The River Casino is a regular, bleak existence on the outside, especially in the middle of the day. In the shining sun, traffic is abysmal and customers are sparse. Nothing about the establishment screams fun. There are no neon signs, flashing signs, or expensive light fountains about. I’m honestly disappointed. It’s too quiet for a place where dreams are supposed to be made. I would wait for the day to surrender and the night to foster to see the bugs coming out of their homes to scavenge some money. But I don’t have the time for that.  

I have personally never been inside a casino before, never needed to. It was less an issue of age and more of need. When you can go to the bank to ask the cashier to give you ten thousand dollars in small bills you don’t need to look for luck in places like these. You make your own luck.

Walking through the door, a lobby with a red carpet welcomes me. Various flowerpots stand neatly abreast the walls, followed by a bunch of empty benches for people to wait. The directional sign hanging from the ceiling says to go right for the restaurant, buffet, and bar, left for the events stage, and straight for the casino.

The door to the casino is open, but the door guard stops me. He looks at me closely and then asks for my Id. He doesn’t judge or challenge me. I guess he doesn’t care who I am as long as I’m eighteen or above. I show him my Id and he lets me enter the premises.

I go through and finally find myself in a place that resembles the casinos from the movies. It’s a dimly lit hall with rows upon rows of flashing slot machines everywhere. There are so many machines here that I can barely see the other side of the room.

There aren’t many people here. Mostly old guys and gals with too much retirement funds and time on their hands. I sparsely hear the sound of jingling ringing from time to time, but no jingling of coins. I guess, the players aren’t so lucky today.

I do feel the urge to push the lever at least once and watch the slots roll numbers and shapes. If only I could charm the machines too. Then I would ask a machine for a jackpot and I would be a rich man.

Shaking my head, I look around for Mr. Davis. I know he’s a poker player, but despair has a way of pushing people down dark and narrow paths. Slot machines are a pure gamble and it's poor gable at that, with no chance of winning against the house.

I‘m glad I don’t see him here. I would have been disappointed then.

Passing through I end up at the baccarat tables. Past which is the roulette wheel that has a few hopeful middle-aged people waiting around it for the wheel to stop turning. I bet there must be over fifty tables here. I only know the games of blackjack, craps, and roulette though. The rest of the games are beyond me. There is a bar to the side, so people can get drunk and lose money at the same time. It’s very thoughtful of the casino owners.

It’s a vibrant and lively place, unlike what it looks on the outside. A low metallic copper ceiling and a regal golden green carpet dons the place. The tables also have distinct red chairs. Dusky yellow light shines from above even though it's only midday still. And I can’t even see my shadow. It’s ridiculous how much thought the creators put into this place to make it as comfortable as possible. The smiling people playing the games can vouch for that. There are indeed some dismayed people with despair looming about them, but they are a drop in the ocean of feeling floating here.

I still don’t see Mr. Davis anywhere and go find him in the poker rooms.

The poker rooms are at the back of the casino. It’s a dingy more quiet sort of place than the rest of the casino. Cut off from the lights and the drama of slots and the table games. The lights are dim, the tables are green, the chairs are dark and the mood is gray. Well, mostly.

There are many tables here, though only three of them are occupied. Twenty-five people plus the three dealers and I can see Mr. Davis sitting with his back hunched and head in his hands. There is a pile of chips in front of him. It’s the smallest pile on the table. The exact amount is difficult to tell but he is probably not winning or winning as fast as he believes he can.

One of the three tables is high-spirited and five of the nine players are chatting and laughing. Looking at them the game does seem fun, but looking at Mr. Davis's table you can see how gambling can suck the life out of you.

Now, how should I go about this? How should I make Mr. Davis hate gambling enough? So that when I suggest him to stop gambling, he doesn’t act like an addict going through withdrawal, ready to hurt anyone who tries to stop him.

Suddenly, the player one seat left of Mr. Davis looks over his shoulder toward the staff standing on the side. He raises a hand and calls the lady. The two have a short but meaningful conversation. The waitress notes down his order and then she leaves, passing me by on her way out. She returns a few minutes later with a serving tray, carrying a blue cocktail and a plate of tortillas or something. It had to be a cocktail because there was an umbrella on the glass. Alcohol and gambling together, are perfect.

