The devil made me do it the first time, and after that I did it on my own. -Robert Fulghum
[This is a work of poker fiction set ten thousand hands in the future. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.]
Ivan Jakes (aka Ivan the Terrible) was the poster child for poker's lost generation, the not-ready-for-prime-time players who came of age after the suicide bombing of Las Vegas' Crystal's Poker Room had devastated poker's elite ranks. Their lewd, rude, and crude poker table behavior earned them another nickname-Poker's Bad Ass Boys.
While many were simply obnoxious, it was Ivan Jakes who stood out from the rest with his infamous swearing-and-shouting poker table temper tantrums that had more than once seen him ejected, kicking-and-screaming, from the poker room.
While the mainstream poker press scorned Jakes as a disgrace to the game, PokerWeek called him The Toxic Tournament Player, and gossipy tabloids like PokerPeople named him Hold'em's Hunkiest Hoodlum. Jakes soon began running with the young and fast Hollywood crowd, which is how he met America's good girl, Mona Arizona.
Unlike other TV teen pop idols turned Hollywood starlets who had preceded her, Mona Arizona, former star of Dizeny's Good Girl, had no intention of following in their out-of-control celebrity footsteps. Rumor had it that America's good girl, having refused the attentions of both in-out-of rehab rock stars and old-enough-to-be-her-father millionaires, was saving herself for Mr. Right.
Killing time while waiting for Mr. Right, Mona Arizona watched endless hours of televised poker. Coming of age in the lost generation era, she was a big fan of poker's bad ass boys, especially Ivan Jakes. They met at Hollywood's Trashy Trophy Awards and soon after they were the darlings of the celebrity rags. "Hold'em Tight, Mona!" advised Girly Gossip Magazine. Only Mona couldn't hold Jakes tight and their highly publicized on-again-off-again relationship, chronicled in all its excess by the paparazzi, ended a year later in Las Vegas with a 911 call which began, "I just strangled the good girl," and went on with a full explanation as to why she deserved to be strangled.
"Poker's Bad Ass Boy Murders America's Good Girl" shouted the headlines. Jakes' high priced defense lawyer shouted back, "My client is innocent!"
"How the hell can you say I'm innocent?" Jakes asked. "I've already confessed to her murder.
In response his lawyer explained the Twinkie defense.
Hostess Twinkies, golden sponge cake with creamy filling, were central to the successful defense against double murder charges of Dan White who, after shooting both San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in cold blood, and then, just like Jakes, confessing to the crime, got away with both murders.
"White's lawyers successfully argued to the jury that an out-of-control junk food addiction had caused him to go into an altered state of 'diminished capacity' in which he couldn't tell right from wrong."
"I didn't eat any Twinkies before I killed her," said Jakes.
"No. But you did play three days of no-limit hold 'em before you killed her and tournament poker is a high stress game that could drive anyone into an altered state of 'diminished capacity' in which they couldn't tell right from wrong."
"So what you're saying is that 'Poker is to blame?'"
"Exactly. On the night Mona Arizona died, you were suffering from a very bad case of PTSS."
"PTSS? What's that?"
"Poker Traumatic Stress Syndrome."
(To be continued in the next issue of Poker Player)
