There was some weird quirk in the law in New York where apparently it’s illegal to facilitate gambling but it’s not illegal to actually gamble. We knew it wasn’t going to lead to arrest. I played poker with famous actors, musicians, judges. There was a guy who said he was mayor of a small town in northern New Jersey (I had no reason not to believe him, but anything that is said at a poker table should be taken with a large grain of salt), filmmakers, bankers, housewives, Juilliard students and many, many lawyers. The other people at the tables did all kinds of things.

I was entry-level in PR at the time, starting over in my late 20s in a new career after an expensive graduate school experience. Upper East, Midtown West, all over Brooklyn and Queens. The busy one, Straddle, in Midtown East, which had inexplicably never been raided so everyone whispered they had someone big on the take (they would eventually, like all the clubs, be raided and shut down). It was the oldest poker club in the city, with only three tables and an old Italian man cooking up the best pasta with red sauce you’ve ever had for five bucks.

Poker room new york