Page 77 of Ideal Life

She should probably tell Sam she was going to be there.

No, then he might suspect she was rewinding, since she hadn’t shown any interest in playing poker herself during the intervening years between undergrad and now. And Talia didn’t have any extra emotional bandwidth at the moment to deal with his concern about her overusing the watch. She had a company to save.

Besides, Sam’s phone will be off, she rationalized, so I couldn’t tell him even if I wanted to. By now, he’d already be in his pretournament meditative-immersion stage. Or, more likely, asleep since it was near midnight.

Speaking of which, she also needed to get some rest, to sleep off the migraine and time sickness.

Tomorrow, there would be a game to play.

Talia

At nine in the morning, Talia was seated at table 11. She had arrived at the Magnolia Grand Hotel and Conference Center in San Jose with only minutes to spare since there had been an accident on Highway 87, so she had been able to avoid Sam in the hallways.

The competition itself was held in two ballrooms. Luckily, Talia had been assigned to a different one than Sam, but when she walked into hers, she froze at the sight of how many players there were. A thousand in this ballroom, a thousand in the other. Round tables covered in green felt tops filled the space, with big numbers on them like wedding centerpieces, except without the frill or flowers. The chandeliers had been dimmed, and instead, spotlights illuminated each table, making the whole endeavor seem so much more intense.

How did she think she was going to win the tournament when she hadn’t even touched a card in years?

I’ve got a secret weapon nobody else has, she reminded herself.

For a room of that many people, though, it was shockingly quiet. Or, rather, Talia could feel the hum of silence, if that was possible, as every player got in their “zone,” their “flow,” or whatever they called their state of extreme focus.

Talia steeled herself with a few deep breaths, then stepped into the breach, weaving herself through the tables until she found hers. She had just enough time to get her chair pulled up to the table before the tournament began.

Despite worrying about not having played poker in a while, though, it turned out that watching all of Sam’s tournaments had made Talia sharp enough to get through the morning. And because this was an open competition and not an invitational, there were plenty of amateurs she could outmaneuver.

She played carefully but well during level 1.

In level 2, she gained more confidence and won big.

During level 3, though, Talia got a little cocky and lost a chunk of her chips.

“It’s okay—you’re still in it,” she told herself. She and 1,749 other people.

The tournament director announced the first break of the day. There were only twenty minutes, barely enough time to go to the restroom, wolf down a protein bar, and report to her next table. There was no opportunity to find Sam, and honestly, Talia didn’t know if she wanted to yet.

Level 4 at table 1 began well, but then things got a little sticky when the dealer revealed the final card. Talia had been betting aggressively, and now she had to decide whether to bluff or not.

Don’t be emotional. Do the math.

The probability of the remaining player having a better hand was not high.

Bluff it is. She pushed 5,000 chips into the pot and hoped it was enough to fool him.

“Nice try,” her opponent said. “Call.”

Fuck. Talia glanced at her watch.

But she shook her head at herself. She was still in the tournament—no need to cheat. Talia did wish she had her phone or Omni 3Ds, because Ideal Life Queen Elizabeth would surely have had a good suggestion for a mental reset, but of course, devices weren’t allowed in the tournament.

Okay, fine, her watch might technically be a “device,” but she hadn’t turned it in at the ballroom door with everything else, because they hadn’t asked her to. It was analog… or something.

Talia started the next round with a pair of aces. Score! As Sam would experience later today (in version nine of playing against Louise Enger), two aces were hard to beat.

Unfortunately, probability was not on Talia’s side for the rest of the cards.

She lost everything.

“What? No!”