Anime and Poetry at the Poker Table
What you actually do during a 12-hour poker session when 90% of your hands are garbage — Cowboy Bebop, reading Moby Dick, writing code. The poker room knows me as the honest guy. That's why the laptop is just a quirk.
Low stakes poker is mostly folding. You sit there for ten, twelve, sometimes fourteen hours. You fold. You fold. You fold some more. Every hand that comes is garbage and you throw it away. Ninety percent of your time at the table is waiting. Not playing. Just waiting.
So you find things to do. I've gotten used to bringing a laptop or a tablet — writing code, reading, watching stuff. That's how I read most of Moby Dick, actually: at the poker table, between hands, a few pages at a time. Same with other books. (I wrote about the book itself in a piece on Reading Moby Dick.)
Right now I'm working through Cowboy Bebop. Old anime from the late 90s. Nostalgic for me — I watched it the first time around when it came out. Good background stuff for the table. Doesn't require too much attention, but it's there. Something to drift to during the long folds.
I'm also the guy with the laptop out at Rivers who looks like he's working. Anyone who's played there long enough has seen me — writing code between hands, looking down at the screen, looking back up at the cards, back and forth. The other regulars at the table are a separate cast of characters, profiled in Saturday Night at River's.
The funny part: if anyone else had a laptop out during poker, people would worry they were cheating. Marking cards or something. That's the assumption people make when someone has electronics at the table.
But for me, people just think: oh, that's Nick. He's just working. That's his day job. He does that all the time.
I've been playing at Rivers long enough that people know me. They know I'm the most honest guy in the room. They know I work hard at my actual job. So the laptop isn't suspicious. It's just a quirk. Same as the guy who has a poker tattoo. Or the guy who always has paint on his hands and face because he's a professional painter — real guy, I don't know his name, but he's always covered in it, and that's just who he is at the table.
Everyone's got something. Mine is the laptop and the anime and the books.
Twelve hours is a long time to just sit and fold. Might as well get something done.