Celebrity interviewer
Martha Frankel started learning how to play poker while doing research for a
screenplay. Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer were going to play two con
artists pulling off a big jewelry heist when they ran into the biggest jackpot of
all: love. Or at least that was the plan, before Frankel went overboard
collecting background information on the poker expertise of one of the
characters. Starting with a regular Wednesday-night game with the guys, she
moved on to cruises, casinos, card rooms, and then, fatefully, online poker.
Her memoir, Hats & Eyeglasses: A Family Love Affair With Gambling, is an entertaining ride
through her rise to poker mastery and the regular paydays that went with it,
until it takes a sudden spiral into lying, debt, and vanished willpower.
Frankel argues that
gambling is in her blood. Her earliest memories are of her family (and all the
unrelated "uncles" and "aunts" who regularly invited themselves over) clicking
mahjongg tiles, tossing in antes, and letting her sneak a peek at the cards
when she topped off their drinks. But the gene didn't manifest in her until she
experienced for herself the thrill of taking a sucker's money, well into
adulthood. She lovingly passes on all the poker lessons that she learned from Michael,
Sal, Lefty, Doc, and the other Wednesday-night players, and somewhat
shamefacedly reports that she became a poker mentor herself to a group of
preteen boys. In chapter after chapter, she moves up the poker ladder, playing
tight, spotting cheaters, reading tells, and always leaving with more than she
had when she sat down. (That led to the repeated refrain "Why are you leaving
when you're winning?", a complaint Frankel fails to comprehend.)
When online poker threw
her for a loop—over a dialup connection that got cut off if anybody
called her on the phone—she never saw it coming. Somehow the rapid play,
mediating screen, and unpredictable opponents added up to months of steadily
accelerating losses. Although Frankel admits her addiction and reveals her
despair, this isn't a Gamblers Anonymous confessional. While some of her
choices have an overly-workshopped sheen (the frank sex talk is especially
off-putting, although her writers' group probably found it raw and honest),
there remains a compelling unresolved tension between her love of poker and
conviction that she isn't in its power, and the evidence to the contrary.