Indian Hold'em

Those who know me know that I travel far and wide in pursuit of whatever professional oddities wash up on my beach. Probably not too many other poker columnists out there have also run the writing staff of the Russian version of Married…with Children or breathed life into a cartoon dinosaur in Brazil (or, for that matter, written six novels, all of which you should go buy and read at once). Not long ago, my travels took me to the heart of the Punjab region of India, and the regional hub of Shamipur, a lively enough town if you know where to go on a Saturday night. Fortunately, I did, and so found myself playing a version of Texas hold’em that I’d never seen before, or even imagined. It’s called Indian hold’em, and I will share it with you now.

In Indian hold’em, as in regular hold’em, you’re dealt two cards, but you can’t look at them. Instead, you must hold them up to your forehead, above your eyes, so that everyone can see them but you. In this way, of course, you know everyone’s holding except your own. The player to the left of the dealer bets, and from that point, the game plays exactly like any other hold’em game ,with betting on the flop, turn and river, and then a very interesting showdown, where you discover not whether you’ve accurately judged your opponents’ strength (since you know it), but rather, through their bets, actions, and reactions, correctly deduced your own. And trust me, it’s very hard to assess your hand strength when you’re surrounded by a practiced group of Indian poker liars who know the game inside out and spew bafflegab as naturally as you and I breathe.

Far more than in regular hold’em, Indian hold’em is all about the bluff. The best players have the will and ability to muscle foes off their hands by putting doubt in their enemies’ minds. Why would he bet so strong if I had something? If I were strong, wouldn’t he just fold? (Or however those thoughts sound in Punjabi.) And see, this is where the game gets fun, because the fool across the table might have pocket aces, but he doesn’t know that. If you bet into him, and you have even a medium-strength hand, he could easily believe he has 7-2. When you can make pocket aces lay down in Indian hold’em…yeah, as they say in Shamipur, Sanu kheda nu khedana ise hai! — “That’s why we play the game!”

Now, I want to put this in context for you. These were not wealthy people, these Indian hold’em players. They had working class jobs and held on as best they could in an economy where 10,000 rupees (about a hundred and fifty bucks) could make the difference between “a good month” and disaster. Yet there on the poker table were notes with more zeroes on them than I had ever seen on a bill in my life. As the night drew on, they moved past money and started writing redemption chits for all their possessions: cell phones, farm animals, even a couple of Tata Nanos, the almost-disposable car they sell over there with no radio, no air conditioning, and comfortable seating for four small marmots. Serious money changed hands, plus chattel, real estate, perhaps even a child or spouse. Lives were changed, plans derailed, and fates determined, all on the strength of two cards you couldn’t see, and on your ability to convince the fool across the table that his piece of crap was worse than yours.

How did I do in the game? Well, let’s see. I was in a strange poker room on the other side of the world (jet-lagged; did I mention I was jet-lagged?) playing a version of poker I’d never played before, in a language I don’t speak, with rules I didn’t understand, and a currency that looked like Monopoly money to me. I didn’t have any business even being in the game, but that hadn’t ever stopped me in Moscow or Sao Paolo (or Bucharest, Berlin or Managua), and it wasn’t going to stop me here.

I crushed it.

Of course.

I won a stack of bills that barely fit in my suitcase, plus a Bolex (counterfeit Rolex) watch, a moped, half a KFC franchise, and a pair of breeding Beetal goats — doe-eyed and flop-eared; true beauties, but how am I ever going to get them home? I felt guilty about crushing the game so badly — I mean, these are poor people — until they told me that they were still playing with money dumped into the game by a noted American poker pro who left muttering, “If it weren’t for luck, I would never lose at Indian hold’em.”

I didn’t stay in Shamipur long; upon departing, I told my Punjabi poker buddies (hey Gurleen, Gurneet, Gurnoor and Gurpreet!) that their game was similar to one I played as a kid, coincidentally (albeit politically incorrectly) called Indian poker. In that game, though, you just held one card to your forehead (like the feather in a Native American headdress, I suppose) and made one bet on whose one card was best. I complimented my new pals on taking the game to the next level. It reminded me of a time when I took the kids’ card game of “War” and turned it into an awesomely challenging game of betting and binge drinking called “Hold’em War.”

Now that I think of it, I may even have written about “Hold’em War” for this very magazine. You should go to the archives and check. You don’t have to check every issue, though; only the ones that, like this one, fall on or near April First. ♠

John Vorhaus is author of the Killer Poker series and co-author of Decide to Play Great Poker, plus many mystery novels including World Series of Murder, available exclusively on Kindle. He tweets for no apparent reason @TrueFactBarFact and secretly controls the world from johnvorhaus.com.