It'll take more than a fi$tful of dollar$

It began as most adventures do: with a terrible movie, an inflated sense of self-worth, and $100. It ended less glamorously—pale skin, dirty hair—but along the way there was psychokinesis and hot chocolate, love and pain. Reducing the gambling life at Yale to a few words may seem inadequate, but that's how it is: the vertiginous images clutter on top of each other, seared into the retina by the lights, the action, and all that money that begins to look a lot like candy.

The movie was Rounders, starring Ed Norton, ES '91, as the card-shark extraor-dinaire Worm, who forces Mike McDer-mott (Matt Damon) back into a seedy gambling under-world at the risk of his sexy girlfriend and his col-lege education. A Russian-accented John Malkovich and poker champion Johnny Chan are somehow involved, but the movie's message can be distilled to a single word, a command really: "Gamble!"

This is where the inflated sense of self-worth comes in. However many doors the Yale name may open in the "real world," an Ivy education doesn't exactly guarantee success in the real real world, that of dimly-lit poker games and blazing casinos. Edwin Jager, SM '01, who regularly plays in a dorm room poker game with $400 swings, said, "I actually don't think there's much correlation between the character of the typical Yale male and gambling." Though it doesn't hurt either: "Being from Yale has helped me out," he continued. "I went to Vegas for the first time this past spring break, and this guy was impressed by the whole Yale bit and ending up giving me over $100 to gamble with. The Y-bomb works in places you would never expect sometimes."

A cellar and a cellular

But that's getting ahead of things. There's no need for Vegas, or even Mohegan Sun or Foxwoods—there's plenty of action on Yale campus itself. Besides Jager's game, several others are held regularly, and often surreptitiously. Perhaps the most regular and surreptitious of these is the "Basement Game," held among mem-bers of the same college roughly five nights a week, in—appropriately—their college's basement. After ducking low-hanging pipes and being hit flush by raw chicken air rushing out of exhaust fans, you can hear the sound of falling chips at the end of the basement walkway. The scene smacks of campiness and self-importance—like a tombless secret society or a middle-school slumber party—until you count the chips, and realize what kind of money is being lost.

Fifteen students are in the game, with anywhere from four to eight playing each night, sometimes as late as their next class. The game is Texas Hold 'Em, which is, as Mike McDermott says, "the Cadillac of poker." Each player is dealt two cards, and must either bet, pass, or fold. For those who stay in, three cards—"the flop"—are dealt face up in the mid-dle, and another round of betting begins. Finally, two more communal cards—the "turn" and the "river"— are dealt and bet on one at a time. Once the final bets are made and called, the player with the best combination of any five cards (of the five in the middle and the two in hand) takes the pot.

"The key to this game," Mike says in the movie, "is playing the man, not the cards," but the regulars that sit around the hot base-ment's shaky wooden table play tight; it's a numbers game, one that sticks closely to their knowledge of the odds. Rarely does someone bluff, but even then it's done conservatively: a player might bet large on the turn card, hoping to make a hand on the river (though he'll be mocked afterwards as a "river rat"). The players turn over every card—the flop, the turn, and the river—even if a winner has won already—just to see what could have won. Was Bruce Lee* right to muck his "radio" (ten/four), did Rollo draw dead with his "Nintendo" (six/four), should Alonzo have sat on his "Big Slick" (Ace/King)? Trips, the talker at the end of the table, wants to know if his burning of his "gay waiter" (a queen holding a tré) was logical.

These players condescend to "gamblers," those who play for the cathartic rush of the big swing, the caterwauling loose game; they've heard of Edwin-"dow of Opportunity" Jager's game, and even pause to talk about "the other action." They heard about the pot that went up to $1,800 and attribute it to the reckless games these "gamblers" play with names like Let it Ride, Burn the Pot, and Annihilator. They had tried these out, of course, and once had $1,600 and Alonzo's cell phone riding on a single hand. That's when they decided to quit. "There's no skill involved!" Trips la-ments, dealing me a pair. Still, Soul Brother No. 1 and Alonzo say they might be interested in the other action.

Now the girl who had been bringing them drinks from a makeshift bar comes over and asks to play ("I'm serious"). "You can play, but you will lose," Bruce Lee says.

"You don't really want to play," Soul Brother No. 1 says.

"Why not?"

