A guy like me sees a lot of poker hands in a lifetime. After the first hundred thousand deals it's like you seen them all. I've had four kings get beat by a runner-runner draw to a straight flush. I've seen more sets of trips cracked than most people have hairs on their heads. I've seen a man bet his last hundred dollars on a 44 to 1 shot and hit it, and I've seen him take his winnings and do the exact same thing the very next hand. But until that night I never saw a guy bet twenty grand on the stone cold unbeatable nuts and lose it all. Because in theory it just don't happen that way. The best hand is supposed to win. That's what the game's about, the way it's always been.

       You know how Texas holdem works, right? You get two cards face-down and you bet 'em. Then the dealer lays out three cards face-up in the middle of the table-what's called "the flop"-and you bet again. Then he puts a fourth card on the table-"the turn"- and you bet again. The fifth and final board card is called "the river." One more round of betting, then you show your cards. Best five cards-using the two in your hand and the five on the board-wins. Easiest game in the world.
       I was at the Sand Dunes playing limit holdem, $75-150, when I hear that Bill Frisk and Morty Deasel were hot to play some no-limit, $5000 buy-in, $25-50 blinds. Me, I like a big game, and I think I can beat these donks, so I say I'll sit in and play three-handed for a bit, see what develops. I was thinking maybe we could get a tourist to sit down and take a shot at us. Yousef, the cardroom manager, sets us up at a table up front next to the rail, and we play for a while.
       A half hour later, Denn shows up with those little black glasses he wears. He eases into the three seat between me and Morty and pulls out a rubber-banded roll of hundreds and counts it down. Sixteen thousand dollars. The kid maybe used to be loaded, but I heard he'd been running bad lately. Real bad. I heard he dropped ninety large in one night at the Bellagio. And something about the way he counts off that last hundred tells me it's his case Franklin-his last hundred dollar bill. He loses that, he's tapioca.
       I notice Denn isn't wearing his gold necklace. Wonder if he hocked it.
       Morty and Frisk eye him like two hyenas trailing a wounded wildebeest. Morty pulls out his roll and buys in another 5K, and so does Frisk. They don't want to be short-stacked. Never mind the kid's rep as one of the most dangerous holdem players in Vegas-the hyenas smell blood.
       Del the Cabby, who still drives a taxi even though he's about eighty years old, sees all the money hitting the table and wanders over to check out our action. He watches us play a few hands, then sits down next to Frisk.
       "Buy-in's five, Del" says Frisk.
       With a wrinkled, veiny hand, Del pulls out a roll big enough to choke an alligator. Del the Cabby isn't just a cabby. He owns half the cabs in Vegas.
       Now there are five of us. Me and Denn Doyle and Morty Deasel and Del the Cabby and Bill Frisk. And for a while it goes bet, raise, fold. Bet, raise, re-raise, fold. Bet, fold. Playing no-limit holdem is like being in the marines-hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.
       After about an hour, the kid is up a couple thousand. He's playing good, picking up more than his share of blinds, being aggressive but not stupid. One hand he raises it up $500 pre-flop. Del the Cabby scratches his lumpy nose, then shoves in his entire stack.
       "Call that bet, kid," he says.
       The kid thinks for about a minute, his face showing absolutely nothing. "I can't call," he says, throwing his cards away face-up. A pair of queens.
       No balls," Morty said. "Pocket ladies, I'd a been all over that one, kid."
       Del the Cabby shrugs and shows his pocket aces with a sour smile.
       Everybody laughs. Morty laughs loudest.
       Like I said, the kid was playing good.
       Frisk and Morty are both screwed down lug-nut tight, playing only big pairs. I should've smelled a rat right there, on account of Morty is usually a pretty loosey-goosey type player. I must be getting old.

       I should probably introduce myself, even though you maybe heard of me. My name is James Robert Cowles, but everybody calls me Jimbo. I play poker for a living. I been making it at this game for four years, two years in Tunica and two in Vegas. I play mostly tournaments. I got two World Series of Poker bracelets, and I made the final table at last year's World Poker Tour. You maybe seen me on TV. I'm the guy with the long hair and the bowler hat.
       I see a lot of younger players coming up the ranks lately. A lot of them online kids, not very talented, but there's always a few get lucky. Most of them, by the time they get to be my age, will have got broke more than once. That's when you find out if you've got what it takes. Get broke and come back a few times. I've done it. I'll probably do it again. I mean, I might look like an old pro to a lot a these newbies, but the fact is, I'm all of twenty-two, Stu.

