I woke up Tuesday with low M, emotion-wise. I wasn't concerned about my short stack, as I was strangely optimistic that I'd get a good run of cards on Day 2. Now that I'd finished a day of play, I'd come out swinging. No, I had been hit with a powerful case of the local affliction, the symptoms of which consisted of repeatedly mumbling, "What the fuck am I doing in Vegas?" until you worked yourself into a desperate froth. I think residents were immune, but tourists were particularly susceptible to this strain of existential Montezuma's Revenge.

Helen was up and at 'em on the East Coast. She direct messaged a pep talk:

Bagged and tagged! Goal! While you are sleeping this morning, I'll research the field. Today's goal: rest and recuperate. Great job.

Day 2, we'll talk about ways to double up and who to go after. You are in fine shape. You're alive!

We talked on the phone in the afternoon, a debrief on the rest of Day 1. I was still depressed by The Master of Illusion's anticlimactic exit. To play for so long, pay 10 grand, wait for the perfect hand, and then have your KK pulverized by a meteor from of the deep cold of space: AA.

"You're not going to see that hand again," Helen told me. You saw that maybe once a tournament, and now I'd gotten it out of the way. She gave me homework, Dan Harrington, natch: Reread DH Vol 1 Pt 5 (betting) p.198-213, 275-286. Vol 2 (zones) 133-155. Get ready to say, 'All in.'

Call her if I needed anything else. Hit the books (yeah, I'd brought them cross-country with me), get some food, maybe I'd feel better. At 2:34 p.m., Coach sent me a message: "Dan Harrington just busted. Moment of silence, please."

Great.

Coach's breakdown of the situation alleviated any remaining stress over my gameplay, and I was grateful. Helen was from Alabama, and her Southern accent and chipper delivery really sold it. But my Vegas melancholy deepened throughout my day off. I missed my kid. I was sick of the Rio's food. Christ, "The All-American Grill" — the flavor profiles of foreign lands had never agreed with me. I wanted to exist one single day on this miserable planet without having the thought, "I should really have the Caesar's Salad." I could have called my college roommate, Jon — he'd tried to get in on a satellite but no go — to see if he wanted to hang, but I was embroiled in a full-on wallow.

The mere fact of Vegas, its necessity, was an indictment of our normal lives. If we needed this place — to transform into high-roller or a sexy swinger, to be someone else, a winner for once — then certainly the world beyond the desert was a small and mealy place indeed. We shuffled under florescent tubes in offices, steered the shopping carts through outlet malls and organic supermarkets while consulting a succession of moronic lists, and wearily collapsed on our beds at night with visions of the Big Score shimmering in our heads. There's a leak in the attic again, the TV's out of warranty, maybe we should get a tutor for Dylan, he's a smart kid but doesn't test well, and then there was Vegas. Vegas will heal us.

I didn't want to be healed, but I knew there was something in the cards I needed. This was the assignment of a lifetime, right? It had never occurred to me that one day I'd play in the World Series of Poker. I was just a home-game scrub. But I loved them, I loved cards. I always had. The martial snap of an expertly shuffled deck, the sleek whisper of laminated paper jetting across the table. Crazy 8s and Spit and then Hearts in college. I was the Bruce Lee of Hearts, no joke; knew all the nerve clusters to paralyze your ass. I'd prowl around the dorm on becalmed afternoons, searching for Hearts players like the disheveled emissary of a ramshackle sect. Our holy text was composed of cut-up newsprint and down-market glossies, but we hit the streets anyway and hoped no one would notice. Everyone was busy studying or calling "their people" back home or whatever, except for me. Cards killed the hours. Then Bridge, and then Poker, the games that helped me unscramble the secret message: The next card, the next card is the one that will save me.

I slept poorly the night of 2A. The combined fields of Day 1A and Day 1C battled it out downstairs. I had played it safe the first day, stuck to the winners. I hadn't gambled too much. Now I had to reconnect with that old faith, that when the next card turned over, I'd see my future there.

I thought I heard crickets.

