Prison Bankrolls for Poker Players
Originally sold to Poker Pro's World Series edition, co-written with C. Lance Williams while he served time for his crimes.
When Poker Pro's World Series edition originally published this piece not once, but twice, it was entitled Poker in the Pokey. It was co-written with C. Lance Williams while he served time for his crimes. Neither my original collaboration for the publications nor this reprint should be seen as an endorsement of Mr. Williams’s crimes, but rather as my attempt to practice Jesus’s ethics: “I was in prison and you visited me.” It’s also funny to me as it’s we wrote it from C. Lance Williams’s perspective and in his voice, which was about as unglamorous as a poker room gets. This includes some language that, though I myself try not to use it, is accurate to the prison system. His whole experience provides a counterpoint to my other piece Neil Gaiman’s Prostitutes. As you’ll see, we talked about a different kind of bankroll. If you prefer an ebook download, go here.
You’ll note that the first full draft was written with the guts of a BIC pen (they weren’t allowed the whole pen because it could be used as a shiv), on a legal pad procured for an inordinate amount of money marked up through commissary and passed on as debt to his elderly parents. I still have his prison letters:
Imagine receiving that kind of draft from a maximum security prison as you read what follows in his own voice:
My first final table beneath a barrage of cameras brought all the stressors of a televised event – lights bearing down, an audience sweating my plays, the promise of who knows how many eyes watching beyond those lenses. But if that tournament ever saw airtime, it wouldn’t play on ESPN, it’d be an episode of Locked Up.
I lived in a “pod” of Federal inmates — twenty-seven of us. We stayed in one room half the size of a basketball court twenty-four hours a day. We ate, slept, shat, and showered in view of each other and a dozen cameras mounted high above us. Poker passed long afternoons. Usually we played quick three or four hand single table tournaments. Stamped envelopes or pieces of fruit made up our buy ins.
This afternoon was different.
Sitting at the final table, I studied my opponents. What started as a field of ten had dwindled to four. To my left, a handsome black guy with a shark on his arm was halfway through a six year sentence for pimping through popular social networking sites. Across from me sat a tiny Mexican dude with a slew of crimes under his name including rape and multiple prison escapes. He was also one of the nicest people I’ve met. To my right, a white man from deep in Texas awaiting trial for domestic violence — he abused one of his two wives / live-ins / baby mommas.
We played dealer’s choice. Types of poker popped up that I had never heard of until then. My eyes fell to that mountain of oranges and postage-paid envelopes and I doubted the truth that I’d only lived in this pod for five days. Prison teaches a man a lot about himself and life. So does poker. That week I discovered my courage. I also learned that for a man to earn a bankroll and the respect it takes to survive prison, he must play many, many different kinds of poker.
I arrived late on a Friday. The transfer from another county jail in another state took all day — wrists and ankles cuffed and everything else stuffed into a van at two in the morning. The first night in a new jail wracks your nerves. Some guys know they’ll walk in and find a good “car” to ride with — homeboys or guys from affiliated gangs. I rode alone and I was no fighter. I thought I could handle myself until my first cellie showed me his scars – knife wounds galore, seven bullet holes, two fragments still lodged in his body, a dozen dental surgeries to repair damage inflicted by a bull’s horn to the face, etc. About that time I realized that I, in fact, could not handle myself.
So I watched everyone, kept my back to the wall. A few greeted me or offered me something to eat, but I kept my distance. Danielle Steel books, naps, and prayers. This lasted the weekend. No one approached me. Some brigs hate new guys from other states.
On Monday my time reached that fork. Big or small, intentional or not, tests pop up by the dozens and an inmate’s response determines his treatment. With any shed of respect, they’d leave me alone to do my own time. But if my neighbors deemed me too weak or too strong, my time could get very hard, very fast.
“You play poker?”
In a small pod like this everyone hears everything and suddenly I saw twenty-six sets of eyes turn my direction.
Variables ran through my head. I was told never to gamble in prison. Were these guys looking to extort me? Some kind of hustle? Despite the red flags, I said, “Yes.” Maybe I was lonely or bored. Maybe I was way too confident. I consider myself a good amateur gamer. Poker, chess, backgammon — in most settings I’d never bet against myself. Except for a bike race. I never learned to ride a bike. Lousy inner ear. My whole life people have said, “You can pick it up. It’s as easy as riding a bike.” And I’d always tell them I never did. So what were my odds of learning prison poker?
A single table. Four players. Zero re-buys. What the hell, right? It was only an apple.
The twice-married man from Texas shuffled and introduced the game. “We play dealer’s choice—“
Wait, what?
“—so we’ll start with Cincinnati hi/low.”
Oh shit.
I thought poker meant no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em! I started playing in 2003 like the rest of America. Chris Moneymaker was a more recognizable name to me than Johnny Moss.
was raking in $100k a year in online poker rooms. I’d watched hundred of hours of Hold ‘Em on TV and played as long myself. Poker meant Hold ‘Em — Texas Hold ‘Em “The Cadillac of Poker” — didn’t it?Somewhere in the back of my mind I acknowledged the existence of other types of poker, but I forgot to check the back of my mind before I jumped in. I had assumed. Oh well. It was only an apple, right?
As it turned out, I lucked into a friendly game. No cheating. No hustling. No mop handles or shanks. Just passing the time. Texas Domestic turned out to be a pretty nice guy. I told him I only knew Hold ‘Em, so hand after hand he taught me a new game. He played Deuce-to-Seven, Stud, Draw and Hi/Lo variations, two-, four- and five-card pockets, double community rows, and wild cards thrown in at will. Every city with a Pony Express stop had stamped its name on a game. He then threw in games that I can best classify as poker-ish. Pineapple Twist, 357, “Follow the Bitch,” Elevator, Tic-Tac-Toe.
