Probability and Grace
Port Washington has a handful of classy bars that attract a clientele of wealth and distinction. They create an environment not unlike being in a GAP, Banana Republic or Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. People garnished in ‘just bought’ clothes displaying their ‘just cut’ hair and indulging in their ‘just poured’ drinks. This is not one of those bars.
This bar is more like being in a PBS documentary on blue-collar living in the Great Depression. The most common ‘just’ here is the guy sitting next to you with the ‘just leave me alone’ expression. It’s the kind of bar for those who crave cheap drinks, dank aromas and no room for anyone to stand on a soap box. I am here by unrelenting choice. I wouldn’t be comfortable anywhere else.
The overwhelming charm of the bar aside, the pool table holds the largest allure for me. It’s a seven foot, green felt, pay table with only a moderate amount of abuse ground into the surface. The tall counter that I am sitting at could sit one big person with three drinks or two thin people with one large drink apiece. It happens to be the best seat in the house for me because of the view. I get to be arbiter to the games of pool the patrons play while I wait my turn.
I am a below average pool player but my love for the game makes up for my numerous losses. For me, there is elegance in the geometric precision that sits atop the uncertainty of: “I can see my shot, but will I actually execute it correctly”. It’s a never-ending battle between concept and execution.
Due, one part to my sense of curiosity and two parts to my economic standing at the moment, I am not drinking tonight. Instead, I have water with a splash of cranberry that mimics, with great utility, my normal vodka and cranberry mix. Over the years, I’ve found that people not drinking in liquor-laden establishments arouse suspicion. Alcohol encourages the mob mentality. When one does not partake with the group, the clientele tends to associate you with either the insane, the “saved” or the police. The latter being the least preferable.
I savour the “chink-slide-crash” of a one-dollar deposit in the table and the fall of the highs and lows. Kenny sets up the rack as Evan chalks his cue. Kenny is a forty-five-year old speed freak. He always has a cup of coffee in his hand and can’t move any slower than sixty-five miles a second. His eveningwear of choice is a stained Bart Simpson shirt and a pair of daggy jeans that look like they needed a wash twenty years ago. He’s less than tall, a touch heavy and shoots pool like a school girl in a short skirt. His game is very aggressive and accurate but he lacks patience. To him every shot has to look pretty, take less than a second to set up, and go off like a cannon.
Evan is a forty-year-old contractor and league player. He is of average height and, minus his salt-and-pepper-coloured hair, looks to be in his late twenties. He seems thin and frail until you talk to him. Then his personality puts on a quiet thirty-five pounds of rock-hard intention. His game is good, damn good.
League players tend to be impressive opponents. My money is on Evan. He is, after all, the better player. Although, one must be careful with such assumptions. Just because the odds are in Evan’s favour, does not mean that he’s guaranteed to win. Evan could scratch on the eight ball at the end, or just have all of his shots blocked the entire time. It’s always anyone’s game. That’s the beauty of it.
I check to make sure my quarter is still on the table. I am set up to play the winner. Even though I believe Evan will completely own this table, I am secretly rooting for Kenny. I can beat Kenny. The only way I can beat Evan is with luck or by getting him too liquored up to see straight.
Evan breaks and the impressive clap resonates through the bar. The balls scatter. They rest on the rails, in the center, next to and near all of the pockets but none of them go in. It’s a good break, just the same. All of the balls are dispersed and there are no groups or “cluster fucks” to make calling shots more difficult. This will be a short game.
Kenny has a number of choices on the table, high balls (stripes) and low balls (solids) alike. He spots the two-ball leaning against a corner pocket, a completely open shot. He puts his feet together, daintily bends his knees in a curtsy, takes aim and POW! He misses the shot completely, leaving the two-ball spinning and bouncing off the rails, knocking highs and lows all over the place and giving Evan a nice setup.
Evan politely shrugs as if to say, “Could happen to anyone,” and takes aim at the five in the side pocket. He misses. Evan squints at the pocket looking for some reason he missed. I can tell he thought he had that one.
