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08.31.06
Stronger Than Fiction
posted by Absinthe | 11:33 PM
Suppose you’re forced to sit down at the poker table with a fictional creation – an opponent who, technically speaking, doesn’t exist, but is still a better player than you are. Someone who has all the qualities that make up a dynamite poker player, who’s better at certain things than maybe anyone else.
Fictionally speaking, who’s your worst nightmare? (I’d like to know.)
Since I have way too much time to think about things, this one took me a while. I debated the merits of Sherlock Holmes (can’t run a bluff on that fucking guy), HAL 9000 (homicidal mania AND poor musical taste), and James Bond (CHEATER). But I finally settled on the sociopathic antihero of The Shield, Detective Vic Mackey.
If you’ve never watched The Shield, well, you’re a pathetic wretch unworthy of basic cable. Mackey is the flawed diamond at the center of the story – a cop so far over the edge he occasionally comes all the way ’round to right again. He consorts with drug dealers, takes payoffs, flat-out robs criminals, and is capable of cold-blooded murder. He’s also the smartest, most dangerous guy in any room he enters. If he existed he wouldn’t be a crooked cop in Los Angeles – he’d be a Senator.
Mackey hasn’t played a lot of literal poker on the show, but his cat-and-mouse games with rivals on both sides of the law show a startlingly clear command of the game. He can run bluffs and bully single opponents, he plays opponents off each other expertly, and he’s absolutely fearless about raising the stakes, finding ways to force his strongest opponents to the test. He’s got a natural bonhomie but can trash-talk with the best of them, and his broad bullshitter’s smile can turn ugly on a dime, moving from quiet menace to brute intimidation in a wink. He’s a great angle-shooter and metagamer, finding ways to cadge extra money here and there. And he’s a master manipulator and scavenger of information, a great reader, and he’s forever asking the right questions in the right way to find out what he wants to know without revealing his motives. He does “favors” that cost him nothing but buy him goodwill that he later trades for something of value. He’s an absolute shark.
If he has a weakness, it’s that metaphorically speaking, he’s playing above his bankroll – everything he has, everything he is is at risk whenever he plays, and no matter whether he’s ahead or behind he’s playing like he’s stuck in the game. And yet he plays balls-out all the time. He exists at a high risk of ruin – but that won’t stop him from taking a big chunk out of your hide along the way.
He doesn’t exist. But there are, I suspect, plenty of players like him out in the world. Sometimes it’s more comfortable to face what we fear the most in an imaginary form. If I were sitting across the table from Vic Mackey, what would I do?
Right now I’d get up and walk away. Unfortunately, that just isn’t good enough.
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Topics: Poker | 6 Comments »
September 1, 2006 at 8:40 AM
But can the guy fold? That’s what I wonder about his play. Can he lay down a loser before it costs him too much? He hasn’t always shown his that ability. Often times, he got himself bailed out by someone else.
Otherwise, I agree with your assessment wholeheartedly. I’d fold and walk away.
September 1, 2006 at 11:03 AM
a fictional creation – an opponent who, technically speaking, doesn’t exist, but is still a better player than you are.
Isn’t that redundant? If he’s better than me, of course he’s fictional.
September 1, 2006 at 9:44 PM
Kilgore Trout would also prove a wily, indefatigable felt menace. Having written several hundred books on just about every topic and managed to span instellar distances on at least one occasion, I think proves his near-omniscience. Trying to take him down would be -EV, but somewhat easier on the ribs and kidneys.
Mackey is a mostly functional sociopath. Poker table, supermarket checkout line, heroin bust – if I’m in his way, I move.
September 5, 2006 at 12:50 PM
Homer Simpson. The ultimate fish, but a guy who always seems to find good situations and work his way out of bad ones, for no reason at all. The ultimate luckbox, he would be the guy who would call you down with a gutshot, three to a flush or an A, and he would hit every time.
September 5, 2006 at 12:53 PM
The thing about sociopaths is that they tend to have egos too large for their own good. It comes from thinking you’re the only true human in the universe. He wouldn’t be able to fold.
I’d do what I usually do when I think I’m in the presence of a sociopath-get the hell out. There is nothing positive that can come from dealing with someone who has no conscience.
As for your original question, I’d have to say the lead detective in the OTHER Law and Order- not the original and not SVU, I’m blanking on the name, dammit.
That guy is like Sherlocke Holmes, knowlegeable in alot of areas and with an innate detective instinct. He’s also well versed in psychology, how to read lies and get into someone’s head.
September 5, 2006 at 6:03 PM
Someone incredibly good isn’t my worst nightmare. There are plenty of people so much better than me that they and the Pokerator 9000 have similar advantages over me.
The “worst nightmare” opponent is a guy you think we can beat who has only a small edge on you– and you keep slowly losing to him thinking you’ll eventually start to win.
You can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t even quit the game.