Eram checked his phone for the five hundredth time that day. No text, no missed calls. It was highly vexing that Gehna hadn’t tried to get in touch with him even once. He had, during the lunch break, texted her a picture of his chip stack with a stylish retro filter. She hadn’t responded.

If she ever does reply, I can apologize then. It’s really difficult to do it cold, just like that, out of thin air. I wonder if she’s thinking of me.

Eram lifted the edge of his hole cards and saw a suited seven and eight of diamonds. It was a hand with lots of equity in a cash game, not so much playing out of position in a tournament. He folded, leaning back in his chair to have a look around the floor.

The excited general chatter of voices from earlier in the day had been replaced by the sound of chips being riffled. Playing with poker chips could be even more addictive than playing poker itself. Sometimes you made a chip walk across your knuckles or—like Le Chiffre in the remake of Casino Royale—rolled one repeatedly back and over a handful of chips with your thumb, but mostly you riffled.

Cut out a tower of chips. Divide it in two. Riffle one with your thumb, index and middle fingers, while pushing the second in with the ring and pinkie. Riffle, push. Riffle, push. It became automatic after a while and everyone at the tables, whether they were playing a hand or not, did it.

There were fewer tables in the room now, and more space, as players were eliminated. As soon as empty seats started appearing at a majority of the tables, the tournament director consolidated the existing players into new tables. This had the added advantage of mixing up the strong and weak players to keep the field fair.

It was almost 6 p.m. when the director announced that the final hand of Day 1 would be dealt. Eram yawned. It had been a long day. All he wanted was a shower and bed. He started restacking his chips in towers of equal denomination, for ease of bagging, and resolved to fold the hand no matter what cards he picked up.

He was dealt an ace-king of hearts.

Eram didn’t believe in poker gods, but he did believe that if you didn’t play your premium hands to the best of your ability, the game would punish you with future bad beats or cold decks. A suited ace-king was a great hand, the kind of hand tournament players with short stacks immediately moved all-in with. So, when the action rolled around to him, Eram raised it a textbook four times and hoped the fish wouldn’t bite.

Almost everyone at the table folded quickly, preserving their chips for a fresh start on Day 2. But this guy in the big blind, the shortest stack at the table, thought about it. He was a chunky boy, wearing a T-shirt with ‘SEXY BEAST’ printed on it that he kept pulling away from his chest every thirty seconds or so.