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Fragments

I Love This Game, Ch. 5

Estimated read time 118 min read

The Village – How to turn poker into craps – No room at the inn     The Village was the Other Casino – an entirely different entity. No Late Nite Tony, no Harvey Bumpback. Really, none of those guys who worked hard at poker, who treated it like the sales job they just left an hour before. Instead, the Village was exciting, packed, manic and most of […]

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Fragments

I Love This Game, Ch. 4.

Estimated read time 151 min read

Sylvester Mallis Jones, Jr. – The Private Life of a Villain – A Villain’s fears    The door on Sylvester’s giant Cadillac, a grey beast somewhere between an overdone barbecue station and an underdone tank, too new for Harvey Keitel but too old for David Beckam, hadn’t even fully been pushed open before Sylvester Mallis Jones, Jr. boomed out: “I have a problem.” Matton nodded stupidly. This […]

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Fragments

I Love This Game, Ch. 3

Estimated read time 110 min read

Matton’s financial straits – Money and conscience – Sylvester offers distraction    Not long ago, Matton Header had begun composing a list. He wasn’t sure why, at first, and in fact, he wasn’t sure how to even do it. He hadn’t used pen and paper for a while, especially after his computer had suffered a massive stroke while he tried downloading the client from a Hungarian online poker […]

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Fragments

I Love This Game, Ch. 2

Matton plays poker – Late Nite Tony complains – Harvey Bumpback explains      Matton Header, round, pale, bespectacled – a kind of tenure track albino pumpkin professor – was thinking. Pondering. Wondering. Pausing. Reflecting. Worrying. Calculating. Hesitating. In other words he was doing what poker players call tanking. Thinking. Deep in the tank. Not sure he’s coming out. Beyond the buoys. Surprising canoers. In the drowning […]

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Fragments

I Love This Game, Ch. 1

Estimated read time 299 min read

Braunfar in the garden – the family – a photograph – a girl – desire     “Smile, Braunfar!” Jaqueline dropped the sixty-four megapixel camera smartphone, the sly gift of an occupied husband, to her side.  For her daughter’s wedding, then affianced Braunfar, still under scrutiny for signs of lingering independence or other dangers in a potential husband, had suggested that the pocked-marked boy with glasses from down […]