won the World Series of Poker in 1976 and 1977. He was one of the true legends of the game, still playing competitive poker after almost fifty years and just recently taking a WPT title. While in prison, most of Spain’s reading material had been poker books with Doyle Brunson’s Super System, first published in 1978, leading the way. It had long been considered the bible of the game. He’d also read books by pros like David Sklansky, Phil Hellmuth, and his old friend Mike Sexton. He’d done all that to keep his edge, to keep himself informed of developments in the game and the poker universe.
Kat continued to be in awe every time someone came to shake Jimmy’s hand and talk to him, but she also fought to keep her cockiness.
“Good luck, kid,” Spain said when it was time to be seated.
“Because of you I don’t need luck, Jimmy,” she said brazenly. “I’m good enough to win this, and that’s no bluff. Just watch out for me at the final table.”
“Let’s get through day one before we start thinking about the final table, Kat.”
“You worry about your cards, I’ll play mine. How about that check and raise?”
“Kat, cool it, the poker shit. It’s embarrassing.”
Kat winced, realizing she was getting carried away again. With a slight nod she went off into the crowd to find her table. Jimmy shook his head. He hoped she wouldn’t find any top pros there. Maybe she would get a soft table, lots of amateurs and maybe some online dead money who she could run over. Top pros might put too much pressure on her in her first big-time start.
Spain was the first to seat himself at his table. He hoped this wouldn’t make him look overanxious—but he was. The other players approached by ones and twos, introduced themselves to him and, where necessary, to each other. By the time they were all seated—including the dealer—he realized he was playing against a table that had only two top pros: Erik Seidel, who he didn’t know, and Chris Ferguson, who he knew slightly. Ferguson was easy to remember, as he went by the nickname “Jesus.” With his long hair and beard he did look eerily like the popular image of Jesus Christ wearing a black cowboy hat. Ferguson also had a trick he did. He could propel a card across the room with a flick of his wrist and impale it on a piece of fruit—usually a banana—as if it had razor blades for edges. Most players had tricks they could do with chips, but this trick was something else that made Ferguson memorable.
The poker circuit and the lives of these high-stakes gamblers weren’t just about the game. It was also about the action. And the action could be anything from what nationality the next person coming out of the elevator would be to crazier things like who could do a standing backflip on a poker table. There were also other sick bets such as weight bets—poker players frequently bet one another who was going to lose more weight in a thirty-day period. These bets were not small potatoes either; they were for hefty chunks of change, usually starting at ten thousand dollars and sometimes going into the hundreds of thousands. One of the most peculiar bets was when the famous Gus Hansen actually challenged his sidekick friend, who was broke at the time, to wear breast implants for a whole year for a fifty-thousand-dollar payoff. The friend took him up on it and the she-man embarrassingly played side games for the entire year. Poker players are just like that. Most of them are high-action guys who have to be betting on everything and anything. That was the life—that’s what they loved and knew.
Jimmy looked out across the sea of poker players, trying to locate Kat, wondering who she was playing with, but it was impossible to find her. He did, however, see other faces he recognized, like the legendary Amarillo Slim Preston, Tom McEvoy, Men Nguyen—known as “Men the Master”—and Johnny Chan. They were all stacking their chips the way they liked them.
For the most part, the faces surrounding him belonged to strangers. He hadn’t been among so many since the first day he walked into prison. Suddenly he realized he was sweating. Was he nervous about playing or having another anxiety attack? The damned things came out of nowhere since he got out. Sometimes he wondered if being out was a dream. Would he wake up and find himself still in his cell?
He sat back and willed himself to relax. Being nervous enough to puke about playing in this tournament would have been acceptable to him. After all, he was only human. But not an anxiety attack—not now!
“Are you all right?” the player next to him asked.
He turned his head and looked into the eyes of a young, pretty blond woman who couldn’t have been much older than Kat.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Thanks for asking . . .”
“Holly,” she said.
“I’m Jimmy.”
They shook hands, and he noticed her palms were damp.
“First tournament?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“How did you get here?”
“I won an office tournament. The prize was the entry fee and buy in for this.” She leaned toward him so that their shoulders touched and said very softly, “I’m so nervous.”
“Just relax. Pretend you’re still playing at your office.”
“That’s hard to do,” she said forcefully. “That’s Chris Ferguson sitting across from us. My God, he’s like a star!”
“Yes, he is.”
“Can I tell you a secret?” she asked, leaning toward him and lowering her voice again.
“Sure, why not?”
“I have a room in this hotel for one night,” she said. “If I make it through the day I’m gonna panic because I’ve got no place to stay after tonight.”
He smiled at her. “Seems to me that’s a problem everyone here would like to have.”
“Have you played in tournaments before?”
“Yes,” he said, “quite a few over the years.”
“Oh,” she said, puzzled. “It’s just that I thought you were sweating. . . .”
“I’m a little claustrophobic,” he lied, “but I’m all right now.”
And he was. Talking with a pretty woman, calming her down, seemed to have had the same effect on him. The sweats had stopped, the dizziness had passed.
He was ready to play.