"God doesn't play dice."

-- Albert Einstein

Texas hold 'em is a simple but popular poker game in which the dealer has an incredible advantage and the deal rotates after every hand. Every player at the table is dealt two cards down -- hole cards -- and then there's a round of betting. The first two rounds are low, meaning on a $3/$6 table in the first two betting rounds you can only bet in increments of $3, and in the last two rounds in increments of $6. After the first round of betting, three cards are laid in the middle of the table. This is called the flop. The three cards belong to everybody. Then another card is dealt, called the turn. Then a fifth, the river. Between the two cards in your hand and the five on the table, the winner is the one who can make up the best five-card hand -- unless everybody else folds, in which case the winner is the last one standing. Everything is determined by how well you play your cards in the hole. In his book "Hold 'Em Poker," David Sklansky, a world-class player, says you should never play hole cards worse than a king-9 unsuited (belonging to different suits).

One of the ways you can recognize a sucker is by what they win with. For a player to win he has to show his cards. If a player wins with a 7 and a 2 you know you've got a sucker, because while any cards can win sometimes, nobody should pay an ante with a 7 and a 2.

On my second day I beat a player named Morenos with two pair to his two kings. He starts referring to me in the chat rooms as an ass. I don't respond to his criticism but I don't go online to get abused. Asleep at night I dream I am at court with my queen, my jack, 10 servants and my grandfather. We're all wearing velvet shirts with hearts across the stomach. We are ready for anything.

I pull $600 in my first three days in 10 hours of play and find myself hooked.

On the third evening I am out with my closest friends, two couples very much in love. We have a few drinks and then go for pizza where we order a bottle of wine. Everybody decides to go back to Ben's house and play board games: Boggle, Trivial Pursuit. I say I am going to go home and write a student recommendation. Wendy keeps asking if everything is OK. She says I seem fuzzy. I say, c'mon, I'm the only single one here. Online aces are floating across the landscape of my mind. My friends beg and cajole and rib but my mind is set, I have things to do. I lose $150 standing in front of my iMac, hardly trying in my dulled, drunken state, the moonlight slashing across my walls. The same rules apply: Don't drink and play poker, anywhere, anytime.

Day 4

"Nobody is always a winner, and anybody who says he is, is either a liar or doesn't play poker."

-- Amarillo Slim

I wake up on my fourth day, a Saturday. There's a message on my machine from a girl I used to like but who hadn't returned my calls. Now she wants to hook up. I don't feel fresh; in fact, I have a little bit of a headache. I have a plane to catch at noon for a reading in Los Angeles. I was supposed to leave last night but missed my flight. I log on in my socks to check out the action. Major Tom is sitting alone in the $3/$6 room. We spar mano a mano and I find him an easy hustle. I bluff him out for a quick $30. We are soon joined by more players, including SeeMePlayBad sitting in the sexy blond's chair. It takes me $200 to realize that SeeMe is a ringer, a serious poker player. I scope the online lobby. Early Saturday morning all the $5/$10 rooms are empty. So my theory that the best players stick to the $5/$10 rooms doesn't wash. Our little $3/$6 room was the only action going, and I was up against a pro. Frustrated again, again I log off, my winnings down from $600 to $250.

This wasn't how it was supposed to go. If I don't win $1,000 then I can't write my article. Worse, I may not be as good a poker player as I like to believe myself to be. If I can't win $1,000 then online gambling is nothing but a dirty con, and I am a fly caught in its net.

I duck into the $10/$20 room. Two early-morning high rollers are betting back and forth, with the pots reaching upward of $100. Mark W. from Sydney has $4,000 in his account. TPF has only $200. I am down to $250 (I have withdrawn my original $500 stake). I like the action. The low player is running scared. I take the seat immediately to the left of the high roller so I have him in position. (Rule of note for aspiring online gamblers: Sit to the left of the best player at the table. You have an advantage over whom you follow -- it's why the dealer is at the best seat on the table: The dealer follows everybody.) Twenty minutes later I have cleaned TPF out with a full house, 2's over aces, to trump the three-ace hand she had bet the farm on. These things happen. I am back up $600.

Who is TPF, I wonder, clicking offline. And what am I doing in the high-roller room? That's against my own rules. Rules in poker, like in writing, like in life, stand to be broken like Buddhist statues in the Afghan countryside. I wonder if TPF is struggling to support a couple of kids, living in a trailer with a 14.4k AOL connection. Does TPF have the money to lose? I doubt it. And all the while, the casino, online like any other, silently pulls its 5 percent rake. That is, the casino pulls $1 out of every $20 clicked into the pot.

On the way to the airport I close the car door on my pinky finger.

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