{"id":22621,"date":"2011-10-27T08:00:12","date_gmt":"2011-10-27T12:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=22621"},"modified":"2011-10-26T18:01:48","modified_gmt":"2011-10-26T22:01:48","slug":"the-poets-poker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/27\/the-poets-poker\/","title":{"rendered":"The Poet’s Poker"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photograph by Tiago Daniel.<\/p><\/div>\n

For Rita Dove, it was an unusual Saturday. It began ordinarily enough: Dove had spent the afternoon at the Academy of American Poets, where she is one of fifteen \u201cchancellors.\u201d By 8 P.M., though, the day had taken a strange turn, and Dove, who is fifty-nine, found herself in the basement of the Chinatown Brasserie, sitting in a recessed booth illumined by a red lantern, looking out over five poker tables ringed with players who had each paid $1,500 just for the privilege to sit there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m terrified of those tables,\u201d she said. Even so, she added, referring to poets, \u201cWe\u2019re supposed to be open to new experiences, so here I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was by no means the only noteworthy author present. At one table sat the novelist Walter Kirn; at another, the comedian, writer, art collector, and banjoist Steve Martin; at a third, the novelist Amy Tan, the evening\u2019s host. Her invitation to the poker tournament had begun, \u201cThis may be one of the most unusual dinner invitations you\u2019ll ever receive.\u201d The evening, she explained, was a fundraiser to benefit a group called Adventures of the Mind<\/a>, which describes itself as a \u201cmentoring summit for 150 of the smartest high school students in the country.\u201d (Players were competing for prizes<\/a> of the \u201clunch with a luminary\u201d sort, rather than money. The house was absolutely winning tonight, and no one was complaining.)<\/p>\n

Still, it seemed an unlikely crowd for an evening of Texas Hold \u2019em, a game defined, after all, by the \u201cpoker face,\u201d that emotionless mask meant to obstruct communication. Wordsworth defined poetry as \u201cthe spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings;\u201d it came as no surprise when Dove confessed, \u201cI don\u2019t think I could pull off a poker face.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen literary types gather together,\u201d mused Prozac Nation<\/em> author Elizabeth Wurtzel, observing from the sidelines, \u201cthey might play Hearts, or Go Fish, or Bridge.\u201d But poker? She associated it sooner with Wall Street traders. Journalist Amanda Fortini, also in attendance, had only learned to play the night before, at Tan\u2019s apartment. \u201cThey were saying \u2018raise,\u2019 \u2018call,\u2019 what\u2019s the other one\u2014\u2018check,\u2019\u201d she told me. Her sole experience with poker chips had been in adolescence, when her mother, at the suggestion of a family therapist, implemented a rewards system: good behavior earned chips, which could be exchanged for television privileges.<\/p>\n

If Fortini embodied the poker-averse writer, her fianc\u00e9 across the room, Walter Kirn, embodied the opposite. Years back, he had replaced an alcohol addiction with a fervor for gambling. \u201cI\u2019m playing better because I\u2019m using the dynamic that I don\u2019t like to embarrass myself in front of a woman,\u201d he told me, gesturing to the woman beside him, World Series of Poker Champion Annie Duke. \u201cI\u2019m also playing worse than my best,\u201d he admitted.<\/p>\n

After losing a few hands, Kirn began to talk to his fellow players about money and fiction, and the ways in which money was a fiction. \u201cIn a leisure society people become addicted to token economies,\u201d he said. \u201cEven our real economy is a token economy.\u201d The conversation turned to his 2001 novel Up in the Air<\/em>, whose protagonist is obsessed with accruing frequent flyer miles. \u201cThe dollar is now just slightly more real than frequent flyer miles,\u201d he said. Then he lost another hand. \u201cThe fact that I\u2019m ineluctably losing my chips is causing me to play to my core competency, which is talking fast,\u201d he said quietly.<\/p>\n

A tournament representative soon approached, asking, \u201cWould you like another re-buy, Mr. Kirn?\u201d Players could make additional donations of $500 for a replenishment of chips.<\/p>\n

