Bad Bobby Sloane – tall, lean, greying at the temples, always neatly and conservatively dressed – looked more like a savings-and-loan vice-president than a gambling fool. If you’d been around him in his early twenties when he’d succumbed to the only burst of flamboyance in his life, he might have handed you one of his business cards – and there it was, right under his engraved name:
ROBERT SLOANE
Poker Player & General Gambling Fool
I will play
Any man from any land
Any amount he can count
At any game he can name
Any place, face-to-face.
Bad Bobby had started playing poker for keepsies when he was nine years old, just after the Second World War. He’d played his first game around a migrant campfire in a Georgia peach orchard. He’d bought into the game with his father’s new boots, for which one of the men gave him fifty cents. His father had died a week earlier, beaten to death in a barroom brawl. Before sunrise, Bobby had turned five dimes into sixty-seven dollars.
Almost four decades later, Bad Bobby Sloane was generally regarded as probably the best all-around cardplayer in the United States, especially in Texas Hold-’Em and, since Johnny ‘He-Horse’ Coombs had recently cashed out, perhaps the best at Five-Card Stud.
Daniel’s knock at Room 377 was answered by a hotel steward. Behind him, through the drifting smoke, Daniel saw a card game in progress. He told the steward he was looking for Mr Sloane, and after a few minutes’ wait, Bad Bobby stepped into the hall. He had flat blue eyes and large, bony hands. He was wearing a well-cut houndstooth jacket, brown slacks, a lighter brown shirt, and a black tie with a gold stickpin fashioned in the face of the Joker.
‘Glad to meet ya, Daniel,’ Bobby said in his sleepy Georgia baritone. He took a room key from his jacket and tossed it to Daniel. ‘Go on down to the room and get the clouds outa your head. I’ll be along when I get there. Whatever you need, call room service and put it on the tab.’
Daniel nodded toward the door. ‘You playing in that game in there?’
‘Yup,’ Bobby sighed, ‘and I’m stuck and bleeding. That’s why it’s likely to be a spell.’
Bad Bobby wasn’t there when Daniel went to bed, but he was there in the morning, talking on the phone, when Daniel woke up.
‘Denver by four! What happened? The Raider cornerbacks get caught stealing cars? The defensive line busted at customs? Sweet Jesus, I may be an old coondog but I still know what a bone is. Shit, give me twenty grand on the Raiders. What’s the overs? Well mark me down another five on the unders.’
Daniel heard him hang up and then begin dialing again. ‘This is Robert Sloane in 377. Could you please send up some Eggs Benedict, two crisp-fried pork chops, and a quart of fresh-squeezed orange juice.’ He saw Daniel was awake and said into the phone, ‘Just a moment, please,’ and then to Daniel, ‘You eating breakfast?’
‘Your order sounded good to me.’
Bobby doubled the order and hung up.
Daniel said, ‘Is the card game over?’
‘Broke up about a half hour ago.’
‘Did you win?’
‘I lost twenty thousand.’
Staggered as much by the amount as Bobby’s nonchalance, Daniel said, ‘That’s an awful lot of money, twenty thousand.’
‘Not if you say it fast,’ Bobby grinned. ‘Besides, you gotta remember you’re not playing for money, you’re playing for chips, and chips is just the way you keep track. The reason they make chips round is because they’re supposed to roll. And speaking of rolling, we best get our gear together. We’re leaving right after we watch the Raiders kick some Bronco ass.’
‘Where are we off to?’
‘El Paso. Promising Seven-Stud game.’
‘Am I going to play?’
‘Not for a bit. First you’ve got to learn the rules and manners, the different games and strategies, basic principles and moves. And since you’ll be playing my money till you’re good enough to win some on your own, I’ll be calling the shots. That’s the deal whenever I take someone on to teach. I call the shots until you can beat me heads-up in a gambling game, and then you’re free to do as you please. Any time you challenge me and lose, it costs you ten grand for my effort. That’s the game, Daniel, and it’s your choice. It’s also your first lesson, a bedrock gambling truth: If you don’t like the game, don’t sit down.’
