Poker Articles

New Jersey Hold'em
By John Vaughn

I once saw a priest roll up his pant legs and lead his parish onto the beach in the shadows of Atlantic City's Trump Taj Mahal for the annual Wedding and Blessing of the Sea, and watched little old ladies carry bottles of holy water back into the slot rooms. The expectant joy with which the congregation took the currency accrued in the city's one great House of hope and spent it in the other epitomized the desperate nostalgia of the faded resort town.

Everything that was once grand about Atlantic City seems to have washed out into the sepia tones of memory. The Steel Pier is gone. Miss America is a quaint relic in the time of Britney Spears and Extreme Makeovers. Even saltwater taffy has no place in our low-carb world. Until Texas Hold'em breathed new life into the place, the casinos were like enormous glittering respirators, keeping the city alive with a delicately balanced mixture of desperation and easy money.

And that's why there's no better place in the world to play the game. With the sanitized corporate sheen that coats No Limit Hold'em nowadays, it's easy to forget that the game originated in a world of con men and criminals. Unlike Las Vegas, which has become a Disneyland in the desert, Atlantic City still has a coarseness that perfectly matches the game's shady origins.

So under the guise of bringing my infant daughter out to New Jersey to meet the family, I decided to take a little detour down the Garden State Parkway to see what No Limit Texas Hold'em tournaments have done for Atlantic City. Sure, using my daughter as an excuse to play poker was a little unseemly, but since my bankroll has been used more for baby bottles than buy-ins lately, I thought it was only fair.

As I walked through the glass doors of the Tropicana's Poker Turf Club, I felt like I had stepped into a fine gentleman's club. If it weren't for the plasma TV's and complete lack of smoke, I would've sworn Sinatra was playing that night. Silver-haired men in expensive looking suits directed me through rooms paneled in heavy mahogany and hunter green leather to a table where a neat stack of $2000 in tournament chips waited for me. Even though those chips only cost me $50, they made me feel like Mike McDermott walking into Teddy KGB's joint with three stacks of high society.

I separated them by color and sized up my opponents: a college student who brought her boyfriend to play in his first tournament, some guys in their 30's who looked like they cared way too much, and a gaggle of older gentleman who looked like they couldn't care less.

Flat screen monitors hung around the room like digital bats displaying the time left in the current round, the amount of the blinds and an enormous "130." I asked the dealer what that number meant and he told me that it was the number of people left in the tournament.

"Great," I said. "Now everyone will see that big '129' when I make my perp walk out of here."

No one laughed.

I took a few hits early on, so I called for a re-buy. I gave the hostess another $50 and the dealer handed me 2000 fresh chips. I was slightly embarrassed that the only way I could build my stack was by buying more chips, but I got over it quickly - all that mattered was that I was back in the game.

My strategy paid off. My very next hand was a monster: Ace-King. I threw what felt like a very real $1800 at the center of the table. I thought the Atlantic Ocean surf had swelled over the boardwalk right into the casino, but it was only my heart pounding inside my ears.

I got two callers: a paunchy guy in a blue velour track suit who looked like he stopped in for a quick game on his way to a Sopranos casting call, and the undergrad's heavily-gelled boyfriend. I twisted my face into the most menacing but non-revealing scowl I could muster.

The dealer turned over A-7-10. I had flopped top pair with top kicker. My hands went numb.

Both of my adversaries checked to me.

The white noise of riffling chips and murmured conversations vanished as eight sets of eyes bored in on me. I couldn't see or hear anything; I could only smell the fear at the table. Unfortunately, I couldn't tell if it was mine.

I glanced at the $5700 pot in the middle of the table, fingered my dwindling stack of chips and made sure Big Slick was still there.

"All in." My mouth was so dry I could barely speak.

When both players called me, I knew I was in trouble. My pair of Aces was up against Aces and Sevens and a pair of Queens. My monster hand was now hiding under the bed.

The dealer turned over a five on the River. No help for anyone. After a brief pause, he slid another card into the muck and turned over my last chance.

I must've looked like the biggest fish in the Atlantic Ocean when the dealer turned over another Queen and pushed all of my chips to Boy Band Gone Bad with his three Queens. I stood up from the table, wished everyone good luck and walked out under the mocking glow of the "110" flashing above my head.

It stings when the shooter rolls a seven at the craps table, or the blackjack dealer turns over a twenty-one to beat your twenty, but you know going in that the house always wins. Getting knocked out of the tournament really hurt because it was so personal. Those guys took my chips like a couple of bullies stealing a kid's lunch money.

And I loved every minute of it.

My opponents taught me that navigating a No-limit Texas Hold'em tournament, like navigating Atlantic City itself, requires patience, cunning and controlled aggression. The confrontational nature of competing against other players that made my loss so painful also made the game infinitely more exhilarating than watching the random spin of a roulette wheel or tumble of the dice. And since I wasn't playing against the house, I knew that I could study the game and actually have a chance to win next time.

Thanks to No-limit Texas Hold'em, Atlantic City's heartbeat is now bounding and strong. I can't wait to go back, but I've learned my lesson. I'm going to practice a little more, read a couple of how-to books, and most importantly, pick up some of that holy water.