"We'll just take your money," Alonzo says. "You'll lose $20 right away."

I look down at my chips—I'm down exactly $20.

The girl doesn't play; few ever do. Those who show up to these games are usually just there for luck—or lust.

"All the people that are involved here at Yale are guys," Edwin said. "When girls from downstairs or elsewhere come around they always seem to influence the luck of a particular player. For instance, last night Jen came up to hang out and watch the fun and Dan won boatloads of money. Just hand after hand after hand. He couldn't be stopped. She got up to leave and he lost it all. Jen always does that to him. Leads him on, and then just turns him off. Poor guy."

The brains vs. the bluster

Adam Wells, CC '02, on his way to the 'Basement Game.'

A few hours later, I had lost enough. I hadn't counted on the possibility of one loose player in the tight game—Alonzo came over the top into all my bluffs. "I get out of control," he warned. But this wasn't the first time I'd lost—for a year I'd played in the Calhoun game, which began with eight people playing small stakes at the back table of the back room in Naples. It ended recently, with my two suitemates playing heads-up, hours into the morning in the common room, the pots reaching $100 instead of the original $10 highs. "I deve-loped permanent back problems," Joshua Kriegman, CC '02, said of his epic matches with Adam Wells, CC '02.

At the beginning of Rounders, Mike's voiceover says prophetically, "Listen, here's the thing: if you can't spot the sucker at the table in the first half-hour, you're the sucker." I couldn't spot the sucker in the first half-year, so I stopped playing. But the Basement Game had heard about the loose-playing Joshua and Adam, and a shootout was imminent.

After a pleasantly social night in which the rookies broke even, Adam returned the next night, alone. He won early and big too, playing on a weak hand that wasn't made until the river was dealt.

"You can't be playing that hand, not with all that's going on," cautions Bruce Lee (so called because he always gets the high kicker), gesturing at the strong probability presented by the flop for a straight or flush. Alonzo sits silent without his glasses; they were jettisoned after Adam topped his $10 raise with a $20 one of his own. Now Adam is up $100.

"Fucking degenerate hands," Trips growls, down $60. "He's winning on fucking degenerate hands."

"Ever since Adam's got here, shit's been crazy," Soul Brother No. 1 adds, smiling despite himself. "We used to be playing $6 pots."

"At that table, it's an insult to be called lucky," Adam told me later. "It's like telling someone you got no brains, just cards. After winning a big hand, I heard Trips say, `What a lucky-ass motherfucker.' Well, you gotta be lucky. You gotta be lucky."

Suddenly, Adam's sitting on $200. When two styles of gambling collide, one takes control, especially in such an aggressive game as Texas Hold 'Em. The straight-playing Trips begins calling with only a high ace, while Alonzo becomes conservative, burning everything he has right off the flop. "Why am I so loose?" Rollo asks the table, after seeing his chips move inches to the neighbor on his right. "Before you got here, I was the man. Now I can't hit a card." "Raise you $4," Adam says.

"$4?" Soul Brother No. 1 is dismayed, no longer smiling.

"Raise $10."

"$10?" he calls again, even though it seems to pain him.

Stakes is high

It gets a lot worse. The large wooden room called the Mohegan Sun Casino is only an hour away up I-95, and they don't take bets less than $10. Not that it feels good to bet that low. "I feel like a kid playing with a stick," grunted a pink fat hairless 20-year-old craps dealer to no one in particular, as he lazily dragged my two red nickels off the felt.

Of course, some people, like Zach Boisi, TD '01, prefer betting blacks ($100 chips). After having spent his 21st birthday at a casino, Zach has been successful with blackjack all year, but last weekend was especially kind.

"I called my mom," he said, "and told her that I won $1,200. She said, `Wow, that's pretty amazing. You know you could lose all that money just as easily.' I said, `I guess you're right, Mom.' I didn't tell her that I had gone back and won another $500 the next day." And the day after that he won the first pick in the TD housing draw.

"Word definitely gets around," Zach said. "I was interviewing for a secret society, and the guy asked me about it. When people find out how much I've made this year, they're impressed. Or shocked. They tell me that I've made more than them this year, and they're out working jobs every week. I'm just playing cards."