There was some nice theater to the Ceremonial Unbagging of the Chips at the start of Day 2B. "Dealers, if a player is not present two minutes before start, remove their chips and place the bag on their seat." I was at White 83, Seat 6, and, per Helen's assessment, I was still swimming in a tide pool with the guppy luckless and jelly-organism amateurs. No big stacks. Steven Garfinkle had told me that one of the great wonders of poker was that a normal Joe could sit down at a tournament table next to one of his idols. Which was true, it was a beautiful thing, like finding yourself playing [a sport] with [a famous player]. (I stopped following sports once Ty Cobb retired.) But I didn't want to sit next to Jonathan Duhamel. Country Time was my speed. Country Time, on my right, was a sober, elderly gentleman in a brown sweater, and I did not think he meant me harm. I did a little Alexander to chill me out, breathe in, breathe out, and checked out the other stacks through my sunglasses.

Did I neglect to say I was wearing sunglasses? I hadn't the nerve during my trial tourneys, as I felt like a douchebag, but the first time I stepped into the Pavilion I happened to be wearing them, and it felt good. I felt safe. They were nothing special, the ones I'd been wearing for years, but they'd filtered out some of my city's more evil wavelengths many times. The visor in my suit of armor.

Perhaps it is also possible that I have not mentioned the rest of my battle gear. I wore a hoodie. A special hoodie. A few weeks before the Main Event, I set up a solicitation on one the social media sites:

If you've seen the tournament on ESPN, you know that all the real players wear the names of sponsors on their sweatshirts and caps and T-shirts.

It has been pointed out that the cost of producing this merchandise will exceed the money raised. To which I say, I have never been good at math.

I got a few responses. I didn't get my act together to order the bracelets before I left (they'll get here eventually, don't worry guys), but I got the duds. I went to a custom T-shirt joint in DUMBO and handed the designer the specs. I'd have to pay extra for a rush job. She double-checked my chicken-scratch, hoodie first.

"Republic of … Ann-hee—"

"Anhedonia," I said.

"What are those?"

"Those are lightning bolts," I said.

She told me to pick out a color for the font on the T-shirt, something to accent the brown fabric. I didn't want to clash. She made two suggestions. I picked one.

"That's 'Vegas Gold,'" she said. "Maybe it'll be good luck!"

I wanted diverse sponsors: a person, a business, and a slogan for the back. So I put "WSOP 2011" over the left breast in Space 1999 letters, and my pal Nathan Englander's name on the right sleeve — he was in my home game and had been a stalwart ally during PokerQuest. The NYC bookstore McNally Jackson anchored the left sleeve. The bookstore's Twitter feed had offered up a slogan, something like "Crying On National TV Is My Tell," but, uh, the name of the store was shorter so I went with that. The owner had given me some picture books for the kid one time, so it felt right. Finally, on the back I put, "My Other Hand Is Bullets," in an old-timey Western font, which my friend Rob Spillman had suggested. I explained to the designer that "Bullets" was slang for a pair of pocket Aces. I didn't want her to think I was going on a murder spree, or to brunch.

When I told Helen about the paraphernalia, she laughed but also suggested that maybe I hold off on wearing the TV shirt until I made it into the money. "It's a bit snarky," she declared. Players were going target me anyway because they'd catch on to my inexperience (gee, how?), and because I "didn't look like the average poker player," i.e., a middle-aged white guy. "Dreadlocks," she said," you don't see that a lot." No point in giving them another reason. OK, in the money, sure. As it happened, the WSOP cracked down on logos this year, part of the fallout from the Fed's assault on online poker sites. It reduced the sometimes absurd number of patches you saw on screen, which made the grizzled players look like they were sporting Office Space-type "flair."

I was going to wear the sweatshirt, though, a snazzy red number with the name of my homeland on the front, and the aforementioned lightning bolts, lest anyone doubt where I was coming from.

Finally, I had my talisman. Our last day together, I asked the kid to give me a good luck charm. I was going to be gone three weeks all told, the longest we'd ever been apart, and I started missing her even before I left. I'd make up the time when I got back, we had years and years ahead of us, but how can you make up moments? I was standing out on the terrace outside the convention hall, baking in the merciless Vegas heat and trying to keep a steady signal on my cell when she told me, "I saw a rainbow, Daddy!" The ex-wife and the kid were in upstate New York, and I knew it had rained because folks were complaining about it on my Twitter feed. Her first rainbow. It hadn't occurred to me that a rainbow was one of the milestones. Unscrewing the training wheels, sure, but light refracted through water vapor? What she felt about it was the important thing. Light refracted through water vapor. Here I was dying in the desert. The kid. What else did I have but the kid?

