Discussions With the Russians

After six months in Moscow, teaching post-Soviet situation comedy, I’ve finally put Russia in the rearview mirror, and not to put too fine a point on it, not a moment too soon. There’s nothing wrong with Russia — I love the place — but man, their winters are long, and I’m glad to be back in Los Angeles, the land of sunshine, blue skies, and Fatburger. There are, however, a few things I’ll miss, one of which is Le Poker Club, a small but well-appointed cardroom situated — because the universe loves me — not 200 yards from my apartment in downtown Moscow.

I was intimidated when I first discovered the club, and who wouldn’t be? Russians have a reputation as fierce, wild gamblers. Chips were denominated at a value of 30 rubles per chip, so in order to know how much I was playing for, I had to make the confusing conversion from chip value to rubles, and then rubles to dollars. And, of course, everyone spoke Russian, a language only slightly less incomprehensible than Klingon. Plus, they all knew each other, and no one knew me. And everyone smoked, which can be quite distracting if you are not used to and/or loathe it. All of these factors contribute to stack the deck against the out-of-towner. Does this mean I didn’t play in the club? Hell, no. I knew I was giving away all kinds of edge, but I was in Moscow, a long way from home and a long way from a game with more favorable conditions. In circumstances like these, it’s a no-brainer: As anyone who has been in a similar situation will attest, a bad poker game is better than no game at all.

So, I got over my intimidation and got into the game. Soon, I was feeling more comfortable, and soon — within days — I had made the club my home. I started making some interesting discoveries, about both myself and my foes, and I’d to share a few with you.

Ivan the (not so) Terrible: My first major breakthrough came in realizing that Russian players, at least these Russian players, were not nearly as fierce as their reputation portends. Most of my foes were relatively new to the game, having discovered it in the past couple of years via the usual route of TV poker and Internet play. Their grasp of the game was innocent of such basic concepts as position play and denying one’s opponent the right price to draw. I’m not saying they were bad — some were naturally gifted and few were afraid to gamble — they’re just still growing in the game, that’s all. They were truly amazed, the young ones at least, to learn that I’d been playing poker in cardrooms for a quarter of a century. To put that in context, 25 years ago, Russia was still the Soviet Union, and poker wasn’t remotely legal.

Discussions With the Russians: The level of English penetration is far lower in Russia than in any of the dozens of countries in which I’ve worked. Yet, many of the players had a smattering of English (and I had half a smattering of Russian), plus it turned out that most of their table terms were borrowed from our language. The Russian word for “raise” is “raise,” and the Russian word for “call” is “call.” In that sense, I was soon talking Russian like a rock star, saying, “Ya bank!” when I wanted to make a pot-size bet, or, “Ya pass,” when I wanted to fold. While we were never really able to exchange complex strategic ideas, we did manage to communicate sufficiently well. For example, when a clueless slackjaw drew to a three-outer against me and got there, it didn’t matter what I said or how I said it; the language of the bad beat is universal.

I Missed My Bafflegab: My verbal wit is a strength of my game, a tool I routinely use to amuse, confuse, or confound, gain information, shape image, and basically lull everyone into a false sense of stupidity. At first I felt lost without it, and had to default back to an image of dour silence. But silence just doesn’t sit well with me. So, I worked hard to improve the situation. (Did I learn Russian? See above comment regarding Klingon.) I found ways to sell my playfulness nonverbally, and used what little Russian I knew creatively. For instance, I gave myself several nicknames, including Johnny Pravda (Johnny Truth), Papa Krutiy (Daddy Cool), and Gospodin Udacha (Mr. Lucky). I used these interchangeably as the situation required. Soon, I had a clubwide reputation — based on my image, not on my play — as a wild, playful, unpredictable force. Mike Caro, the “Godfather of Image,” would have been proud.

I Didn’t Miss Theirs: When you can’t understand a word anyone is saying, you can really tune everyone out and concentrate on your poker. I think I thought more deeply and clearly about my play than I normally do in an American game, where I’m constantly — at least unconsciously — distracted by the conversations going on around me. What’s more, denied comprehensible verbal information, I became much more aware of nonverbal clues. My foes’ tells were more apparent and more reliable than usual, although this also may have been due to the Russians not yet being very good at plugging that particular information leak. In any case, my “Russian language iPod” came to serve me well.

Showering Off the Smoke: I first started playing cardroom poker in California in the 1980s, before smoking was banned in public places. I remember — and not particularly fondly — coming home from local clubs feeling like I’d been swimming in a smokequarium. Now that most (all?) U.S. cardrooms are smoke-free, I can go a long time without experiencing that particular sense memory. There’s no shortage of it in Russia, though. Apparently, the whole smoking-is-bad-for-you thing has yet to catch on. It will eventually; it may be that Le Poker Club will be smoke-free when next I darken its door. On this trip, though, the ritual post-game cleansing became a staple of my routine. Yet, I didn’t mind putting up with the smoke, just like I didn’t mind putting up with the language I didn’t understand, the currency I couldn’t quite cope with, the jokes I didn’t get, all of it. Why? Don’t you know? Because even a bad game is better than no game at all.

John Vorhaus is the author of the Killer Poker book series and the new poker novel Under the Gun, in bookstores now. He resides in cyberspace at vorza.com, and blogs the world from somnifer.typepad.com. John Vorhaus’ photo: Gerard Brewer.