Free Double Blind by Heidi Cullinan Page A

undertones the look carried, and she sighed. “Do me a favor Jansen,” she murmured. “Next time you come, skip the toke and bring me one who looks like that and plays for my team.”
     
    Randy laughed and kissed her cheek before sliding his hand up from Ethan’s butt to his lower back, leading him gently with the touch toward the back of the room. He didn’t take them all the way to Five, though, but rather held him back and to the side. Here, Ethan could see the tables and players clearly, but they could still speak to each other without disrupting the game. Keeping his voice low, Randy did his best to explain Hold ’Em.
     
    “There are a lot of different versions of poker. What you were playing on the computer was Five-Card Draw, which is probably what you’ve seen in westerns on TV. But the most fun are the community card games, like Seven-Card Stud and Omaha. This one, Texas Hold ’Em, is the most popular.”
     
    He pointed to the dealer at the nearest table. “Everyone gets two cards of their own, dealt right away. These are your ‘hole cards’. You look at them and keep the information to yourself. You might decide to fold based on what you see there alone. Or you might look at them and know you’re going to go all the way unless you get the whiff of someone with nuts. That’s a hand you know statistically cannot be beat. If you get one of those, your biggest job is to keep the information off your face. But more on that later.” He nodded to the center of the table. “Those cards laid out there in front of the dealer are called the board. They’re public cards, five in total, dealt in three waves that you will hear people call ‘streets’. The first three are dealt at once, and they’re called the flop. The fourth card is called the turn. The final card is called the river.” He glanced back at Ethan. “You taking all this in, Slick, or do you want a rewind?”
     
    Ethan was studying the table intensely, his pale eyes sharp and focused. He nodded once. “I have it. I think. Keep going.”
     
    Randy nodded back, pleased. “So here’s how the play goes: You get dealt your two cards, and then there’s a round of betting before the flop.” He pointed again at the table, to the white chip with DEALER printed on it lying before one of the players. “In a home game you’d take turns dealing. In a casino or club, there’s an assigned dealer. But since the blinds have to rotate, they put that chip out—it’s called the button—so everyone knows who the ‘dealer’ for the round is. The first two players to the left of the button are the blinds. Hold ’Em doesn’t have antes where everyone tosses a little something into the pot. Instead, it’s a double-blind system. Everybody takes turns betting blind, and two people go at a time. The first blind is the small blind, which is for slightly less money than the big blind. Those two positions have to bet no matter what, and everyone takes their turn there. After that, the players move around back to the dealer, and they call, raise, or fold. To call, you place the minimum bet for that round, which is posted at the table. We’ll be playing at a five dollar table: five early, unlimited late. You raise, though, if you think your hand is pretty good and you want to drive up the betting. The bigger the pot, the more you get. But you have to be careful how and when you raise, or you’ll drive the live ones out.”
     
    “Live ones?” Ethan whispered.
     
    Randy hadn’t realized he’d used the lingo, that one was so ingrained. “Poker shorthand for ‘a player who probably doesn’t know what he’s doing and whom you can probably beat’. Or, if you want to be really crude, a patsy. But if you’re out to make money, live ones are critical in a poker game. Always treat live ones well, because they’re probably buying your dinner. Oh, and when you win, or when you leave a table, be sure to leave a toke for the dealer.” He smiled when Ethan