That last day, I asked her to pick something out from her toys. "I'll keep it on my table and it will give me good luck, and I'll think of you whenever I look at it." She deliberated, and chose a pink flip flop. It was an inch and a half long, made of soft foam, and dangled from a keychain. It just appeared one day, probably from the bowels of a birthday party goodie bag — there was all sorts of weird little crap in those things — nestled among the Smarties and renegade Now & Laters. "Can you write something on it?" I asked. "Like 'good luck'?" She deliberated again, and wrote GO LUCK in a 6-year-old's penmanship on the sole of the flip flop. We let the ink dry.

A pink flip flop on a keychain. The first day I played, I kept it in my hoodie pocket. I couldn't bring myself to put it out there. It was definitely not cowboy, it was the very anti-Brunson made physical. On Day 2B, I pushed the charm up against my 23k. There was invisible stuff tied to the ring besides the pink flip flop, too, all my psychic baggage on a string, limply rising to the ceiling of the Pavilion like a bouquet of faltering balloons. Alright, Luck, I'm waiting.

Coach wanted me to double up before dinner to 46k. Despite my prediction that I'd unleash my crazy-psycho betting style in Level 6, the only quirks I added to my play were a new protectiveness toward my blinds (Peck at my blinds, will you, crow? I'll show you!) and a more receptive ear to the siren call of pot odds (It only costs a little more to see the flop …). Yes, Big Mitch, I know it's kid's stuff, but in my cheapo home game you didn't consider these things because the stakes were so low. After the Main Event was over, I played some of the home-game variety that had been my steady. It was bananas. Like if you stuck 10 squirrels in cardboard box, shook it up, and then threw in a deck of acorn-scented Bicycle cards. Raising 2x the blind — what exactly did you mean by that bet, it was fucking gibberish! Six people seeing the flop? You can't all have Aces. I had become a whining Robotron, trapped with bona fide humans.

At the World Series, of all places, I was finally comprehending the underlying principles I'd been studying, getting the barest glimpse of how they worked, their consequences and power. The deep magic. I had an inkling now of what Helen was saying when she said this place was Heaven, what her father meant when he told her Vegas was the Center of the Universe. I felt it.

Too bad it just ended up costing me chips. Nothing panned out. Someone called me when I had QQ, but other than that I didn't scratch up anything during Level 6. In fact, I lost a bunch. I was down to 14k. I was dying. The blinds were about to shoot up to 300/600, with a 75 buck ante. The Wave of Mutilation was gathering force, and I was definitely drowning, not waving, as the poet put it. At the break, I sent a DM: 14.5k … 10 M. OK, Coach what do I do?

I received a short reply: Call me.

Out in the sun with the smokers, the 3G limped along. Everybody calling their buddies back home, their spouses, shrinks, giving updates. I couldn't get a signal out. Twitter was dead. Given my low emotional bandwidth, I understood AT&T's difficulties, but hell. Finally, a bunch of lazy-ass electrons eked through and I got a stream of DMs:

Shove time. But you have time to wait for a decent hand. I'll run it down for you.

The next couple of DMs detailed starting combos I should go all-in with, pairs, face cards, how to play them in different positions around the table. Under the gun, middle, the button.

You are in all-in shove mode. This is easy. You have one decision and plenty of time to wait for a decent spot.

Doubling up is key, but stealing 2400 pots with all-in shoves is fine.

New goal: 25k by end of this round. Once you reach this, you can relax and play normal for a little while.

Double up time. One, two, three double-ups and you're a contender. Go get 'em.

I tried to keep it straight. Was that a pair of 7s in early position, or only if there's no raiser? AJ when, whatzit, huh? But the Coach believed in me, I was going to do this. If I didn't, I would cease to exist.

At the start of Level 7, I gathered myself. I recalled a steamy summer Brooklyn morning weeks ago, when my physical trainer, Kim, tried to straighten out the sad, gnarled bone-cloak I called my body. Get into your spine, she said.

Get into your spine.

Get Some Spine.

Patience, and position. I waited. I wasn't the only one with water in his nose. Seat 9 had started out with a stack my size, and he mixed it up in Level 6. Now he was treading water and looking for his shot. He shoved his chips in — and the Wave of Mutilation took him under. Seat 3 was a young dude who'd been staying afloat by attacking blinds, some chips here, some chips there. He went all in, and was sucked down into the bleak fathoms. (You shouldn't wear headphones when swimming, because you can't hear it when someone yells, "Shark!). For my part, I got KQ off-suit early in the level … and didn't go for it. It didn't feel right, and surely a better hand was rising in the deck, about to bubble up from randomness and bail me out. Right?

