Tales from the tables

At the far back wall of the Barceló Bávaro Casino, past the roulette and blackjack tables and rows of slot machines, is where patrons of the Barceló Bávaro Palace Deluxe in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic—spring break destination for hundreds of Midwestern families and East Coast college students, including me—can play poker at two adjacent, eight-seat poker tables roped off with faux-velvet rope from the rest of the casino.

I’m not an idiot. The games of chance at all casinos are deliberately and dependably designed so that the house wins with a razor-thin majority of bets in the long run. Otherwise, casinos wouldn’t be profitable. It’s a losing game for the gambler. Even when the blackjack or craps player makes the “best” possible decision for each hand or roll of the dice, they’re losers in the long haul.

But poker is a bit different. You’re not playing against the house, you’re playing against the other players. The casino makes money taking a nominal percentage of each pot for itself. With enough skill—enough savvy in drawing players into hands you’ll win and bluffing them out of hands you won’t—a poker player can turn a profit.

So poker was the only casino game that interested me during spring break this year. TV broadcasts of poker games that started popping up on ESPN early in the Oughts helped facilitate our generation’s interest in a type of poker called Texas hold ‘em. During middle and high school, my friends and I would get together on weekends and play with all of the seriousness and pizazz we saw on TV. The game has its own particular parlance that invests fun technical meanings to words like “flop,” “river,” “draw,” and “pocket rockets” (not what you think, sicko).

I’ve been doing this for long enough, I thought. I’ve played in casinos before. I could handle one in the DR.

By the last night of the trip I had netted about $50 when I sat down for one last round before leaving. The lone open seat was next to the only other American playing, a gregarious mid-20s man trying to small talk the other players and dealer, none of whom spoke English that well.

Between one hand, I decided to prod him and chat him up. We swapped stories: He was from Idaho, a wind-turbine-component salesman who assured me he was a “tree hugger.” Born and raised in Idaho, he was an ’05 graduate of a small school in the northern part of the state. When the next hand was dealt, I wished him luck.

“I’d say the same, but you go to Columbia. You don’t need luck,” he said. He joked that I might be using tricks out of “21” until I reminded him that that movie was about card counting in blackjack. Those kids from the movie were math types. I said a psychology major might fare better in poker.

Good cards weren’t coming my way, and I wanted to play conservatively because, well, I had had a few Presidentes during the day. Better to be cautious.

But my chip pile was a bit low about an hour in, so I finally decided to make a move. Readers who don’t understand/care about Texas-hold-’em poker can skip this next part. (Here comes some of that poker jargon.) On the flop, I had the top pair (10s) on deck, so I made a bet that only the Idahoan called. The river was a king—bad, because if he had a king in his hand, he had me beat—but I bet again to scare him a bit. I noticed him hesitate for a second before calling again. I had him, I thought.

What I hadn’t noticed, once a six was dealt as the final card, was that there were three spades on the board. Anyone who had two more spades in their hand had a flush. And of course, that’s exactly what the Idahoan had. Beaten on the last card. In poker parlance, it’s called a “bad beat.”

My spring break winnings completely erased (and then some), I left the table, but not before the Idahoan assured me that as an Ivy grad, I’ll have plenty more opportunities in the future.

I’m not an idiot. But I was dumb (and tipsy) and he was lucky.

Dino Grandoni is a Columbia College senior majoring in Economics-Political Science. He is a former Spectator head copy editor. The Lowest Common Dino-minator runs alternate Fridays.