The author nodded.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you, Mr. Kirn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though not playing his finest game, Kirn nonetheless gave the lie to the idea that poker was somehow unliterary. He pointed out that the editors Adam Moss, Will Dana, and several other publishing giants have a regular game. Poker, Annie Duke told me, could be seen as \u201can exercise in storytelling and listening to stories.\u201d Even to place a bet or to abstain from doing so was a story, she said, a way of \u201ctalking with each other with your chips.\u201d Others have made even bolder claims about the relationship between poker and storytelling: \u201cHumanities professors should recognize that the ways we’ve done battle and business, made art and literature have echoed, and been echoed by, poker’s definitive tactics, as well as its rich lore and history,\u201d James McManus argued<\/a> in an article drawn from his 2009 book Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As the night wore on, and six tables whittled themselves down to one, it became clear that in this room at least, literature and poker were two sides of the same chip: It seemed that nearly every author in the room had a secret love of poker, and every poker player in the room a secret (or not-so-secret) book. \u201cI\u2019ve written about 74,000 words of my autobiography,\u201d the night\u2019s emcee, Poker Hall of Famer Phil Helmuth, told me. Meanwhile, even the poet was trying her luck, at a special table set up for the poker-phobic. \u201cThe language is great,\u201d Dove said of the Hold \u2019em lingo\u2014\u201cthe flop,\u201d \u201cthe turn,\u201d \u201cthe river.\u201d \u201cI start to daydream about the language, and I miss the next call.\u201d<\/p>\n

By a little after 11, the room\u2019s energy had converged on the finalists\u2019 table. Still representing the scribbling class were Steve Martin, nursing a Tsing Tao beer, and his wife, the former New Yorker<\/em> staffer Anne Stringfield. Tan was also in the game, as was her husband, Louis DeMattei, a tax attorney (\u201cshe writes and I write off,\u201d he said). Six others, including a chess grandmaster, Phil Helmuth\u2019s sister, and a fellow from New Zealand whom no one seemed to know, also remained in the running. Soon Stringfield was out, and then Tan. At 11:40, Martin raked in an impressive pot, $80,000 in chips, but by a little after midnight, he too was out.<\/p>\n

The top slot went to the Kiwi gentleman, a stocky and bespectacled young man whose name was Kahn Mason. He was a quantitative analyst with a Ph.D. in applied statistics. For his prize, he chose a private lesson with Annie Duke, over her protestations that the dinosaur dig with paleontologist Jack Horner was a better value.<\/p>\n

I asked Mason what it was like being a math guy playing against writers. \u201cWe tend to be good at the odds,\u201d he said of quantitative analysts, \u201cbut we\u2019re really bad at reading people.\u201d Fortunately, he said, writers were easy to read.<\/p>\n

David Zax is a writer living in Brooklyn.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Rita Dove, it was an unusual Saturday. It began ordinarily enough: Dove had spent the afternoon at the Academy of American Poets, where she is one of fifteen \u201cchancellors.\u201d By 8 P.M., though, the day had taken a strange turn, and Dove, who is fifty-nine, found herself in the basement of the Chinatown Brasserie, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":163,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[4564,4576,4568,4573,4567,4580,4574,4565,4579,4572,4584,4578,4583,4581,4582,4569,4571,4273,1131,4570,4575,4566,4577],"class_list":["post-22621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-academy-of-american-poets","tag-adam-moss","tag-adventures-of-the-mind","tag-amanda-fortini","tag-amy-tan","tag-anne-stringfield","tag-annie-duke","tag-chinatown-brasserie","tag-cowboys-full-the-story-of-poker","tag-elizabeth-wurtzel","tag-jack-horner","tag-james-mcmanus","tag-kahn-mason","tag-louis-demattei","tag-phil-helmuth","tag-poker","tag-prozac-nation","tag-rita-dove","tag-steve-martin","tag-texas-hold-em","tag-up-in-the-air","tag-walter-kirn","tag-will-dana"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Poet's Poker by David Zax<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"October 27, 2011 \u2013 For Rita Dove, it was an unusual Saturday. 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