When I extended my hand for him to shake, he stared at it as if I were diseased. I got the hint and dropped my arm to my side.
“It’s a deal,” I agreed. “Now, let’s play.”
Dante sat in the chair beside me and shuffled the cards. “Since it’s only the two of us, we’ll have to play heads-up. I’ll deal first. As the dealer, I put up the small blind. You’ll post the big blind. Got it?”
I nodded. “Yes, but you’ll have the upper hand as the dealer.”
He dropped the deck onto the table and slid it across the felt between us. “Draw a card. Whoever has the highest will deal.”
I lifted the first card from the stack and sighed. “Three of clubs.”
He raised the Ace of Spades from the deck and smirked. Then he took our cards and reshuffled them several times. Dante found a rhythm with how he shuffled, explaining the rules of poker as he repeated some OCD type of ritual with the cards.
Man, he was weird.
This was the first time all day he looked happy and content. So I didn’t interrupt him as he went on about the rules, even though I had a basic understanding. I liked games that involved strategy and skill, so poker was right up my alley. Although, Dante had the advantage by dealing first.
Dante tapped the deck on the table. “Normally, the person to the left of the dealer would put up the small blind, and the player beside them, the big blind. The big blind is equivalent to the current minimum bet. That’s twenty thousand for this table.”
“How much do you bet?”
“The small blind is half your wager.”
I added twenty thousand dollars in chips to the center of the table, and Dante contributed ten thousand. Then he dealt each of us two cards.
He kept his cards low to the table so I couldn’t see, his expression unreadable. I had a terrible poker face and tried to hide my excitement at getting a pair of sevens.
Dante eyed up the chips in front of him and added forty-thousand dollars to the pot, raising the bet. He glanced at me. “What’s it gonna be?”
“I’ll call.”
I matched his bet, and then he dealt the three flop cards. So now we each had five cards to use—the Queen of Spades, the Ace of Hearts, and the Seven of Diamonds.
Yes!Three of a Kind!
It was impossible to tell what Dante had by his facial expressions. He wore the same mask of mystery. So I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, which only made me want to know him more.
“You can check or bet,” Dante informed me.
“I’ll check.”
Dante added more chips to the pile before flipping the Six of Hearts onto the table.
Not a card I could use.
We now had six cards to choose from to make a five-card poker hand. Another round of betting ensued, where we each added more chips to the pot. It now totaled over one hundred thousand dollars.
Dante dealt the river card, the last of the game.
A Ten of Diamonds.
I thought I noticed a slight flicker in his eyes. The closest thing I had seen to a tell since we started playing. He must have had a good hand because any form of emotion from Dante was rare.
He flipped over his cards and smirked. “Boat,” Dante commented with zero emotion in his tone. He must have noticed my confusion because he added, “I have a Full House.”
Three aces and a pair of tens.
Well, fuck me.