       Denn Doyle was the exception that proves the rule, or so I thought at the time. As far as I knew, he'd never once been broke. Last summer, he'd destroyed some huge game back in the Midwest and actually won himself a restaurant off some high-roller. But he was only sixteen, and no Donald Trump. After just a few months he ran the joint into the ground, converted his remaining assets to cash money, and headed for Vegas. You got to be twenty-one to play here, but fake IDs are easy to get and the kid has a face on him you can't put an age to. A few months back he just showed up at the Bellagio, sat right down in a $400-800 game, and destroyed it.
       I met him a few days after he hit town and we got to be friends. He fascinated me. Like I say, he was a kid, just turned seventeen, but if you looked at the way he played, the way he carried himself, the way he bet his chips, you'd say he'd been gambling for a thousand years.

        But back to this game I was telling you about. We been playing for an hour or so with no really big pots. The kid has a little over $19,000. I got $6400. Del has made a couple of bad moves and is down to $2500. Frisk and Morty are sitting on maybe twelve grand each. Morty-some guys call him Morty the Mouth-has been trash talking, giving Denn a bunch of crap.
       "I hear those boys at the Bellagio been giving you some chump lessons, kid."
       Denn ignores him.
       "Guess they figured they'd fattened you up enough. Glad they left some for me."
       The kid pulls out his iPod and plugs in. He doesn't want to listen to Morty no more, and I don't blame him.
       And then we get into it, the thing I'm telling you about.
       It starts when a new dealer sits down, this redhead named Cattie Hart, and I see the kid's face go soft and slack, like somebody slipped him a roofie.
       I know the kid is having a little thing with Cattie-they hooked up a couple weeks back. I can't blame him-Cattie is pure fox, right down to the red hair, the clear brown eyes, and the canine smile. But Cattie does not so much as give the kid a look. She is all business, her smooth face hard and tight, shuffling the cards with professional speed and precision. Like Denn, it's tough to put an age on her. But however old she is, the cards flow like butter in her hands.
       Morty bets $500 out of the small blind. Frisk, in the big blind, instantly calls him. The flop comes ace, deuce, jack. They both check. The turn is another jack. Check; check. The river brings a ten. Morty makes an oversize bet of $8000. This is a strange thing for Morty to do, but he does it anyway. Frisk calls and shows a king, ten. Morty shrugs and folds without showing his cards.
       I've seen a lot of fishy plays in my time, but that was one of the fishiest. It looked as if Morty had just given Frisk an $8000 gift. I didn't get the point of it at first, but it didn't take long for all to become clear.
       Three hands later I wake up with a pair of jacks in the big blind. I like pocket jacks. Some guys say they're the toughest pair to play in no-limit holdem, but I like 'em. Lots of guys like to raise with 'em, but not me. I like to get in cheap, then catch a good flop or get the hell out.
       The action goes like this: The kid, under the gun, limps in, calling my blind bet. Morty also calls. Frisk raises it up to $600. I do not like him raising that way after both the kid and Morty limp in. Limpers are dangerous in no limit holdem.
       Del the Cabby folds. I look at my jacks and get this creepy feeling running up my spine. Maybe I have the best hand. Maybe not. Regretfully, I pitch them into the muck.
       The kid calls Frisk's bet. Morty picks up his cards and stares at them. Very sloppy. Holdem players usually leave their two hole cards face down on the table and just lift the corners a little bit to see what they've got. Morty actually lifted his cards up off the table. I can see that he has a nine of clubs in his hand, and if I can see it, so can the kid.
       Clearly, Morty is going to fold. But I am thinking that it is very uncool of him to flash his cards that way. I'm surprised when Frisk doesn't raise an objection.
       Morty mucks his cards. Cattie raps the table, burns the top card, and flops an ace-king-nine. The kid stares at the flop for a few seconds, then checks. Frisk bets $1000, a small bet given the size of the pot. The kid calls. At this point I read the kid for a monster-pocket kings or pocket aces.
       The turn card is another nine. The kid checks. Frisk bets $4000. The kid smooth calls.
       The dealer peels off the river card. A third nine.
       Interesting.
       The kid stares at that nine for about twenty seconds, then he checks. Did he smell a rat? Or was he slow-playing? One of these days I got to ask him.
       Frisk pushes forward his entire stack, about $15,000, enough to put the kid all-in with his last $14,000.
       The kid frowns at his cards. He must have a sixth sense or something. He unplugs himself from his iPod and looks at Cattie. She doesn't look at him. He stares at her for a long time, then he shrugs, turns up his pocket aces and says, "I call."
       His hand is unbeatable. With ace-king-nine-nine-nine on the board, the best possible hand would be four nines. But I saw Morty fold the nine of clubs. The kid saw it too. So his aces-over-nines full house has got to be the stone cold nuts.
       Frisk, squinting at the kid's pocket aces, shakes his head slowly, as if he can't believe he's lost. Then he turns up a king. I think he probably has another one, giving him kings over nines full. But the second card he shows us is the impossible nine of clubs.

