Check or raise?: The house always wins

Fortunes are made and lost, as poker fever takes over in Pakistan.

“Can’t read my, can’t read my, No he can’t read my poker face”

Lady Gaga’s hit single is very much on my mind as I enter the game room of this upscale club in Karachi.  The aroma of fish and chips is in the air and the general silence is only broken by the rustling of cards and clinking of poker chips. Seated around a circular green table are nine fairly affluent looking men, judging purely by their clothes and expensive watches. Their eyes are fixed on the cards they hold, their secrets carefully concealed behind their ‘poker face’ expressions. Occasionally, you will hear someone swear as they lose or let out a cry of glee upon winning. As the stakes rise, so does the noise.

Poker — a card game played between two or more people with money at stake — has always been considered gambling, but the game’s loyal fan base is fervently pushing for it to be accorded the respect of a sport. The International Federation of Poker, which was founded in 2009 in Switzerland, has been promoting poker as a ‘mind sport.’ Then there’s the World Series of Poker, a series of televised poker tournaments held annually in Las Vegas. In fact, Pakistani-American Poker pro Hasan Habib has been a regular fixture at this event, netting around $5,100,000 as of 2010.

No one’s really sure where poker originated, with some claiming it started in Louisiana and then spread to the Mississipi riverboats. Here in Pakistan it was initially probably started by people returning from the US, and then had its ‘cool’ aura enhanced by movies like Matt Damon’s Rounders, the George Clooney starrer Ocean’s Eleven and, of course, Casino Royale. Credit also has to go to Facebook, with its online ‘Texas hold’em Poker’ game. Even if you haven’t played it, you would most likely know of it from the countless invitations to play from your Facebook friends.

As the game’s popularity grew, Pakistani poker fans began converging in private residences and, for larger events, rented houses to battle it out across a table. The trend started in Karachi some six years back, but now poker has its adherents across the country.

“We were the first ones to start poker tournaments in this area,” claims a well known poker dealer operating in Defence and Clifton, areas that are home to the highest-stake games in the city. “It was at the same time when the clubs starting holding games as well.”

And so, among the well-heeled gamblers of Pakistan, flash or teen patti is no longer fashionable. Flash, in case you don’t know, is a traditional game of cards that is played with a deck of three, where you simply bet and reveal who got the highest-ranking hand. It’s mostly just luck of the draw and deep pockets that win you this game.

In poker, on the other hand, success doesn’t just come from the cards but also from the timely bluff which can even help you win against a person with a better hand.  That is why avid poker players will swear by the superiority of the game over other card-based gambling games.

“Poker is more civilised,” says one player. “Flash is only luck!” asserts another, adding that “Poker is a game of mind, speed, technique and, well, luck too.”

At the time when poker was introduced in Karachi, the stakes (the amount needed to buy poker chips before you begin to play) ranged from Rs500 to Rs1,000, but like all things money can buy, inflation has added a significant zero to the cost of stakes, raising it to around Rs5,000 to Rs10,000. Private poker gatherings, at residences or rented houses for instance, have low stakes, but you don’t get a club’s class or environment.

For his part Jaffer*, a Poker enthusiast, finds private gatherings a little too gritty for his tastes.  “Clubs are sophisticated and my favourite is the Golf Club,” he says. “You meet decent people, the game is clean, plus you can order food and drinks and the house pays. Private places can get dirty. You get plenty of drugs and booze, and they are even ready to call girls on request. So the choice of place really depends on your mood and how much dough you got in your pocket.”

Of course, not all clubs are created equal. In contrast with the upscale club mentioned earlier, a sports bar located near Shireen Jinnah Colony (which shut down early this year after running into losses) was a lot less classy. Walking in, you are immediately hit by its gritty atmosphere. The air is heavy with the smell of hash and stale smoke, and expletives are routinely exchanged between hardened players who hardly so much as wince at the verbal blitz going on around them.

