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I like seeing all of these stories about 2000's underground poker. I wrote about my time in the 2000's running an underground poker ring in Charleston South Carolina.
Here is what was going on in South Carolina during that time. This was a real cat and mouse game with the police that turned into a poker game all on its own.
https://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/4065-poker-players-fight-the-law-in-south-carolina
Chapter 1
https://imgur.com/gzs3uYJ
Every other morning as I iron my shirt for work I am reminded of the secret life that I had lived for nearly two years. See, an eight foot by four foot felt poker table with a four inch raised padded rail, automatic card shuffler, and chip drop-slot makes for a great ironing board. In a pinch it also serves many other, equally as important purposes. I name them off in my head as I flatten the collar of my favorite blue shirt; a large desk for history homework, a hard table for an impromptu interrogation, a soft platform for sweaty sex, and of course a poker table for making money. I put on my shirt, still hot from the iron and I roll up my sleeves as I walk down the stairs from the third story of my townhouse. The October air in Charleston is cool and feels good against the heat on the back of my neck. I slide into my shiny red BMW, nearly two years old now, but paid for. The smell of raw leather still lingers in the interior, and seems stronger on mornings like these. I instinctively push the button on the center console to lock the doors before I grab the gear shift and put the car into reverse. I don’t know why BMW doesn’t make them lock automatically. I pull out onto the highway and spin the tires, listening to the 330 horsepower wake up the car. I’m not in a hurry or anything, in fact I haven’t been in a hurry for quite some time. It’s just that it is sometimes important to make it look like you are in a rush, and sometimes it is just because it feels damn good to go fast.
“Folks don’t get wealthy by being in a hurry.” I remember lecturing to Kevin in one of the first months of our two year, million dollar endeavor. He was always in a hurry. I still stand by my saying, though I should have replaced “wealthy” with “anything they want.” Folks don’t get anything they want by being in a hurry. Oprah Winfrey did not get rich by rushing into having a talk show with a book club, and presidents don’t get into the White House by throwing their name on the ticket the minute the idea pops into their head. No. Oprah started by landing a co-anchor position on the local nightly news. And Ronald Reagan started as a B-list actor before becoming president of the Screen Actors Guild, Governor of California, and finally President of the United States. People don’t get married by flying to Vegas minutes after meeting each other, or after a one night stand. Well, maybe they do, but this is why it doesn’t work. They slow down and date for years, are engaged for another and then they get married, in a church, surrounded by their families and are then taken off in a horse drawn carriage to their honeymoon. That’s how you fucking do it.
It is an uneventful two hour drive on highway 17 going north. Myrtle Beach isn’t really busy this time of year, but the traffic is still just as bad. It’s a good thing that I am not in a hurry. I pull into my VIP spot with almost an hour to spare, the parking lot is empty except for a few cars spattered in the first two rows. An old minivan with curtains on the windows, a Ford Escort with a spare tire rusting on the rear axle, and an old Chevy truck with a child’s car seat in the passenger side, just to name a few. The owners of which are probably already claiming their lucky seats. Fucking suckers. They all probably rushed to get here too and onto the boat. I stay in my car for another 15 minutes and wait, listening to the ‘pumped’ playlist on my iPod, my car’s premium speakers matching perfectly to the acoustics of the interior space. I think just for a second about pulling out of my space and driving further up the coast to Atlantic City. I would probably be too exhausted from the drive by the time I got there and would sleep in the hotel until late at night. That is when the real whales come out. Here on the 11 am Myrtle Beach casino boat the closest thing to a whale is the 350 pound mother of five glued to a stool in front of the “Wheel of Fortune” slot machine. I don’t leave, instead I open my glove box and stuff six 100 dollar bills into my pants pocket, any more or any less would be unnecessary, at least on a Wednesday. I walk slowly up to the path and say hi to Dave as I pass up onto the ramp. I don’t need to show any ID to board.
