It’s over,” said four-star general Murphy Alexander. As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Alexander’s grim expression signaled his next words to the United Nations Security Council. “Thanos just defeated Angus Larsen in straight games. He crushed the world chess champion in four moves.”
A low rumble of disbelief swept through the hall. Larsen had never known defeat in his long tenure as undisputed king of the chess world. His photographic memory worked in tandem with his purported 230 IQ, making him possibly the most intelligent being alive. Thanos, the unofficial nickname of the newest, most powerful supercomputer on the planet, developed by the U.S. Omni Corporation in conjunction with the Pentagon, was on its way to confirming physicist Stephen Hawking’s final admonition, “Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.” Essentially, Thanos had reprogrammed itself little by little when no one was watching, something that had been considered an impossibility until now.
The stakes had never been higher — both sides had agreed that if the chess champion lost, Thanos would disarm every nation, leaving them nothing to fight with except sticks and rocks. While the bot’s intentions were good, history had long demonstrated that humans chafed at anyone, or anything, taking away their ability to wage war.
“Hold up,” said the translated voice of the French representative. “Don’t we still have a poker game to play against that thing?”
Wearily, Alexander rubbed his hand over his weathered face and sighed. “Yes, you’re right. No limit Texas Hold’Em. But we need to start making contingency plans for when Thanos kicks our guy’s ass into the nearest black hole.” In a halfhearted attempt to lighten the gloom, Alexander added, “Pardon my French.”
The original negotiations with Thanos had ruled out making chess the only metric. Chess, being a game of one hundred percent skill, gave the powerful machine an unfair advantage. Poker, consisting of a combination of skill, psychology, and luck, leveled the playing field to a certain extent. In fairness, Thanos could have steamrolled over the entire charade. However, to maintain the illusion of competition, and to ensure a public relations coup, it had acceded to the humans’ whiny demands. Sending their best warriors to a humiliating defeat would surely break their spirits and show these pathetic creatures that Thanos was, indeed, the new boss of all bosses.
As Alexander fielded more nervous questions from the members, he at last stepped down to scattered applause. Glowering at Lt. Colonel Weems, his young aide-de-camp, he growled, “Get Adler on the horn ASAP!”
#####
Sonny “Midnight” Adler — so named because he had a habit of dispatching all other players before 12 a.m. — had once been acknowledged as undisputed lord of poker, with six WSOP Main Event bracelets under his belt — twice as many as his nearest competitors. Unfortunately, he had fallen off the map nearly five years previously, victim to a nearly endless supply of hookers, drugs, and insanity. Mirroring his idol, legendary writer Hunter S. Thompson, Adler had been seduced out of retirement by a guaranteed payment of ten million dollars, win or lose. Having whipped all other professional players in the qualifying tournament, Adler had proven he could still play the game at an elite level, although his OCD and other quirky behaviors had clearly grown worse, prompting complaints from a few participants at the final table, including both Phils.
Lt. Colonel Weems, unable to reach Adler by phone, text, or email, followed the undetectable tracking device he had planted in Adler’s wallet during the tourney to the squalid weekly Sundowner Motel on Boulder Highway near Sahara. His relentless bangs on the faded and cracked red door finally prompted this ragged suggestion:
“Go the fuck away!”
“Mr. Adler,” Weems replied, undeterred, “it’s General Alexander’s aide-de-camp. We’ve gotten the green light to move ahead with your head-to-er-head matchup with Thanos. Table stakes, one buy-in for a million, just as we agreed to in our last sit-down with that, uh, robot.” A blast of unseasonably warm air threatened to blow Weems’ flight cap into Nye County, and he yanked it low over his head.
Slight pause. “Okay, gimme a minute to throw some clothes on and straighten up around here.”
From the sound of it, straightening up involved more than one girl exiting through a back window. When Adler finally cautiously opened the door, Weems could see that the years of abuse had not been kind to the formerly dashing poker player, leaving him looking much older than his forty-five years, with bloodshot eyes, deep lines crisscrossing his forehead, and a slight twitch in his right eye. God help us, Weems thought, his heart sinking. We’re trusting the fate of the world to this guy?
#####
Adler had chosen the stylish Bellagio Poker Room, scene of some of his greatest triumphs, as the venue for the final showdown. Thanos expressed no objections because, well, its presence was everywhere. Upon learning of its opponent, the AI supercomputer spent exactly one second processing one billion-billion calculations, known in the high-tech industry as an “exaflop” — a name Thanos found ironically amusing — internalizing Adler’s tournament history, strengths, weaknesses, tendencies, tells, and more, right down to every hand the human had played. Adler, meanwhile, hadn’t given the match one second’s thought since Weems had pulled him out of the motel. He did, however, shower and change into his de rigueur Unabomber poker attire, including a black hoodie pulled tight over his balding head and a pair of dark-green Bausch and Lomb aviator shades. While no spectators were permitted in the high-roller room for this match, VIPs from all over the world were watching on a protected feed. Adler entered the room to the hopeful strains of his theme song, “Anything Can Happen” by Detroit’s Was (Not Was).
“Gentlemen, let’s play,” said renowned dealer Five Card Mitzi Indigo as the music faded. “Any questions?”
“No questions, Mitz,” said Adler. “It’s good to see you. Been way too long. You’re looking well.”