Strangely enough, a lot of the poker players I encountered were either jobless or with no regular income, and found playing poker an easy means of making money. A few were even hooked on drugs, and poker enabled them to buy these without having to turn to their parents for money. In fact, many got into drugs because of poker. “When you are in stress after losing a bundle of cash, the most tempting thing is a rolled up joint or a line of cocaine,” says a regular player. “It is the best way to relax and it numbs you enough to forget everything. There is plenty available at private game houses.” It‘s like killing two birds with one stone: game houses make additional money from the sales of drugs and the drugs lure players into gambling more recklessly.

But why gamble away your money in the first place when, even if there is a chance of winning, there is an equal or greater probability of losing? “When you shuffle the deck and the first cards are aces, you think everything is working out fine but the reality is a tad different,” says Shahal Khoso, a regular poker player. “If you get good cards in round one, you tend to get confident. You raise the stakes. But in the next round, you end up with bad cards and your luck takes you down.”

The metaphor used by another player is quite fitting, as he explains his fixation with the game, “Playing Poker is just like smoking cigarettes; you try it once and you are addicted. You never really figure out why you tried it in the first place.”  But unlike smoking a cigarette, a habit that is taken up by both genders in some quarters of our society, you will hardly see women gambling, whether in private game rooms or at clubs.

In fact, when I went to game rooms for interviews and field research for this article, all eyes would turn towards me, as if I were an alien who invaded their home ground. When I shared my concern with one of the dealers, the reply was one which you will expect perhaps from ninety per cent of Pakistani men. “We belong to a Muslim society. Our women are not allowed to indulge in such activities. They are our pride and they should stay at home where they belong,” he said. Funny coming from someone who organises poker games, because the last time I checked poker was gambling and gambling is forbidden in Islam.

For dealers and houses that arrange poker games, it is a great way of making money. Without any substantial investment, you arrange for a room and gather some people, and you are good to go. The returns are phenomenal, for you can get a ten per cent rake (commission) per hand by simply dealing hands and sitting back.

“Even the smaller organisers make three to four lakh rupees per year by holding poker games at home,” says the dealer. And if you are holding a big tournament, he says, you can make as much as Rs50,000 to Rs100,000 in a single day. This explains how clubs can afford to offer free food and drinks, I think to myself.

Of course, there is always the danger of police raids, since gambling is after all illegal in Pakistan. But then, an organiser makes enough money to bribe his way out of trouble. When poker first began in a Block 4 Clifton apartment, the constant arrival and departure of men at odd timings raised suspicions, and a police party raided the place.

“Around 15 to 16 guys were arrested but were later released after the police were paid around 3-and-a half lakh rupees,” the dealer says.

Thus, with stakes so high, it’s perhaps inevitable that some players have to turn to crime to make good their debts. “People have kidnapped their own siblings for ransom and then killed them when it came to resolving gambling debts,” says a police officer. “There was a very heartbreaking case in which a father gave away his own little daughter in place of cash he owed to someone for gambling.”

And if these are not reasons enough to shun gambling, there are ample cases of people who have sacrificed their lives and relationships at the poker table.

A former poker player confided in me, “I tried to commit suicide because there was no way I could have paid or played off my debts. I started getting threats. The more I lost, the more I played on credit (private places let player buy chips on credit, often at exorbitant interest rates) in the hope of winning and recovering. In the end, I had to flee the country and stayed away for months.”

“One of the reasons my marriage failed was because of my husband’s gambling,” says a divorced housewife. “There were days when we would have a Land Cruiser parked outside, and days when all we would have was an old Corolla. Gambling then made him an alcoholic when he could not control his depression over losing money and thus he ended up losing his job and leaving his family.”

The possibility of making a quick buck, coupled with the glamour and adrenaline of this game, makes poker irresistible for a growing number of people. It’s not as if every person who picks up a deck of cards ends up becoming an inveterate gambler, but for anyone growing addicted to the clink of chips and the rustle of cards, Shahal Khoso has a warning. “Gambling leads to lying, deception and, well, break-ups too,” he says. “After all, Juwa kisi ka na Huwa,” he says.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, December 16^th, 2012.

Like Express Tribune Magazine on Facebook and follow at @ETribuneMag