       I expect the kid to jump up and start screaming. I mean, that's what I would do. But he just turns dead white and stares at that card for what seems like forever but is probably only ten seconds, and then his head comes up slowly and he looks at Cattie.
       She is staring down at the table, blank as a slack-strung marionette.
     Frisk has this little smile on his face; Morty is inspecting his fingernails.
     Del the Cabbie shakes his head slowly.
     "Tough beat, kid," he says.Denn shoots a look at Del, then he looks back at Cattie.
     "Why?" he says to her.
     Cattie says nothing. She won't even look at him.
     Yousef, sensing a situation developing, comes bustling over to the table.
     Denn, his voice brittle as ash, says to him, "Look at the tape." Meaning the video recording from the hidden cameras that dotted the cardroom ceiling.
     "Is there a problem here?" Yousef, struggling to get up to speed.
     Color is coming back into Denn's face, red rising up from his neck. He shoves his chair back, stands up, and thrusts a finger at Cattie. "She set me up," he says to Yousef. "Look at the tape."
     Yousef tries to grab the kid's elbow. "Sir-"
     "No!" Denn, red-faced now, shrugs off Yousef's grasp. "Look at the goddamn tape! She-" Jabbing his finger at Cattie. "-and those two-" Now pointing at Frisk and Morty. "-set me up."
     Morty, all indignation and injured pride, jumps up and starts shouting at Denn, and I think Denn is going to wade right through the table to go at Morty but Yousef gets his skinny little body between them and suddenly Security is there, two hulking suits bookending the kid and lifting him off the carpet like he weighs nada. They haul him out of there, the kid shouting "Look at the tape, Yousef!"
     The funny thing is-maybe it's not so funny-is that the tape, assuming Yousef even looks at it, probably won't show a thing. Those security tapes don't pick up as much as you might think. However Cattie put that nine of clubs back into play, it was smooth. If neither Denn nor I saw her do it, odds are the tape won't show it either.
     As soon as Denn is out of sight this gray-faced dude in a matching thousand-dollar suit glides up out of nowhere. He comes up behind Cattie and puts his hands on her shoulders. She goes all stiff.
     He looks at the cards on the table and smiles. "Bad beat?"
     "I got lucky," says Frisk.
     The gray guy nods, as if he's gotten what he came for, then lifts his hands from Cattie's shoulders and turns and fades back into the sea of slots.

     Later on, back in my crib, I wonder why they'd gone after the kid that way. There are bigger and easier fish in Vegas. Denn's lousy sixteen large is nothing to guys like that.
     It had to be personal.
     And I wonder about Cattie Hart. What would it take to get her to drop a deck on a guy supposed to be her honey. All I can think is he must have done something really awful to piss her off that way.And I was thinking I maybe might have said something about that nine of clubs I saw in Morty's hand, but in my world you don't play the other guy's game. You take care of numero uno, Bruno.
     One player to a hand.
     That's the way it is.
     The way it's always been.