Tom Grimsby skipped from Brighton's Grand View Casino to the cab rank with a big grin on his face. He had just won over four hundred pounds. His keys, attached to lucky smiley face key-ring as given to him by his grandma, jangled as he picked up pace.

"Hold up," one of the other players shouted after him. Grimsby turned and saw that the voice belonged to one of the night's baddest beats, a forty year old, bettor on anything, named Eddie 'All In' Brady. Grimsby was half his age. He guessed that Brady might be sore about losing to a youngster. This big built gambling man, or maybe it was just the puffer jacket he was wearing, was fast advancing towards him. Grimsby panicked for a moment that he was going to be murdered right there and then over a game of cards, but the 'Hold up' was friendly - "I mean 'Hang on a second, I'd like a word with you' - not 'This is a hold up, gimme the cash you've just won off me'."

For a man who had just dropped a ton, Brady appeared in jovial spirits. He reached inside his puffer jacket and offered Grimsby one of his cigars.

Grimsby declined.

"No thanks, I don't smoke".

"A poker player who doesn't smoke!," Brady scoffed. Then, as an afterthought, he added, "Fair play to you. Live long and prosper."

Grimsby looked healthier than Brady. He was all fresh and clean cut, whereas Brady was grizzly with stubble, with wild long hair that he had not bothered to do anything with.

"Wondered if you might wish to carry on playing and increase the size of that wedge you've won there," Brady continued, lighting up one of his cigars himself, "I know of a game going on not far from here. Lots of sucker players."

Worse suckers than you?, Tom Grimsby was smugly thinking.

"Yeah sure, I'm up for it," he decided in a flash, figuring he would use just half of tonight's winnings as his stake.

And soon they were in a cab and on their way to Johnny the Rake's, the early summer's night still young, England's south coast scrolling past them out of the left windows...

so begins b's novel

UNDER THE GUN :

poker highs and lows

 

out now

from www.amazon.com

www.amazon.co.uk

www.barnesandnoble.com

and other global online outlets

also from www.lulu.com/underthegun

(another book i recommend from lulu is ben mack's 'poker without cards', not a poker novel but a consciousness thriller / series of conversations between a psychiatrist and a guy changing his world view via bill hicks, robert anton wilson, buckminster fuller, etc - that one not by me)