In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.—Andy Warhol.
[This is a work of poker fiction set ten thousand hands in the future. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.]
Joe Coogan was the world’s most famous poker player for fifteen minutes.
This is the story of Coogan’s bluff. It began with a telegram.
The telegram, an invitation to play in the 1970 World’s Most Serious Poker Tournament—the first-ever ten-player, $10,000 buy-in, winner-take-all, no-limit hold’em game—was sent by Billy Buttons owner of Freemont Street’s Rabbit’s Foot Casino. Other telegrams had already been sent to America’s nine top poker players. The last telegram went out to a virtually unknown poker player named Joe Coogan.
Joe Coogan had lived for years on the periphery of professional poker, eking out a very meager living playing poker for pesos on the Matamoros-Juárez-Tijuana cantina circuit. Yet, on the first day of the WMSPT there was Joe Coogan surprising everyone, behind $10,000 in tournament chips, trying his luck.
And luck was with him. On the very first hand he doubled-up and re-doubled shortly thereafter. Those two early-stage all-in wins, and a whole day of big-stack bluffs, were enough to send Coogan, into heads-up confrontation late that night against some pushover chess player who was trying his luck at the poker table.
Only Cyrus Eisenberg was no pushover. Having defeated Bobby Fischer at the ’65 World Chess Championship, and finding no one else worthy to play, Eisenberg turned his intellect to poker.
The cards were dealt and Joe Coogan’s fifteen minutes of poker fame began.
Coogan, a handful of chips off the lead, peeled an unsuited 7-2 off the felt and decided to bluff off Eisenberg, “Raise ... $25,000.”
Eisenberg called.
The flop was 7-3-3.
Holding two pair and with the low kicker Coogan bet, “$50,000.”
“Raise,” says Eisenberg, “$100,000.”
Coogan now put Eisenberg on a big pair, A-A or K-K, and knew the smart play was to fold. “Call.”
The turn was a deuce.
Coogan has paired his deuce, which was no help whatsoever. The only way he could win was to make Eisenberg fold. “I’m all-in.”
Eisenberg sat silently. Minutes ticked by. Coogan leaned over and said, “Tell you what, give me one of your $1,000 tournament chips and I’ll show you one of my hole cards. Either one, your choice.”
“You’re serious?” asks Eisenberg.
“$1,000 chip gets you a look-see at either of my cards.”
Billy Buttons is called in “Can I,” asks Eisenberg, “buy a look at one of his cards?”
Buttons walks over to Coogan and whispers in his ear. Coogan’s reply is a nod and Buttons says, “Play the hand.”
“Alright,” says Eisenberg, tossing over a $1,000 chip and pointing at one of Coogans’s hole cards, “That one.”
Coogan flips over the deuce.
He knew what everyone, including Eisenberg, must be thinking: Coogan, to be willing to show either hole card, must have a pair of deuces for deuces full of sevens.
Had Eisenberg picked the seven they all would have thought he held a pair of them for sevens full of deuces. This, Coogan thinks, will go down as the greatest bluff ever.
“Call,” says Eisenberg, flipping over K-K.
Coogan is left with one $1,000 tournament chip, not even enough to pay the next blind. The hand goes down in poker history as the “Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff.” Coogan, having used up his fifteen minutes of fame, goes back to playing for pesos.
(To be continued ... )
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