‘Suppose I can’t beat you?’
‘Well, you’ll probably be so poor and frustrated and fucked up that I’ll cut you loose outa mercy, if you beg nice. That makes me out mean, but actually I’m about the easiest man in the world to get along with,’ cept for two things I can’t abide – sniveling and gloating. Don’t snivel when you lose or gloat when you win.’
‘Do you mind if I ask about your connection with AMO?’
‘No – though it’s not good card manners to press a man for information on his private life.’
‘I didn’t mean to offend you.’
‘You didn’t.’ Bobby ambled over to the TV and switched it on. ‘When I first moved up into the high-stakes games, I went bust occasionally – well, more often than not, to tell the truth – and Volta offered to back my action. Most backers naturally want a chunk of the cake, fifty-fifty being about standard, but Volta only wanted five percent a year – of the net – with me to do the accounting. Can’t hardly beat that with a stick. Plus, I agreed to take on students now and then if Volta thought they had promise. You’re only the third one. First two mighta made it, but they went crazy ’fore they got there.’
Daniel started to ask where ‘there’ was, but Bad Bobby raised a finger and pointed toward the football game. ‘We’re gonna have months to talk on the road. Right now we got twenty-five grand that says there’s no way the Broncos can whup the Raiders by more than four points and that together they don’t score over forty-two. Let’s eat breakfast and watch our money.’
The Raiders won outright in a defensive struggle, and later that afternoon Bad Bobby left town as he ususally did – ahead of where he came in.
El Paso. Houston. Dallas. New Orleans. Nashville. Omaha. Cheyenne. Denver. Reno. San Francisco. Always the best hotels, the finest restaurants, and the fastest action in town. Daniel watched as Bad Bobby played. He loved Bobby’s style, a balance of discipline and impulse, imbued with an aesthetic that fell neatly between plantation manners and swamp-rat savvy. He heard hundreds of Bad Bobby stories from players and spectators alike.
The most frequent story concerned Bobby’s youth. He was already making a good living playing cards from town to town by the time he was sixteen, but he was illiterate. So Bobby took a cut of his winnings and hired tutors to travel with him, paying them wages and expenses in exchange for teaching him reading and writing, and, later on, arithmetic, geography, and history. It took Bobby nine years to read and write at a college level. He attracted tutors who liked the thrill of an occasional wager, whether it might be on the turn of a card or how many road-killed armadillos they’d see between Lubbock and Galveston, and thus Bobby was able to complete his college education at a modest profit.
Daniel learned that Bad Bobby’s nickname had been given him by Barbwire Bill Eaton when he’d beaten Barbwire’s set of aces with a low straight in a Texas Hold-’Em game, causing the usually unflappable Barbwire to bang his head on the table and babble, ‘Goddamn, lots of players beat me, but you beat me like an ugly stepchild. Gettin’ so when I see you come through the door, I say to myself, “Fasten yr asshole, Bill, cause here comes Bad-Beats Bobby.”’ The name was soon shortened to Bad Bobby.
When the game was over and they were back on the road, alternating at the wheel of Bad Bobby’s perfectly restored ’49 Cadillac, Bobby shared his poker wisdom and general card sense with Daniel, explaining rules, odds, strategies, how to properly shuffle and deal cards, and the small niceties of etiquette, like playing quickly and in turn. Daniel learned, if only theoretically, how to play position and manage money, when to raise, call, or fold, how to quickly assess the strengths and weaknesses of other players, the best times to bluff, how to calculate pot odds, how to spot tells, and cheaters, and marks. They reviewed recent hands as Bobby explained why he’d played them that way and what he might have done in different circumstances. He constructed practice hands for Daniel, questioning him on his decisions. He illustrated the lessons with copious stories and lore picked up in forty years on the road and at the tables.