I chuckle to myself, maybe Evan’s game is off tonight. I turn around and watch boxing on the TV suspended above the bar. I love boxing. I appreciate the same characteristics in it that I do in pool. You never quite know who will win until it’s over. Amidst the barbaric battering of each other there is strategy, psychology and split second decision making.
I hear Evan swear and I look back to the game. As Kenny picks his next shot he is strutting around the table like a drum major in a meth-addled marching band. A quick glance at the table tells me neither of them has gotten a ball in yet. Kenny takes his dainty little aim and fires away. By now some of the balls have started to group in the center and by the pockets, making Kenny’s buckshot method perfect for the arena. No balls go in.
Kenny swears. Evans suggests they re-rack and start over. Kenny shakes his head “no” and steps outside for a cigarette. Evan wobbles his head in disbelief and explains to me that they just went through ten turns each with not a single ball in. My rhetorical remark is “What are the odds?” as I shrug and smile.
Evan continues to explain his disbelief but I start thinking about how nice it is that no one can smoke in bars any more. Just ten years earlier if you were to suggest to anyone in here that they couldn’t smoke inside, they would either laugh at you or go into a dissertation on their rights as smokers. In the end, the second-hand smokers got the vote and now I can enjoy an evening in a bar while narrowing my future ailments to liver failure and perhaps gout.
Kenny is back into the room with a new, crazy determination in his eyes. Wait, no, he always looks like that. Evan takes the first shot, misses. Kenny takes his adorable little stance and blunders. Evan lines up at the pocket and nothing. Kenny blasts a random shot presumably at a pocket and the balls scatter but none go in. This continues.
After about five minutes, other people in the bar start to notice that this game of pool has become a marvel of sorts. They gather around and place bets on who will get the first ball. In the beginning, all bets are on Evan, but when they see his carefully executed shots missing just as much as Kenny’s gauzier method, the betting evens out to a fifty-fifty split.
After twenty more minutes of this, it’s Evan’s turn to look at me and ask, “What are the odds?”
I love that question. Actually, I love probability or more accurately the philosophy of it. I find a lot of comfort in the thought that there is a calculable chance that I may, at any given second, find myself transported to a South American jungle wearing a greenman outfit and speaking completely fluent Portuguese. Granted it’s a very tiny chance but the probability still exists.
Another great take on probability comes from my cousin TJ. He took a class in statistics and use of probability for a couple of days in college. The course was supposed to last him the whole semester, but after a series of arguments with the professor, he decided that he already knew all the answers to the questions, so he dropped the class. The overall debate went as such:
Professor: Ok, here is a simple example of what I am talking about. If I have five quarters and I toss them in the air, what is the probability that they will all land heads-up?
TJ: Fifty-fifty.
Professor: Each quarter, in theory, has a fifty-fifty chance of landing on heads, or a one in two chance, as we say. But you did not take into account that there are five quarters so our “one in two” is multiplied by five.
TJ: I didn’t forget anything. You’re wrong, it’s still fifty-fifty.
Professor: The phrase is “one in two”, and how do you figure?
TJ: Either they all land heads up or they don’t. Fifty-fifty.
This argument went on for days with every example. “You have one deck of cards and it is randomly shuffled. What are the odds you will get a royal flush?” – “Fifty-fifty.” – “You are playing craps, what are the odds of landing a seven over five throws” – “Fifty-fifty” – “You have six decks and are playing blackjack with five players and the house, from the top of the deck what are your odds of getting blackjack?” – “Fifty-fifty” and it went on and on until after a week of this TJ figured that, since he knew all the answers, he would stop coming to class. He transferred into a mechanical drafting course instead.
In total fairness to TJ, I think he’s right. All things said and done, either something happens or it doesn’t, no matter what the odds are.