It didn't happen. Rags, rags, rags for an hour and a half. Instead of limiting my speech to the word "Raise," now I said, "Can I have some change?" as I slid a 1,000 chip to Seat 5. The Wave of Mutilation washed away my stack, chip by inevitable chip, and I kept calculating and recalculating my M. Was now the time to freak out, shove with anything? Was I being passive, or waiting for my shot? Down to 6k. I wasn't feeling that well. Then I saw them: Pocket Aces. Rockets. The self-same Bullets on the T-shirt. I was going to take down this fucking pot. I went all in … and won the blinds and the antes, i.e., bupkis. Bobbed up to 8k, but the swells were about to get much worse.

The announcer informed us there were three more hands until break. The floor managers broke tables on the edges of the White section; they'd disperse my happy clan soon. I didn't know if it was better to play with these guys, or a fresh table. Who knew what kind of behemoth stacks roamed out there in the depths, beyond my little tide pool. I was going to make a move before Level 7 ended, no matter what. The poker book advice can be hard to follow — the esoteric slang, the situations you have to experience first-hand in order to appreciate, the crappy writing. And then there was advice that made perfect sense, like: Before the end of the night, before a break or adjournment for dinner, you can grab a pot because people are distracted and want to split. This made sense to me, more than "Suited connectors on the button can be a strong play," because it was sneaky, and I came from a long line of secretive, sneaky bastards. We slinked down the block to steal a cab downstream, left two teaspoons of juice in the carton and put it back in the fridge, and pretended that we didn't use up all the hot water. Sneaky.

I had three chances. It was a Wave of Mutilation: Surf it, motherfucker. My first two cards were no-go. White 83 fidgeted as it contemplated the break. Next hand, I think I almost pushed my chips in, but declined. I wasn't feeling it. Players from other tables squeezed out into the hallway. One more chance: K and 8, off suit. Half my table looked at their hands and mucked and departed to have a smoke or take a piss. I pushed … and the new guy in Seat 3, he did nothing at all. He sat. He was the Big Blind this hand, and he was a Swiper, after Dora the Explorer's klepto nemesis. He preyed on blinds, scavenging to survive. When Swiper joined our table, he had a big stack of green chips, the ante chips. "That's how you know," Coach had told me.

So Swiper's BB was in the pot. What happens, you may ask, when the Swiper becomes the Swipee? Swiper scrutinized me and asked a question. I didn't catch it, it was some poker nomenclature beyond my ken. I stared into the pot, then past the pot, through the felt, into the void. In general, I had realized, most of my table image was me pretending I was spending a typical afternoon in my crummy, divorced-guy apartment. Tick tock. Finally, he folded. Anticlimactic. It was some chips anyway. Up to 9.6k.

I DM'd Coach on the situation. You may be wondering what Helen was doing in between strategy sessions. She was thousands of miles away in her Upper East Side apartment, gathering intel on the game at her kitchen counter, and doing home projects. "I was watching my Twitter feed," she told me later, "and making sure you were not tweeting. Then when the Levels started, I would run away. I was so nervous for you! I was listening to books on tape, scouring the floorboards. Cleaning the oven. Doing home projects." She had made what she called her "M-sheet," an index card listing how to bet at different Danger-Zone Ms, the blind structure at each Level. She kept the M-sheet in her pocket for quick consult during my breaks.

Under 8k, she wrote one word: Worry.

You're ok, you're ok. But you've got to double up and loosen even more. Here's how:

Once again, she broke down the hands to play, and how.

Do it. Double up. Then double up again, damn it. #toughlove

I blipped out a message through AT&T's "cellular network" and told her I hadn't seen any of those hands, just Aces, so I was due.

Hell yes, you're due. You are not going to bust out of Day 2. You are a shove machine.

You've outlasted 500 players (Mattasow, Dunst, Greenstein) for a reason. Patience. I predict 3 double-ups b/f dinner. RUSH dang it!

I want to see you double up and then shove all-in before you've had time to stack your chips. I see it. Rush! Then swordfish.

GOGOGO! I am glued to this computer rooting for you with the blind structure and Ms in my apron pocket.

There you have it. No more negative thinking, despite its central role in my day-to-day philosophy. I was a player, and I was in this game. I wasn't depressed, I was curating despair. I wasn't half-dead, but half-alive.

