Old-School POKER

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FROM THE OUTSIDE, Chula Vista’s Village Club card room sits in ostensible stillness. Exhilarated wagers, a cacophony of chirping chips and heaps of greenbacks are all neatly hidden from public scrutiny behind a façade of small-business banality.

 We’re in the Manhattan Bar, across the street. As the tequila begins to set in, I realize randomness and chaos are thick as smoke in the turgid air. In front of me is George Ziegler, an on-again, off-again poker- playing savant who’s zoned out to some faraway world of reason, numbers and concrete logic. Still deep in his own realm, he takes a final belt off a double Margarita rocks. He’s coming off the full stride of a coursing mind flow—a deep meditation on probability, chance and the unholy collision of statistics with that blind and sometimes merciless hand of Lady Luck.

The 47-year-old hasn’t been in the Village Club in months. Like everything else in his life, poker comes in streaks. Until last year, he’d been making his living at Texas Hold ’Em, playing the $8-$16 tables full time. According to his statistics—and an MBA from D.C.’s George Mason University says there’s no reason to doubt them—he was making $22 every hour, untaxed, which he says put his real income closer to $33 an hour. But in the capricious light of randomness and chaos, that wasn’t enough to justify 50 hours a week.

“When I talk about randomness . . . you have what’s called a positive expectancy,” Ziegler says. “However, there’s no certainty whatsoever —and you’re actually risking capital to play. Versus, if I just go do marketing, I’m not risking anything . . . I’m no longer willing to subject myself to the whimsical hand of fortune.”

Behind us, a light tap and the gentle sound of an eight ball falling is followed by another round of invective from an irate biker. The outburst offends Ziegler’s more refined sensibilities. Just a year ago, he says, that dissonance would have grated on his nerves—but now, through another self-improvement book, he’s learned to classify and filter unhelpful stimuli.

Dressed casually in a red button- down and black slacks, he’s carrying reading material: a frayed Anthony Robbins book and a yellow notepad. The bar matron materializes with another round of drinks. The artificial light of the place plays off her rouged and wizened face below a neonblue halo. She’s shy, with an angelic smile and the creamy white exposure of a snug navel just above hip-hugging jeans. Then my thoughts cross the street and swirl around the Village Club.

THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA says in the Gambling Control Act that “the longstanding public policy of this state disfavors the business of gambling,” that it “categorically prohibits certain forms of gambling, [and] nothing herein shall be construed, in any manner, to reflect a legislative intent to relax those prohibitions.” It goes on to say “public trust . . . requires that comprehensive measures be enacted to ensure that gambling is free from criminal and corruptive elements,” and “gambling can become addictive and is not an activity to be promoted or legitimized as entertainment for children and families,” with the reminder that “unregulated gambling enterprises are inimical to the public health, safety, welfare and good order.

The act—authored by then-senator and current California Attorney General Bill Lockyer—created the Gambling Control Commission in 1998, to ease the regulatory burden on the state’s Department of Justice, the entity that had overseen gambling in California for more than a century. Ana Carr, the commission’s spokesperson, says there are 94 legal card rooms in California. Every level of those establishments, from food servers to dealers, is strictly licensed by the state. Local municipalities like Chula Vista add their own set of regulations—and taxes (other area gaming rooms, the Palomar Club and the Lucky Lady on El Cajon Boulevard, and Ocean’s Eleven in Oceanside, are sanctioned by local ordinances). The state may not come across as gaming friendly, but there’s no denying it’s got its hands dug deeply into the coffers of the gambling industry.

I race through odds, percentages and all that money—legitimate and otherwise—as Ziegler’s mind continues spinning off tangentially, chasing a different course with every new thought. I begin closing in on the subtle relationship between brilliance and insanity when a throaty voice in the corner breaks my concentration.

“The nigger’s back,” it says in acerbic deadpan.

Before I can turn to see the mutterer of the epithet, a bobbing pool cue catches my attention. A $100 custom stick is strung to the back of a 4-foot midget. He’s black as night and bearing paramilitary combat boots. He heads straight for the onearmed king of the table. It’s all business; there’s little talk between them. Two minutes later, the man with one arm splits the tension of the night with the sound of a sledgehammer break.

 Ziegler is oblivious to the epic battle. He’s fallen deep into another mind flow, contemplating randomness, chaos and entropy. “In the long run, I’m a big favorite to win,” he says. “But then the real critical question becomes ‘How long does it take to reach the long run?’ Ten hours, 60 hours, 100 hours? I’m not as patient as I used to be in my early 30s, when I was willing to take some losses in order to walk out with my wins. Actually, it’s expected that you’ll lose . . . you know you’re gonna lose sometimes. Matter of fact, it’s important that you do lose, ’cause if you never lost it would mean they never win, and if they never won there wouldn’t be a game.

“Being able to look at it philosophically, and tell yourself that, isn’t always easy to do when there’s $300 or $400 out there and the other person—who is extremely unlikely to win—gets extremely lucky and wins instead of you. That’s what I mean when I talk about randomness.

“First of all, I don’t have the patience to play eight hours anymore, like I used to. If I play eight hours, I’m seeing enough cards where I’m much more likely to ‘reach the long run’ than if I only go play an hour. Because on any given hand—even hands I should win—the odds that I will win . . . my edge just isn’t that great.

It’s just the accumulation of all the small edges that made me a huge favorite, given enough time. I could play completely correctly and according to all the odds and using my understanding of psychology and everything else—and be playing against complete idiots who don’t understand anything—and still lose.”

Ziegler loses me again in a spiel about the concurrence of standard deviation and Lady Luck. I zone out—as the dwarf licks the onearmed man a second time—and I think of a conversation with a highly placed special agent in the Drug Enforcement Agency. He speaks of Ramon Arellano- Felix—the enforcer for the Tijuana Cartel, one of the most mercenary figures in the history of the Mexican narcotics world. Arellano-Felix and a policeman gunned each other down in front of a Sinaloa pharmacy in 2002.

“It was a situation he’d seen probably a thousand times before,” the agent says. “Luck just wasn’t with him that day.

One of the most dreaded men in Mexico, the erstwhile enforcer took a bullet to the left side of the head— and at least two highly versed agents believe it was that fateful action that made possible the ensuing demise of the cartel’s infrastructure. A newspaper picture of pathological Ramon, laid out on a Mazatlán street—paces away from the slain policeman—dances through my mind as we pass into the obscure world of the Village Club.

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