In January, just after the start of the new year, I visited Maryland Live with Calvin. These days, he commutes from his home, in Washington, D.C., to Maryland Live, where he feeds on fish who are happy to lose a few hundred dollars an hour playing No Limit Texas Hold ’Em-the poker player’s game of choice since 2003, when the great American online-poker boom of the aughts took off. He got his start making a few dollars a hand on the Web site PartyPoker, then graduated to long weekends of live play at the Borgata before taking up residence at a casino poker room in Charles Town, West Virginia. He is a grinder, a cautious type who doesn’t bluff that often or do anything hair-raisingly spectacular in tight situations, and who makes his living by doggedly adhering to the odds against lesser players.

John Calvin (not his real name) swims somewhere in the middle. Like any complex ecosystem, a poker room offers much more than a binary relationship between predators and prey.

Even pros from Florida, who like to boast of their state’s sunny weather, low taxes, partying tourists, and self-renewing population of old white guys, now come to Maryland Live in the dead of winter. According to Bravo Poker-an app that tells you how many tables are open for business at any time of day or night in nearly every room in every casino in every state in America-there are usually more high-stakes games running at Maryland Live than at the world-famous Borgata, in Atlantic City. The poker room, which opened on August 28, 2013, has 52 tables, making it one of the biggest rooms outside of Las Vegas. Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it offers thousands of slot machines and 177 table games, including blackjack, roulette, craps, and mini baccarat. Maryland Live is a casino-and-entertainment complex in Hanover, Maryland, adjacent to the Arundel Mills mall. Some even evolve into sharks.įish abound at Maryland Live, home to the hottest new poker room on the East Coast. Those who do learn from their mistakes may climb a rung or two on the evolutionary ladder. By the time they reach the limits of their endurance, emotional or financial, they are poorer but seldom wiser. They are bad at poker yet continue to play.

Card shark hearts