All the talk came to an abrupt end when Tyson sat down. Up to this point I had the seven of us talking in a more or less natural tone, which was good for me. I have always loved to gather tells and other useful tidbits during easy conversation because people tended to let out their natural selves. Tyson’s arrival however stopped the conversation cold. No one wanted to be the first one to break the silence. But after a moment I steeled myself and asked him what his name was. I had to repeat the question a couple of times but I eventually got him to tell us his name. Just like that the fragile sense of camaraderie I had managed to bring to life was gone. The table sat in complete silence until William and Jonathan joined us, but with Tyson staring at everyone, all I was able to do was coax out their names.
With the table now full, the dealer prompted Tyson and Kelly for the blinds. The two immediately surrendered their blinds and the dealer began the tournament at our table. When I received my second card I lifted both corners up and glanced down to inspect my first hand. I was rewarded with a pair of aces. With that pair smiling up at me, I couldn’t help but feel like things were going to go my way. Maybe I would be able to win this thing without manipulating the cards after all, and that would certainly make Matt happy.
Chapter 8
While Jonathan contemplated his next move after Kelly’s bet, I knew he thought she was bluffing. It was too bad he hadn’t spent the last couple of hours studying the players like I had. If he had paid closer attention then he would have known that yes, she was bluffing, but I was fairly sure that his hand would lose either way. I was confident because I knew their tells. And I knew them, because I had done the work to figure them out. Sometimes I continued to play a hand that I had no business continuing, but the payments I gave to them were well spent because I gathered what I needed. That or I planted what I could use.
Now Kelly had more than a dozen different tells, some were false but a good handful were precious tools to use against her. Unfortunately for Kelly that little eye twitch of hers, as slight as it was, was a dead giveaway that she was trying to bluff her way out of the bad hand she had been fishing on. Fortunately for her that twitch was variable, and this time it had been slighter than the last time I saw it, so while she may have something to hold on to she was still trying to bluff her way out of the hole she had jumped in with Tyson
Now Tyson was the player at this table, and as such, he was the only one I had been unable to get a read on. To be fair there had been two players that I had quickly decided to ignore rather than waste precious time studying. Simone and Tiffany clearly didn’t come here to play poker; at least as far as I could tell. The pair had lacked any kind of knowledge of the game; I mean, they didn’t even know the order of the hands. Their decision to enter had troubled me at first since, just like me they had ponied up the entrance fee, but unlike me, they obviously didn’t come to play the game.
It wasn’t until after they were eliminated that I discovered their real reason for coming, as foolish as I thought it was. During the first hour everyone else at the table was able to bleed them at a good pace, so their wealth was being redistributed evenly enough. Until Tyson managed to eliminate them both at the same time. So he absorbed the reminder of their chips into his own pile. And since they each roughly had about half of their starting amount, Tyson had lucked into a staggering lead over the rest of us. A lead which was only exacerbated by the fact that he was clearly a very talented professional. But once they were eliminated the two women cheerfully got up and were escorted by one of Dempsey’s goons into the stadium seats surrounding the room. The next time I caught sight of them it looked like they were placing bets. They were placing bets, presumably on who would finish where, and no one at the table mentioned it. So I had to assume that it was standard procedure.
Of course I spent a poor hand thinking about why Dempsey would be doing something like this. I managed to figure it out before the next hand started. This was Dempsey’s control over his elite guests. From the moment I walked into this room, I felt like I was a gladiator and it turned out that I really was in a way. This whole tournament was nothing but a spectator sport for those elite few that he brought in. While a few of them would get to play with the real professionals if only for a short while; someone might even get lucky enough to take one out. But that wasn’t important, no, once their time at the tables was over they were guided from the playing arena up to the stadium where they could mingle with their own. Once there, they would be able to share their experiences with the ones who hadn’t made the cut. But they would also be able to place bets on those still in the game.
When Dempsey’s control became clear, so too did his real purpose. This wasn’t about making money; it was about social networking. Dempsey was slowly merging his business interests with society’s elite. Sure, he made a healthy profit from the entrance fees, not to mention the apparent extracurricular betting and furniture. But even if Dempsey were running this tournament at a loss he would find a way to continue doing it, if only so he could continue to influence the next generation of business leaders.
It was impressive how far out the man was willing to plan. He was running a game of his own and everyone involved was a valid piece to move. He was teaching these future leaders to trust him; to lean on him; to come to him for everything. And with that it was no wonder Dempsey’s sphere of influence was rumored to be as large as it was; he was spreading it across the United States a company at a time. Those companies wouldn’t strictly belong to him, but they would still be his, or more importantly under his influence. And the fact that the tournament only had a limited number of seats only increased its popularity. I could feel the weight of Dempsey’s cold intellect just as much as Tyson’s chip count and they were both staggering.