An old friend of mine from the hood recently got out of jail. He had done a chunk of time for repeat DUI charges. On his last bourbon binge he wrapped his Buick (nice big silver car that was) around a telephone pole, not before endangering the lives of an entire retirement community. He had driven by mistake into the compound, couldn’t get out, and that’s when all hell broke loose. Anyway, he almost lost his life in that fiasco, and it hadn’t been the first time. Pino cleaned up his act in the joint, took a 12-step program, joined AA and so forth. Pino is a good guy, and I’d never judge a person for succumbing to the evils of addiction. Most of us have been there, one way or the other.

So Pino is totally sober these days, God bless. He’s got a job in a local hospital, a nice clean flat right in Little Italy. Hell, he’s even got a girlfriend, decent looking, decent girl. Pino says they played a lot of cards in jail, to pass the time. They played hearts a lot but fights would often break out. Hearts is like that, if you’ve never played. And after a thousand rounds, euchre can get pretty boring. So, even though gambling was forbidden, the boys started playing Texas hold ´em tournaments, the winner receiving token prizes instead of the usual cash winnings.

Actually, as Pino explained, the prisoners did award a secret cash prize to the winner, but this was kept completely under wraps. If the guards ever found out they would have stopped the tournaments. But the tournaments became so engaging and lively in the best way, and the poker skills of the prisoners improved so dramatically that the counsellors at the jail decided to encourage and monitor the tournaments and seriously consider tournament poker as an ongoing rehabilitative tool. After all, the participants, over time, and after watching countless televised poker tournaments, behaved remarkably well. They learned respect for the game and respect for each other as their skills improved and their tournaments had the strategic and tactical intensities of chess matches. And yes, though things got heated at times, as things do at poker games, violence never erupted – except in one instance, Pino said, where a skinhead named Vincent put a bad beat on a guy they simply called Bear.

“Yeah,” Pino recounted. “Bear moved all-in with pocket kings and when Vincent called with a shitty jack-9 unsuited and hit an even shittier straight, Bear lost it. ‘How the fuck could you call an all-in with that shit!’ he screamed as he pummelled poor Vincent into a pulp. Bear did a month in isolation for that, and Vincent spent time in the infirmary all bandaged up like a mummy. But afterwards Vincent refused to press charges. ‘That was a donkey call,’ he admitted. And with a poker player’s handshake between the two peace was restored, and the cards hit the air again.”

Anyway, I’ve been hitting Fallsview with Pino these past few weeks and he’s been playing some splendid poker. When I complimented him on his skill set he nodded and confirmed that he felt he was on to something. “Poker has saved my life,” he said, almost tearing up. “I fucked up so many things before. But I know I can do good at poker. I know I can become a good, maybe a great player. I can feel it. And I’m willing to do everything I can do make that happen."

During one session at Fallsview I saw Pino make some dazzling moves and some that seemed marginal to me. For instance, on one occasion he moved all-in on a raised pot and found himself called by two individuals. One turned over pocket rockets and the other turned over pocket kings. When Pino showed a jack-10 of diamonds I felt disappointed. It seemed very donkyish to me, that call. And when the flop yielded an ace and a king I could only chuckle, until I noticed that they were also diamonds and that Pino was a queen away from a royal flush. The guy with the set of aces looked sick to stomach and the guy with the kings could only shut his eyes and shake his head. Well, people, not to turn this into a fairy tale, Pino did not hit his royal flush. But he did hit a flush and, incredibly, took down the pot against those two monster sets. When I asked him about making that call he smiled and said, “What’s jack-10 called in poker talk?”

I had to think about it for a moment. I’d heard it referred to as The Joint on occasion. When I told Pino this he nodded solemnly. I smiled, of course. We’re all allowed our “favourite” hands in poker. That’s the beauty of it. Not to mention that when it comes to playing speculative hands, you can’t do much better than The Joint, which can often wreck a party of aces and kings through its drawing power. Pino went on to win a bundle that night. Good for him. I’ve found Pino’s story and his re-emergence into the world inspiring. Sometimes it’s just a question of locating your niche, of picking the instrument that you can play most naturally, and hitting it hard. I hope Pino finds success in poker, though he must know he has a long and difficult road ahead of him. That being said, preparation, passion and confidence go a long way in any endeavour, poker being no exception.

Emile Frendo of the Honeymoon City is a semi-professional poker player and winner of the 2006 Pirate Poker Open Championship.