TJ also said that he thought it was funny that the professor only used gambling examples to teach the class. He later found out that the same professor was a retired blackjack pro who had been excommunicated from all the major casinos in the Northern US for counting cards. What are the odds?
It’s an hour and a half into the pool game and Evan, having diligently tested his skills against the table and lost miserably, has changed his strategy to closing his eyes and wishfully smacking the cue ball. Kenny is on his third cup of coffee and is sticking with his “look – curtsy – shoot” strategy. Neither has gotten anything in.
The crowd around the pool table has drifted away and all bets were put back in the pockets of the patrons twenty minutes ago. It seems that even the most extraordinary of events gets boring if you have to wait to see the end of it. Now it’s just Evan, Kenny and me. Occasionally someone yells over from the bar “Get one in yet?” met with a lackluster “No” which is met with a soft snicker and more drinks.
We have long since dispensed with the idea of this solely being a game against two people. This is now a game against reality. Evan keeps trying different strategies to hit a ball in, behind the back, sticking his tongue out, licking the cue first. As each one fails to work, he repeats under his breath, “What are the odds?”
He says these words for hours as he and Kenny play on. I feel like telling him “Fifty-fifty” but I know he won’t find it nearly as funny as I would.
These words, “What are the odds?” take on a different meaning as Evan says them over and over. I hear them until they make no sense and have no meaning, until again, they take form and again I recognize the phenomenon that is happening before me. The words continue to be repeated until I lose the meaning once more and am waiting for my turn after the longest pool game of my life.
It’s funny how we place value on things. That which is less probable is more valuable and our concept of probability is taken from experience. I don’t suppose anyone would be impressed with Old Faithful if every geyser in the world erupted at clockwork-like intervals. People would probably call it Old Ordinary. Or, if car crashes only happened once every five years or so, every one of them would make national news, no matter if there was injury or not.
“We apologize for interrupting Super Bowl XXXX but we have important and breaking news! John Cornfed of Springfield, Ohio has just backed his 1988 red Chevy pickup into a lamppost. There have been no reports of injury yet. FEMA is sending three helicopters to assist!”
On the flip side, if infrequent events become frequent then the impact of them is diminished and excepted. Using the same example of car accidents, you may see a report on the news about such a thing, but only if there was a large loss of life or if traffic was held up for an unusually long time.
It’s four a.m. and the bar is closing. Evan and Kenny stopped playing an hour ago and began drinking heavily. If I am to guess, they are trying to erase any memory of this evening. I am still sitting and staring at the pool table. When the two of them finally decided to quit they left the table “as is” almost afraid of what would happen to the fabric of time/space if they were to interfere with the playing field.
The bartender politely tries to shoo us out by turning on all of the lights. Evan and Kenny, drunk and with the emotional stability of infants, stumble out of their chairs and turn towards the door. I get up too, but head over to the pool table and pick up a cue. I call out to Evan and ask if he minds if I try a shot before I turn in.
Evan slurs something to the extent of, “I don’t give a damn if you use your pecker to hit the goddamn balls.” Kenny says something unintelligible and he is waving his hand around as if he has lost all use of his wrist.
The cue ball is sitting in front of the yellow one-ball, which is directly in front of the far right corner pocket. The line of cue ball, one-ball, and pocket is all of a foot in length. What are the odds? Based on what I saw tonight I’m sure a person well-educated in statistics and probability could plug a large number for me, but I am going to stick to fifty-fifty.
I take careful aim and shoot.
The one-ball rolls into the pocket.
The sound of it tumbling down the track and dropping into the locker is a sweet melody. Evan screams “Wahoo!” and Kenny squeals like a five-year-old. I take a deep breath and smile inwardly at how ordinary-life has just become amazing.
What are the odds?
Joseph Auslander is a US citizen living and writing in Wellington, New Zealand. He has worked for the film industry in California, created infomercials in South Florida, carved code in Connecticut and slaved away on sea-going super yachts. He has an open love affair with public libraries and enjoys pillaging his past for prose.