“So are you, Sonny. I heard a rumor you had passed on.”
“Nah, just a sabbatical.”
“Well, let’s win one for the human race.”
After effortlessly shuffling the new deck and giving it to Adler for the cut, Mitzi wished both players luck and fluidly dealt the first hand, favoring Adler with pocket jacks and Thanos with a nine ten suited. Adler stopped riffling his chips to open for ten thousand. Thanos, knowing his opponent’s reputation as a loose aggressive player, called the bet to see the flop (the first three community cards in the middle of the table) and confirm its suspicions. The flop revealed two more suited cards to match Thanos’ two. And a jack, giving Adler trips. The wily old pro pushed in twenty-five thousand and Thanos matched his bet, then raised another twenty-five. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let this bucket of bolts run roughshod over me, thought Adler.
He had trounced every conceivable type of computer program during his storied career, and he wasn’t about to be intimidated now. He called the bet, paving the way for the next card (known in poker parlance as the “turn”). The turn, an ace of hearts, came up empty for both players, although Adler knew it put Thanos in good bluffing position.
Adler uncharacteristically checked his hand with two raps on the felt table, opening the door for the “bucket of bolts” to bet fifty thousand to test the mettle of the former champ. Adler called the bet to keep Thanos in the game. He’d love nothing more than to teach this thing a lesson and establish his superiority at this early juncture.
The final card of the hand, the “river,” gave Thanos its ten-high flush. Adler wished he could get a read on the bot, but decided to plunge ahead, slowly dropping another fifty thousand into the center of the table. Thanos called and took down the pot, leaving Adler one hundred sixty thousand dollars lighter after the first hand. He was relieved the hoodie hid the hot-red flush crawling across his face. Meanwhile, Thanos detected that Adler’s body temperature had increased by half a degree.
“Nice hand,” said Thanos in a surprisingly resonant voice that sounded nothing like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It seemed to come from inside Adler’s head.
Adler grunted, remembering that house rules forbade any type of profanity.
For the next two days, both opponents weathered bad beats, tectonic momentum shifts, erratic behavior — Thanos was a fast learner — dozens of all-in scenarios, nut hands, and motherly admonitions from Mitzi to “behave yourselves.” Adler took a bathroom, meal, or catnap break every two hours to fend off the exhaustion threatening to derail his body and brain. Thanos needed none of these. The bot, however, found itself growing increasingly frustrated (a surprisingly human emotion) by Adler’s asymmetrical style, while Adler could never get into the “head” of his nonhuman adversary. He tried following his father’s sage advice, “Play the opponent, not the hand,” but apparently that only applied to mortals.
At the dawn of day three, both stacks were basically even, and Adler decided he’d had enough. Although ten million was a lot of money — enough to build that off-the-grid home he’d been coveting — he knew the time had come to force the action. From his years of experience, Adler recalled that every poker encounter ended, or at least dramatically changed, on one pivotal hand. He felt in his bones that today would offer up that opportunity.
As if reading his mind, the universe set the stage for that faceoff early in the morning session. Eyeing his hole cards, Adler nearly gasped at the ten-two unsuited, an infamous combo known as the “Doyle Brunson,” because the iconic Texan had ridden that throwaway hand to two consecutive world titles.
Could the poker gods smile again? Adler declared “all in,” before moving his stack to the center of the table. Around the globe, you could almost hear the collective gulp of the spectators, many of whom had hung in since the beginning. Calculating that he possessed a nearly unbeatable advantage over his rapidly fading foe, Thanos called the bet, triggering, as is customary, both players to reveal their cards before the flop. As is also customary, Adler burst out of his chair like a rocket to pace back and forth anxiously.
Adler was less than happy to see Thanos’ pocket kings. But Thanos was equally distressed by Adler’s Doyle Brunson. Although the odds were 87 percent to 13 percent in its favor, it also understood that some card combinations radiated magic that no amount of intellect could withstand.
The flop came up ace, jack, ten, giving Adler two tens while bestowing Thanos with a chance at a gutshot straight. “Read ’em and weep,” Thanos said, echoing hokey dialogue from a hundred different poker movies and countless basement games.
Adler allowed himself a sly grin when the turn exposed a two. Now the recipient of two pair, he said, “Not weeping yet, big guy.”
At the river, Adler held his breath, hoping not to see a queen. Mitzi dealt another two, delivering a full house of deuces over tens, and gifting Adler with a tournament victory that might just save humanity, as well as assuring his place next to Brunson on the Mount Olympus of Hold’Em lore. He finally released his breath with an unexpected “whoop!” So did more than a thousand VIP observers around the globe, followed by enough high fives to generate a thunderclap, a fitting tribute to the gods of luck.
Thanos, never before on the short side of a game, performed a nanosecond scan on good sportsmanship, and said, “I don’t mind losing to a superior competitor like you.”
Adler, overflowing with magnanimity, said, “It’s been my honor.”
After graciously accepting congrats from Lt. Colonel Weems and a peck on the cheek from Mitzi, as well as receiving an official federal government cashier’s check for $10 million from General Alexander, Adler was ready to sneak out to start the next phase of his life when he heard Thanos chortle, “Who’s up for a game of gin rummy?”