I reentered the Pavilion and waiting for the color-up to finish, when they take out all the 25 dollar chips and change them for 100s. Bye-bye chump change. Bye-bye chumps, too. I started humming that song from Ocean's 11. I know most classical music from the pop vehicle that introduced me to it, hence "That orgy song from A Clockwork Orange" or "That one where Bugs Bunny victimized the opera singer." The tune in question was "Clair de Lune," a tender little number, and I did not mind humming it among the gamblers. If I whistled on the streets in New York, I could hum in the casinos of Las Vegas.

So, Debussy. "Moon shine." It starts off slowly, and you lift with the current, this sort of warm levitating feeling. Then it picks up, cresting to victorious apex, but it's a curious kind of victory, for even as it approaches fulfillment, each triumphant note is undercut by a sense of evanescence, a hint of loss that is contrary to the apparent trajectory of the song, and at the same time its true destination. The eventual collapse of the idea of escape is the real heart of the tune, even as we float joyfully on its evasions. It contained both failure and reward at the same time, and it was OK.

In Ocean's 11, the movie stars assemble before the Bellagio Dancing Lights, the casino's nightly extravaganza of synchronized fountain jets. For the whole flick, the movie stars have been handsome, they have been clever and rude, but now they are quiet. They cannot speak. This was the big one. It was the big job, the heist of a lifetime, and somehow they'd pulled it off. Everything before this was half-assed practice. Everything after will be disappointing postscript. The movie stars stand there looking at the dancing lights, among strangers, the tourists and the squares, the ones who'd never know that a miracle just happened. But these guys knew, they had touched it, even if seconds from now it would change from what they did into what happened, become a story they'd rarely share. They'd tell it years from now because they felt safe with their companion, or because they were feeling down and couldn't help themselves. The night is cool, the heart is sliding down into nostalgia, and they say, "Did I ever tell you about the time I played in the World Series of Poker?" The awful knowledge that you did what you set out to do, and you would never, ever top it. It was gone the instant you put your hands on it. It was gambling.

I was calm, for a shove machine. This was the round when I'd make my stand. I arranged my chips into a tiny fort. I turned the pink foam flip flop upside down so I could see what the kid wrote to me.

GO LUCK.

(Don't tell me you didn't realize this was a sports movie, the only one I'll ever star in. Maybe you, too, because we're in this together, you and I. But keep in mind it's a '70s sports movie, and you know how those end.)

The blinds were 400/800 with a 100 buck ante. I was at 4 M, the Wave of Mutilation rising five seats down. The dealer shuffled and … I got cards. Two hands into Level 8, I got AK, Big Slick. Now we could begin. I pretended to think about it, and I went all-in. Everyone folded except for Swiper. Perhaps he suspected I'd run a game on him that last round before break, made him fold something promising. Here was a duel, unfolding before the table broke, it was a harpoon fight on a disintegrating chunk of ice in the polar seas, I'd seen this on TV. I intended to gut him, and I did. I turned over my AK, he showed his K-whatever, and I bled him on the flop, and the turn and the river. I doubled up to 19k. You bet all your chips, the other guy or gal matches you, and if you win, you get all that plus the blinds and antes: double up. "Swiper, no swiping," as Dora says.

They were about to break the table. The floor manager had our table draws, and he'd distribute them after this next hand. Country Time went all-in. He'd done it a few times before, to mucks all around. This time, Seat 5 called him. I can't remember what the flop was. All I know is that Country Time was out, and he drifted away.

The dealer was having some trouble sorting through Country Time's stack. Seat 5 said, "I don't know if he's out." Maybe Country Time had chips left.

"He's still there," someone said. Indeed Country Time was, well, taking his time in his departure. There are different types of players. Aggressive. Solid. But there was only one way to walk out of the room when you bust: Absent of dignity, full of shame.

"Should we get him?"

"Count it," the floor manager said. The dealer moved the chips around.

"Does he have anything left?"

"He's walking slowly."

"We can catch up to him."

We looked over. We looked back at the chips.

"How much does he have?"

"Should we get him?"

No one moved.

"Count it again," the floor manager said.

"He's walking pretty slowly."

Country Time exited the Pavilion. He had a single chip left, $1,000. One of the players asked what was going to happen to it. The floor manager said it would be placed at his seat at his new draw. He'd be swiftly blinded out. It was an unsettling image, the floor guy setting this anonymous chip on the next table and the chip just sitting there, being eroded into smaller chips, and evaporating. Never a face to put to the player formerly known as White 83, Seat 5. You know, Country Time.