She walks toward me, her hair swinging behind her head like a hypnotic pendulum. I look at her and the drink in her hand. I smile blossoms n my face. A plan forms in my head.

“Hey, I want you to do something for me,” I tell the waitress once she gets into talking distance. She looks at me with an accommodating gaze. The badge on her shirt reads Irene. She’s a beautiful lady and it’s a fitting name. I don’t like the makeup though. It jealously covers her facial features as if afraid someone might recognize the real her.

“Do you see that guy, Irene?” I point at Mr. Davis. She nods. “Drop the drink on him. And make it seem like an accident.” I command her.

I only have to tell her what I want. She will work out the details herself. Had I left out the accident part though, she would have picked up the drink and dropped it on Mr. Davis’s head without a flutter in her heartbeat. That’s how it is.

I know Irene might have to face some consequences for dropping the drink on a customer, but I don’t see any other way to make Mr. Davis leave the table for a while. So I can talk to the other players at the table. I’m going to make them enact a coup against my friend. I guess, I’ll tell the manager to go easy on Irene or something. That’ll be easy to do.

“Okay,” Irene says and walks away.

I watch with interest as she makes her way through the tables toward the player who ordered the drink. She picks up the drink on her last step and accidentally steps on one of the star-shaped legs of the base of the player’s chair. She loses balance and falls forward. The drink flies out of the glass in her hand, and showers upon Mr. Davis's head, drenching him in cold alcohol. Irene falls into the customer’s arms and the tray falls on the table, splattering the tortillas all over it.  

A commotion arises. The players are not happy. The manager hurries forward to handle the situation. The game stops.

Mr. Davis sits in the chair without moving as if he is shocked. Irene hurriedly jumps out of the man’s arms and apologizes to him and to the other players at the table before leaning over to clean the mess she has created. The customer doesn’t seem to care about his dropped order. He’s enthusiastically asking Irene about her well-being, but his hands are being dishonest. A few of the older gentlemen at the other tables are either standing up or raising their heads to see the fun. They say the older you get the less you care about others; it’s obliviously the opposite.

The poker room manager hurries to handle the situation. He glares at Irene for a passing second but doesn’t demolishes her in front of the players. Simply orders her to bring another order for the customer, helping her out of the bind. He also moves the game to a different table and tells the dealer to forsake the rake for the next five hands as compensation. He then calls a male staff member to help Mr. Davis clean up, who denies the help.

I guess he has had enough internal disputes over the game for today and wants to call it a day. That’s too bad though. I should have known this would happen since he is already on the edge of despair and heartbreak. I guess I will have to step up and act in person. I don’t like to do this but what choice do I have?

I set out of my hiding place and head towards the table. One of the staff members stops me on the way.

“Yes?” He questions.
“Ignore me,” I tell him without stopping and he stops paying attention to me.
“Who are you?” The manager also asks. I tell him the same and get the desirable treatment in return.
“Everyone!” I shout when I reach the occupied tables and ask them to ignore my presence too while they are playing the game. That’s all it that takes for me to deal with one-half of the problem.

The reason I’m reluctant to do things this way is that there is a limit on the number of commands I can force upon a person. The number decreases steeply with the number of people I’m controlling and the duration of the command.

If I have to command everyone present to act a certain way then I can only overlay two commands to everyone at best. Thankfully, I only need to control the few people at Mr. Davis’s table. Which makes things easier.

“Mr. Davis, agree to the manager's recommendation and go change into a new outfit.”

“I would like to get a change of outfit.” Mr. Davis tells the manager. “But what will happen to my chips?” He asks in concern, more worried about the money than himself.

“Don’t worry about them, sir. The dealer will take care of them until you return.” The manager reports.

“That’s good.” Mr. Davis nods in relief. “They are all I have left, you see.”

The manager sends one of the staff members to accompany Mr. Davis. Then arranges for someone to clean the floor and the table Irene messed up.