Indeed the Sun, with a different entrance for each of the four seasons, is the small-time casino with a big-time heart. At least that's how Zach likes to think of it. "It's nicer than Foxwoods," he said, "because the people have more personality. Foxwoods prides itself on being the biggest casino in America, but the Sun is a lot more friendly." Well, there are several plastic models of smiling Native Americans, but "friendly" is a stretch for the labyrinth of flaming lights, jangling coins, and green baize, all conspiring for your cash.

The casino's exterior isn't nearly as dramatic as Foxwoods'—think It's a Small World to the Woods' Cinderella's Castle. On the side of the entrance road, a half-mile crater has been hollowed out of the reservation, junked with sprawling masses of brick, machinery, and stone—it looks like an ancient burial ground that's been converted into the set from The Running Man. Prodigiously profitable since opening four years ago, the Sun is building casinos large enough to compete with the five at Foxwoods.

Business as usual

The life of a gambler is a sordid, dirty, filthy affair.

At the low-stakes blackjack table where I was sitting, a Japanese banker played catatonically. Indicating his bets with a mute tapping of the felt or a quick sweep of the hand, he sipped complimentary coffee. He lost a hand, rubbed his forehead, and fell sideways, right off the stool. Derek, the mullet-haired dealer with black sunken eyes and black sunken teeth, motioned the pit boss over, who motioned for a paramedic.

How much had this man lost? Was he dead? Had the flashes of light and sound aggravated some heart condition?

"He's been here for 40 straight hours. I think he needed a break," Derek laughed, dealing out the next hand. The limp figure was picked off of the floor, his chips left on the table.

Lost in the Woods

If the Sun is your friend, then the Woods is your mother. At 2:45 a.m., the waitresses come around with beverages— not cocktails, but bottled water, tea, hot chocolate. Having a good go with it (finally!) at the Blackjack table, I even felt like asking for apple juice.

But Louis at the end of the table was begging for his chicken sandwich ("All I need is my saaandwich!"). Fifty years old, wearing a leather jacket and a turtleneck, he has several thousand on the baize in front of him, including several blacks and a couple greens ($500). After he hit his point, he began neighing.

"That's the yee-ah of the horse! I already did the year of the dog. Woof, woof. You work me haaaard, Loucil. So hard.

"Ho! That's a multi-color! Racial haamony, baby, party over here, get funky, 'round the gravy train! "I wanna call my doctor—I feel psychokinetic power coming through my ears."

And I believed Louis—after all, he just made $2,000 on a single hand, right after whispering into my ear exactly what cards he would be dealt. Casinos do strange things to people, and on my way to the Texas Hold 'Em table, I saw Daniel Squadron, CC '02, acting strangely. It was his first time at a casino, and he was hunched over a single blackjack hand, next to an elderly Chinese woman. They were betting on the same hand, together. He would place a $10 bet and she would back it up, gently sliding two red chips behind his. I think they were looking into each other's eyes. "I never realized that $5 chips could bridge the language—and love—barrier so powerfully," he said later.

At the poker table, Josh was even, Adam had lost his Basement Game winnings. The dealer, looking like Vincent Gallo circa Buffalo '66, asked me if I wanted to sit down.

"You wanna be a man, you gotta play all night," he snickered. Everyone at the table started laughing—some plump truckers, a German grad student dressed in Sprockets-black, and a young blond boy, a child really (the casinos don't card often). Back at the blackjack table, another rookie gambler, Sid Elevator, was earnestly trying to shake hands with Louis to thank him for his winnings, really thank him, but Louis was too busy screaming something about his uncle in the Navy and a chicken sandwich. In the adjacent room, lined with hundreds of slots and several new Toyota Avalons, you could hear a winner every second: buzzers, alarms, strobes, broken glass, cherries, pineapples, mermaids.

Pale skin, dirty hair

Rounders proved to be less ridiculous than the real thing. My self-esteem was shot. And the $100? That's how much the Herald gave me to gamble; that's how much I lost in my first hour at the Sun.

Simon Hanft, SY '00, who won $900 on a single longshot bet last weekend at a Mohegan Sun craps table, thinks gambling is not only prospering at the casinos, but at Yale, too. "It's become a lot hotter. I love it!" But the money, the sounds, the basements without electricity and the casinos flooded with it, writhing in neon and Native American? "It's a lot of fun," he says. "It's a lot of pain."

Photos by Nathaniel Rich. *Some names have been changed to protect anonymity.

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