The table broke. I liked them now, the gamblers. They were just people. They had intimidated, but no more. They were better players, dexterous in their manipulation of the underlying principles, they had poker faces they toiled over, but they were just dumb morons like I was, mules walking on their gravel. They put on too much cologne, or too little antiperspirant, uploaded stupid photos to Facebook, were riven by doubt and then fortified by an unexpected reversal, wiped ketchup from the corners of the mouths, these messy eaters. They were scared, like I was, of being wiped out, of losing all their chips in hexed confrontation. Mules like me. They carried tokens from home to remind them of what they had left behind, and placed these things next to their chips, and they prayed.

I joined Black 6, Seat 4. I didn't say anything and got the same back. This was a real table, they were playing cards here. 100K stacks, whole edifices of thousand-dollar chips like I'd only seen on the tube. Seat 2 was the table leader, decked out like the Unabomber with his hoodie cinched around his face, mirrored lenses repelling others' eyes. I was the second-shortest stack — the worse-off guy looked queasy. But I'd double up again before dinner, per Coach. I felt giddy, like my skin had become so thin that only the tiniest membrane separated me from the outside, my inner self from the pure poker atmosphere I moved in. I'd pulled one heist, and I'd do it again

Two hands later, I looked down at a pair of 10s. OK. Cool. The pot was $2,100. I was in early position. Hands — the ones attached to my wrists, not card hands — please do not tremble or shake. I said, "All in." I was starting to like the sound that. It was much better than, "Can I get some change?" Everybody folded except for Seat 2, Mr. Sinister, who called in a flash. Damn. We turned our hands over: He had a pair of 3s. What the hell was that about? But that's how he got to a big stack: He played aggro, and from the glum faces around me, it was paying off.

Neither of us made a set. I won with my 10s, and Mr. Sinister said, "That's been happening to me all day."

Doubled up. I was at 40k, thereabouts, 19 M. Out of the Danger Zone. Level 7 had harrowed me as I waited to shove my chips in. The first half hour of Level 8 had wrung me out, but it was time to get out of what Coach called "small-stack mentality." I no longer had to play like I was trying to escape the space station before it self-destructed, as the chirpy computer voice counted down my M. I wasn't a fucking animal anymore

It was an hour and 15 minutes until dinner. I could do that. Then I got a pair Aces.

On a rush. Cool. I wasn't going to go all in, I thought, because I could play normal again. I bet $2,200, the table standard for this level. I was going to make some chips. There were mucks, and then the guy in Seat 7 raised me $8,000. I hadn't seen his face yet. I saw his hands. I saw his chips. He had me matched. Should I go all in? I called his bet, and we saw the flop.

A Queen, an 8, and a 3. No straight, no flush. I was the first to act. He didn't have pocket queens. I don't know how I knew it, but I did. I bet 10k. He's going to fold, I thought. Instead, he went all in.

I said, "OK."

"You're all in?" The dealer asked. You had to say it.

"Call."

He had KK. I showed my hand. The table groaned. "I didn't put him on Aces," Mr. Sinister said, with a touch of confusion in his voice.

"I thought maybe he had Ace-Queen," someone else said. They were already consoling Seat 7, down at the other end of the table. "Damn, dude."

The next card was a Jack. For a second, I thought, is he going to get a straight? I was being silly, that was impossible. Three double ups before dinner, just like Coach told me. I had it. He needed two cards to save him, the remaining kings. I was 94 percent favorite to win. But you know how '70s sports movies end.

He got his K. I was out.

"Aww, man.

"Damn."

"That's a bad beat."

"I didn't think he had Aces," Mr. Sinister repeated, like a fucking idiot. I was starting to think he wasn't a poker maestro, just some guy who'd been getting some good cards, which happened from time to time.

Seat 7 was a portly twentysomething guy with a Australian accent. He came over and shook my hand. "You played that really well," he said. "I didn't think you had Aces."

No, no one knew I had Aces. I could have gone all in before the flop, or after the flop. Then they would have known something was up. Not that he would have folded KK, but still. Betting aside, I think you and I know why they didn't see Aces coming. Why I was unreadable, why they could only guess at my hand.

I have a good poker face because I am half-dead inside.

