Party Animal

Calling His Bluff: A Poker Party's Uneasy Undercurrents

Inside the split-level where David and Madeleine Rowan grew up, rugs have been rolled up, couches pushed aside and poker tables set up. There's not much conversation, but the room is buzzing with energy and the plink of poker chips.

This is the much-anticipated 5th Annual Alexandria Series of Poker, a low-stakes card tournament that has become a holiday reunion for a group of college-age friends.

About 40 players, mostly guys who graduated from T.C. Williams High School, are bent studiously over their cards -- some wearing iPods or reflective wraparound shades to better keep their poker faces. Despite the party's Vegas-y inspiration, an air of wholesomeness pervades. Players are drinking Gatorade. The Rowans' mother, Lori Cooper, is in the kitchen cooking appetizers. Downstairs, in the rec room -- wood-paneled, of course -- players are anteing up while sitting inches from Madeleine's dusty old dollhouse. She is now 21 and a foreign affairs major at the University of Virginia.

There's even a sitting Alexandria School Board member -- Charles H. Wilson -- on hand. Wilson, a poker aficionado, read about the event in the local newspaper and cold-called Rowan to see if he could join in. David Sachs, a 22-year-old University of Vermont student, says he's been coming here since high school, when they played Texas Hold 'Em every day after class.

"D Ro" -- he means Madeleine's 19-year-old brother, David -- "started it, and it's become a whole subculture in Alexandria," Sachs says. "The tradition has continued."

Poker has been very good to D Ro. That's how D Ro got his leather sectional. That's how D Ro got his big-screen TV. That's how he got his vanity plate that says "GTMDRO" (short for "Get 'Em D Ro"). Turns out D Ro has been supporting himself by playing poker online since the summer.

And his mother isn't exactly happy about it. It quickly becomes obvious that just because the family's dining room table is covered with poker chips and playing cards instead of turkey and trimmings doesn't mean this weekend will be free of the kind of family tension that ordinarily pervades the holidays.

"I told him he either had to be in school or have a full-time job -- not poker! -- or he had to move out," Cooper says from the kitchen, where she's tossing pigs-in-a-blanket onto a cookie sheet. "It's the difference between a vocation and an avocation. Playing poker with your friends -- that's fine."

D Ro, eying his mother carefully, explains that he dropped out of his freshman year at Coastal Carolina University last spring and, once he was back at home, quickly learned he could make far more money playing poker online than at any job on the local JobLink board. In the fall, he gave in to his mother's wishes and moved to Vermont, near where Sachs and other buddies attend school. He plays poker full time, pulling in, he says, $15,000 to $20,000 a month.

Does he ever think about enrolling in school there?

"I've given it a lot of thought," he says earnestly, as his mother busies herself with the appetizers. She is intently listening to her son's answer, but her face betrays nothing.

By 7:45 p.m., after several hours of play, the horde has dissipated, and the tournament is down to two players: Madeleine, who has just knocked her card shark brother out of contention with a pair of queens, and Elan Rotklein, who is a junior at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Cards are dealt. Madeleine -- using skills she has learned from David and from playing in tournaments herself -- tries bluffing. It doesn't work. Elan, a 21-year-old quantitative economics major who was Madeleine's sixth-grade boyfriend, sees right through it. He emerges victorious with a queen-high flush.

"I think everyone had a good time," David says afterward, pleased that the Alexandria Series of Poker has brought so many of his old friends together.

As for his unusual career path: "I'm going to ride it out," he says. "One thing [playing poker] has instilled in me is a lot of confidence. Poker is about making good decisions in the short term -- and in the long term."

If you have an upcoming party you'd like to share, e-mail us at partyanimal@washpost.com.