I wait for them to leave then turn to the players at Mr. Davis’s table.

“I want you all to collude,” I tell them. “And give Mr. Davis, the person who just left with the staff member, the worst nightmare of his life. I want him to lose all his chips and his dignity. I want you all to make fun of him when he losses. Make him pray to god that he wins. I want him to win and lose. I want him to go through so many highs and lows that he starts crying. I want him to hate gambling with his life. You can take all of his money, but leave him with one last chip. So he can keep it as a souvenir and never forget the night. Is that clear?”

“Sure,” Says the players and the dealer.

Mr. Davis soon returns to the table. What he goes through there on after is nothing short of mental torture.

At first, Mr. Davis wins many small and big pots. He bets into the hand and the players around him keep folding at the turn and river. He loses some small pots, but the hand he wins earns him close to two thousand dollars every time.

I don’t understand the game well so I tell the manager to send Irene over to explain the rules to me. She’s happy to help. She tells me they are playing 10-25 no-limit Texas Holdem. Meaning, that once the blinds are placed, the minimum bet anyone can place at one turn is twenty-five dollars. I applaud Mr. Davis for his courage. Twenty-five dollars is not a small amount of money to give away every hand. But she tells me if you are not in the blinds, which are the first two positions after the button (a real button that is passed along to the next player every turn) then you can fold the cards pre-flop (the turn before the dealer deals community cards on the table). The turns are called pre-flop, flop, turn, and the river. The players can bet every turn if they want to put more money in the pot, check if they want to take a gamble or fold the cards if they don’t want to post any more money into the pot and get out of the hand at any turn.

One hour later, Mr. Davis is floating on the moon. He has tripled his money to roundabout fifteen thousand dollars. He’s laughing and talking. I have heard him say plenty of times that he’s going to make money today, but little does he knows that his high time is coming to an end.

His nightmare starts with a hand where he receives a suited AQ of diamonds.

According to Irene, in a game of poker, AQ in the suit is the fifth-best starting hand after AA, KK, QQ, and AK in the suit.
AQ is a hand that demands a re-raise Pre-flop, which opens the betting in the turn and forces people to read and decide whether they want to put even more money into the pot to continue with the hand or fold and get out of it.

Mr. Davis happily re-raises a bet of 100$ from an opponent on his left to 350$. By the time the pre-flop action ends, the pot has already inflated to an amount of 2000$. Even worse, six out of the nine players called the bet. Now AQ might be the fifth-best starting card, but its value goes down with each player that comes along for the ride. According to Irene, any hand, even the best-starting hand AA, performs best against one or two players calling pre-flop.

I’m actually surprised there are so many things to pay attention to in a game of poker. Then again, everyone would be a winner otherwise.

The flop comes out KJ8 with two diamonds, and a spade, giving Mr. Davis a chance of completing either a royal flush, a flush or a straight draw on the turn and the river, and he has an over card plus that. That means even though the cards in his hand haven’t connected to the board, his odds are good enough for him to continue with the hand.

That he does.

When the UTG opponent, which means under the gun, the first player to act every hand, bets 750$ on the flop, Mr. Davis follows without any trouble or second thought. The rest of the players fold their hands, but the player on the button, the last position to act in a hand, calls.

Now the pot has swelled to an exaggerated 4250$.

The turn comes a ‘3 of clubs’. The board doesn’t change. Mr. Davis still hasn’t connected anything. He only has a high card ‘A’ and there is only one more community card left to be dealt on the table.  

The UTG player bets 1000$ this time. Mr. Davis thinks about it for some time. He’s sweating now. Even I can see that he wasn’t to fold. The players start mocking him, not verbally, but with gestures, snickers, and snorts. Then the player calls the clock on him, forcing him to make a decision between the next thirty seconds.

Mr. Davis calls. Now he has sent a little over two thousand dollars into a pot of 6250$ with nothing but hopes and dreams.

“No wonder he’s lost so much in just a few months,” Irene says.

He’s nervous and sweating. His lips are moving, praying to god for a miracle… That never comes.