The World Series of Poker's official count of the nations represented at this year's Main Event was 98. The number had always been off by one. Now the figure was correct. I grabbed my hoodie, jabbed the pink flip flop in the pocket, and staggered out of the Pavilion. Absent of dignity, full of shame.

Like I said, after the heist, all that's left is the disappointing postscript. Normal life. Helen was surprised that I was calling her in the middle of the Level. "It's dinner?" I told her the whole thing, what I could remember. "He rivered you! On the river!" I reviewed the betting — was there something I should have done differently? "There was no way he was getting away from Kings." Just as I wasn't going to get away from Aces. "There was no way you weren't going to get all your money in that pot." I still think about it, of course. But everybody has hands like that. The failures that stick.

Husband Lex had just gotten home from work. Helen gave the rundown. "I told him it was a good way to go out," she told Lex. As in, better than being washed away by the Wave of Mutilation. Lex responded. "Lex just said, 'That's a terrible way to go out.'"

I carried out Helen's last order. I finally got to the seafood place and ordered the swordfish. Buzio's, it was called. The bartender asked how I was doing. I told him. "Frankly," I said, "it was pretty exhausting."

"Yeah, these guys come in here, they say 'I just busted out.' Then they go, 'Thank God, it's over.'"

Helen was right about the swordfish. It was pretty good. Piccata. Later that night she e-mailed me to say that the next day she was heading to the Borgata in Atlantic City "w/Lex to play the 100k guarantee tourney." Before I left for Vegas, she'd told me that she was off gambling until September. After her disappointing visit in the early stages of the WSOP, she was taking a break. Being my coach, running scenarios, had put her back in the game. "When you busted out," she said later, "I was horrified. But my first thought was, Good, now I can go to AC!" There's a poker player for you.

As for me, it was time to go back to Anhedonia. In the airport I stopped at Hudson News and bought a souvenir mug, a refrigerator magnet shaped like a flip flop, and a bottle opener that said, "Win Lose or Draw." I'm the sentimental type. I heard a song, they were playing it in the store, a slow piano tune. There was a TV screen on one wall above the T-shirts, and I saw they were running a loop of the Dancing Bellagio Lights, shot by a helicopter at night, and the music was "Clair de Lune." Courtesy of the Las Vegas Board of Tourism, I imagine.

"Clair" was a cheap date, it turned out, the movie now part of the town's mythology. I didn't mind that my private notion had never been mine at all, but a popular romance. I couldn't own it. What would Johnny Moss, the first champion of the World Series of Poker, think of how his game had changed over the decades, as it transformed from an intimate competition among buddy-rivals into an multimillion dollar international event, bigger than any single individual. If Johnny Moss walked into the Pavilion today and saw the thousands of players worrying their stacks, the tables upon tables of hopeful souls, heard the symphony of crickets, I'd think he'd say, Deal me in. It's not mine, but it's cards.

"Clair de Lune" in a Hudson News franchise was nice exit music from Vegas. It made me feel, how do I put this, good.

I learned a lot of things during my long, bizarre trip. About myself, and the ways of the world. One, do not hope for change, or the possibility of transcending your everyday existence, because you will fail. Two, if people put their faith in you, you will let them down. And three, everything is a disaster. In short, nothing I hadn't known since childhood, but sometimes you can forget these things when engulfed by a rogue swell of optimism, which happens, if infrequently.

There was a fourth item, but I'll save it for the kid, for when she's older.

If I forget again, there's always next year, right? What the heck, I'll play the circuit, win some tournaments and come back. Palm Beach. New Orleans. Tunica. Never heard of Tunica, and maybe that's a good thing. Return to Vegas. Make it to Day 3 this time, make it into the money, it will all work out. Maybe I'll win, and they'll play the national anthem of the Republic of Anhedonia in the Pavilion. I'll stand on the stage in my hoodie, which is now decked out in rhinestones and flapping Vegas Gold fringes, place my hand over my heart (it would take some time to find it) and the speakers in the great hall will broadcast my homeland's song, loud and clear so that everyone can hear it: "NYUH-GUH-UH! UH-GUUHH! NYUH-UGH UGH OH GOD NO NOT AGAIN SSSIIIGGGHHH …"

Try again. It was a very Bad News Bears thing to say. Scrappy. Inspiring.

Actually, fuck it.

Colson Whitehead's new novel Zone One will be published in October by Doubleday. Follow him on Twitter here: @colsonwhitehead.

Previous installments of Whitehead's series on the WSOP:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
The Whole Damn Thing