An hour passed and Texas Domestic knocked everyone out.
Except me.
Three hours later I crapped out on a battery of games that included wilds, bonus cards and kill cards (i.e. in 357, threes are wild, fives give you an extra card and if you flip over a seven you automatically lose). I killed an afternoon and learned two-dozen new games. More importantly, I had fun and went down fighting.
“Thanks for playing, Missouri,” Texas Domestic said. He crunched into my apple and through the mouthful added, “We’ll have to get a game together tomorrow.”
That evening my routine changed. The pod’s shot callers told me to decide what we watched on TV. Two O.G.s offered me popcorn and a “shot” of coffee (enough instant coffee for one mug — the premium prison commodity). My new nickname, Missouri, rounded the room before dinner. The pod invited Missouri to work out, asked Missouri to join a Bible study, solicited Missouri to play spades with the guys who stayed up all night.
I realized how deep my roots reached when the tiny Mexican on the metal shelf above mine invited me to cook. An inmate is a loner, a temporary guest, until he finds a group with which to cook. He might endure a place for years eating his fill from the institution’s trays, but until he throws some rice and hot sauce into another man’s pile of beans and corn chips, he can never say he baked a prison tamale, and he will always remain alone inside those bars.
El chicito artista de escapar was an interesting bag of contradictions. The little guy boasted a huge personality. He loved his gambling addiction. He’d spend days meticulously pulling one thread at a time out from a handkerchief using the needle he had managed to smuggle in until he crafted a beautiful tapestry of a heart with DEATH written inside. He was his own tattoo artist, a dozen of them in prison, all professional quality, but the toughness of his gang signs were lost beneath the heroically rendered Mighty Mouse on his chest. His teardrop tattoo danced between his smile and playful winks as he told me of his escapes and of the snitch who got him caught again. His adorable, comic accent made his next words hard to decipher: “I killed that motherfucker.” Still with the smile.
Later, as I listened to cards shuffle and longed for a day when I could sleep with all the lights out, I tried to decode the change in my winning style. Was it because I played all those unfamiliar games without backing down? Could it be that simple? Texas Domestic knew the games better than anyone, which hinted that he’d done a lot of time, and the rest of us played him fearfully. But he only beat me on games that required no skill, and I didn’t remember folding once.
They respected me now. I could use this knowledge to beat him, but suddenly my mind stopped clicking. When my reckoning shifted to Emma Watson’s face, I knew I’d have to figure it all out in the morning.
With 4 a.m. breakfast calls and aches from snoozing on sheets of steel, mornings in prison made me hyperaware of things like vitamin deficiency and how I’ll never meet Emma Watson. These things on the mind, I ate an orange first thing the next morning and used one envelope to write an ex-girlfriend and another one to buy a shot of coffee. I thought it might drown my loneliness.
So when that day’s game came around, I was broke. No fruit. No stamps. I think it’s easier to mismanage a bankroll when it’s also a player’s only source of Vitamin C.
“You playing with us today, Homie?” asked The Pimp.
“Nah, I don’t have anything to buy in with.”
“Man I got you! You’re good at those weird-ass games. Whatever you make, I get half.”
Of course. Of course he had me. Why is it that friends stake each other all the time but when the friend is an actual pimp, you feel dirty?
It was nice to be able to play that day, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how set I was. For some reason, I stood out as a dominant player – after only one game. If he paid my way and I won, I’d make two days worth of buy-ins. But there’s no reason he wouldn’t want to keep paying if I performed well. So now I’d have a stash to buy other things — coffee, deodorant, other buy-ins. Or I could feast on oranges and write a lot of letters — all because I seemed skilled at games of pure luck and at least competitive at games of skill.
I was set.
Smuggling up to the final table of Wednesday’s tournament, I was down one apple, but my pimp was down a lot. Something told me that would be my last chance to prove he’d made a good investment.
Texas Domestic’s chips – old playing cards ripped in quarters — spilled over onto my side of the table. A commanding lead. Escapito, The Pimp and I were about even. I stopped playing games with too many wilds, but even in Hold ‘Em or Omaha my edge was only nominal. These guys always called. My whole betting strategy crumbled.
But I grasped at hope. The Pimp played the weird games. The Pimp liked to go all-in. The Pimp drew dead when Texas Domestic caught three Queens in Follow The Bitch (Queens are wild).
Escapito showed off. He’d dance around and mutter prayers in Spanish before folding at the last second, and only because “cards didn’t feel lucky.” More than once he lost on a simple game by calling my bets all the way to the showdown and turning up ten-high. When that happened, Escapito groaned and smiled and cursed and winked and shoved me his money.
He faked it. He didn’t understand the rules — any of them. Escapito wanted to gamble. I realized this too late to put it into play. Escapito’s stack disappeared.
A crowd gathered for the final two. My poker nemesis had me covered six times over. And he wanted to play 357.
I could no longer fold to weird-ass games. In heads-up it’d look like cowardice. Plus, it’d be boring. “I’m all in.”
The crowd liked it, especially when he called.
His first card was a seven. Instant kill. “Man I hate that game,” he said.
My deal. We’d play… 357.
The crowd loved it.
“I’m all in,” I said again.
Call. This was my chance.
Another seven.
I quadrupled up in two hands and our stacks looked even. A few hands later a string of lucky wilds and no kill cards crowned me champion. That night my number got called. I’d pack up and move out to another joint in the morning. I paid off my pimp and handed the rest of my fruit and envelopes out for free. Five days prior I had stayed to myself but by the end of that stint I received handshakes and genuine well wishes. Missouri. The poker champ.
“Are you nervous?”
Nah. I already know all the games.