The river is a ‘5 of spades’. The board bricks. Now the best hand Mr. Davis can make is ‘AKQ85’ and even the smallest of pairs, even a pocket 22, which is called the ducks by the way, can win against him.

He has hit nothing. When his opponent goes all in on the river, asking Mr. River to risk another 1500$, he reluctantly folds his hand.
Mr. Davis throws his cards into the muck, the pile of discarded cards. It is a bad draw. He understands. But then his opponent asks him if he wants to look at his cards.

Mr. Davis visibly shakes. He knows what’s coming and it’s not good.

He doesn’t want to see his opponent's cards, but his head nods away in a daze anyway. The opponent rolls over an off-suit 27. The guy in the pink shirt had nothing! Absolutely nothing!

The other players see the cards and laughter erupts at the table. The hand is over and now they can discuss it. That they do. The player left of Mr. Davis pats his back, but he’s laughing out the hardest.

“I knew what he had when he re-raised me.” The winner says sarcastically. “I could have won this hand blindfolded.”
“Yea, he’s no poker player.” Says another. “He’s a fish. Which is good for us in ‘it? That means more money for us.”
“Have you heard he’s lost over forty thousand dollars in the past few months?”
“Really? That’s good. I’ll thank him later for giving me money to enjoy a night with a hooker.”

Mr. Davis’s face burns with anger. He doesn’t erupt in anger. He calls the waitress over and orders a drink. I tell her to make it as watery as possible. I don’t want him to lose the money under the influence. He wouldn’t remember anything that way and the plan will fail.

After that hand every hand that Mr. Davis plays, he either folds good hands pre-flop or calls with bad hands after the other players provoke him. To make matters worse, the players hound him in groups of two or three every hand.  Plenty of times, he folds the winning hand and other times calls with the losing ones. Every time his opponents win with a garbage hand, they show it to him-

-bringing another bout of laughter to the table.

After four hours of absolute mental torture, Mr. Davis has only one ten-dollar chip left in front of him. His hair is disheveled, his shirt is wrinkled, and his hands are trembling. The players have made sure that Mr. Davis never forgets this day in his life.

He has cried and hit himself, shout at the player, and been mocked so badly that he now sits faltered in the chair, shocked and dazed.

Another hand starts. The dealer deals with the cards. Mr. Davis doesn’t pick up. He stays listless on the chair with his head in his hands. I let out a sigh. It’s time to end his nightmare. I tell the manager to end the game and he does it happily.

The players start leaving. They don’t forget to add insult to Mr. Davis’s injury by demeaning him further on the way out. One person asks him when to call him when he’s at the casino. That he’ll miss his son’s birthday to play with him. Another adds him to a chat group named free money and tells him to let them know when he’s playing next. He says he has never played such an easy game before and would like to earn a little more free money from him.

Unable to take the insults any longer, Mr. Davis stands up and punches the player. When the staff tries to keep him around, he takes off from the table and runs out of the room.

I tell the manager to ban Mr. Davis from the casino for a lifetime and follow after him.

He rushes into the washroom. Where he looks at his reflection in the mirror and cries bitterly. I have never seen a man cry like that. I feel bad for him. I apologize in my heart but I don’t back down since there is only one last thing left for me to do.

Mr. Davis washes his face and stares at himself in the mirror. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I stand beside him and whisper, “You hate gambling. You hate poker even more. You will never gamble again.”

I then follow the defeated Mr. Davis to his home. It’s not fun to see a man walking toward his home with a crouched back, his legs trembling, and no trace of hope or excitement about him. I watch him talk to Mrs. Davis at the door, who hugs him in response. He promises her that he will never gamble again which makes her cry even harder. I watch them until they enter the house then I return home.

I am not tired, but my head hurt. Lying on the sofa, I suddenly remember all the people I have hurt before. I wonder if I have done the right thing this time. I find no answer in the depth of my guilty heart no matter how I look. So I turn off the lights and go to sleep on the sofa. I can’t get myself to sleep in the comfort of my bed, not after completely destroying a man from the inside, even though I have done it to save his family.