“Good Morning, Ryan.” Dave says as he straightens his back and pulls the daily newspaper from his stand, handing it to me. They all know me by name; I know most of theirs too, but not them. Which is alright, that makes us even. I pass through the halls and by the sad looking, unlit slot machines. Some people have already claimed their seat with a jacket and their lucky bucket. I go up to the tallest portion of the ship, the poker room, and head out onto the deck. No one else is out here, probably due to the two flights of stairs and the fact that there is a free buffet on the floor below. I sit down in one of the cushioned white chairs and pull the first cigar of the day out of my shirt pocket. I light it with my silver Zippo that is etched with a royal flush and blow out the puff of smoke as I put my feet up on the metal rail. It’s going to be another half hour before we undock and another half hour after that while we float out into international waters. I know from experience that this cigar will last exactly one hour, paired with two Grey Goose and Red Bulls it is truly the breakfast of champions. At this time most people in the eastern half of the United States are sipping on their second cup of coffee while sitting on their uncomfortable office chairs in their grey or brown cubicles. I think about this just as land disappears from sight over my polished black Italian shoes. That could be me, making 40k a year in an unhappy office; only looking forward to the weekends for freedom. My college degree is somewhere in a box already. I graduated in May, majoring in business management with a 4.0 GPA. My parents were thrilled; their little boy had accomplished something great. They didn’t know. Their little boy hadn’t been a little boy in a long time, and he had already accomplished something so great that he couldn’t even tell them. Fuck a degree, fuck a 4.0. The only reason I had even stayed in school for my last year was because I had nothing better to do, not because I wanted a fucking job. My parents think that I have submitted my application to nearly every business in Charleston. “Sorry mom, this economy just isn’t a good one for a freshly graduated 23 year old. They want someone with more experience.” I’m not sure how true this is, because I haven’t even made my resume, let alone actually gave it to a company. I was too scared of getting hired. So I don’t travel back to Ohio to visit them that often. I couldn’t lie to my mother right to her face. I could lie to nine strangers around a piece of felt, and they would believe me, but to my mom, no. I sometimes think that if she knew the basics of poker, she could beat me.
My coworkers are all already around the table when the signal is called for the first hand to be dealt. I take the last good drag off of my cigar and tossed it over the two decks below into the water and grab my Vodka Red Bull and headed inside. The scene has changed dramatically from an hour ago. I slowly walk to the open chair on the right end of the table in seat three and pull 400 dollars out as I sit down. I surveyed the table while walking up. Most people have 200 dollars; one guy has about 350 dollars with his wallet next to his stack on the table. Sometimes it’s good to be the last to sit. I know exactly how much to put down to top everyone yet not be too robust and scare everyone off when I am in a hand. Mr. Wallet is not afraid to lose every bit of that 350, and I have to have that covered. The locals know me – and my play. They know exactly what I am doing – they think they know exactly what I am doing, I’m not worried about them. The good thing about casinos is the vacationers; rotating money. None of them know me or how I play, but I know all of them and exactly how they play. Well, at least the 90 percent of them that play the same damn way. This is especially true of the ones with dark sunglasses, or earphones, or their lucky card covers. They watch too much T.V. The dealer knows me by name and after taking my frequent player card he slides over my stacks of chips. Mostly white-one dollar and red-five dollar chips, but a few are green-twenty five dollar chips. “There you go, Ryan. Good luck” He says, tapping the top of the largest stack. Luck? I don’t know what it is about tapping and poker. I look around the table and catch a glimpse of a sunglassed teenager tapping the rail with a green chip, a fat man with an iPod tapping his knee along with the beat of his music and then the dealer tapping my white chips. And of course the tapping that every player does when they say “check”. I swear if I could block everything else out but the tapping it would sound like some sort of long lonely song. I grabbed my chips and pulled them close to the rail. The sound of chips clanking together is a sound that every poker player knows. It is especially prevalent during the first ten minutes of any game. Most people have been waiting, impatiently, to get those chips, and now they want to feel them in their hands. They want to show off their talent of chip-shuffling, and chip-bouncing, or other hand tricks. I have seen them all. Chip tricks are cheap tricks, who do these fuckers think they are? I can’t resist. I take a stack of three red chips and three white chips and put them side by side. I shuffle them once with perfect form, and then I cut the stack of six into two stacks of three again and shuffle once more. I again put them in two stacks of three and shuffle one last time. When I split them again they are in two perfect stacks of three reds and three whites. I amuse myself by doing this a few more times. No one is watching. They are all busy doing the exact same thing; killing the two minutes while the dealer shuffles the brand new deck of cards. Before I know it I have two cards in front of me and I take a quick peak. 4d9c. Rags, I have a 32 percent chance of catching a pair, and that wouldn’t even help. I probably have less than a 5 percent chance of winning this hand.. “Fold.” I say, tossing my cards into the middle of the table as I slump back into my chair. I’m in no rush.