Congratulations on Discarding Your Hand!

You’re a notorious gambler from the bad part of town (it is unclear just which town you are from the bad part of) with a secret past and no future. It’s a story as old as America, or perhaps more accurately as old the non-violent convicts who made up a large portion of America’s initial British emigrant population.

But you want more out of life. Sure, drifting from town to town is great and you’ve met some amazing people doing what you love and are compelled to do, but of late you’ve been feeling unfulfilled. Sometimes you’ll be hiding in a dumpster from some loan sharks or daydreaming in a prison cell and your thoughts will turn to starting a family, maybe outside of Reno, getting some health insurance and settling down.

It’s been a little distracting and, to be honest, it’s not really a possibility at present. There are too many people in Nevada alone who want to murder you and string you up by your ocular nerves to show what happens to deadbeats who cross them. Even if you got as far as the east coast, the deeply entrenched Vegas mafia would still be able to get to you.

So the best you can do it live off the grid. Or so you thought. Until you saw the poster for the International Five Card Draw Poker Championship.

Five Card poker has been waning in popularity of late, with the slightly less boring Texas Hold ‘Em dominating the public eye. But it looks like someone wants to bring it back, because they’ve put one hell of a purse for anyone who’s fool enough to go after it, enough cash that you could pay off your debts and start a new life somewhere that isn’t Nevada. And you’re the sort of fool who’s feeling lucky and desperate enough to enter and risk your life. Five Card is, after all, your game.

When you arrive you’ll see that “international” was pure flavor text. You’ll recognize all the other drunks and drug addicts at the table from the rail yard where you all hide together from people who want to break your legs or tell you they love you and, for the first time in months, you’ll feel confident.

You’ll take hand after hand, until most of the pot sitting in front of you, heaped plastic chips resembling the treasure of some incredibly lame dragon. In the end it’ll all come down to you and Richard “Mentally-Ill” McGee.

Rich McGee will barely know where he is. A combination of Vietnam, heroin and syphilus will have long since eaten away at his brain, and the parts left seem dedicated almost entirely to screaming obscenities, urinating in public and apparently playing Five-Card-Draw.

But you know for a fact that if Rich wins the prize it’ll all go straight to hookers and blow. It’d be one thing if you were planning on spending it on the same, but that money is earmarked for your yet-unborn-daughter’s college education. So you won’t let up or offer to go Halfsies™ with him. Instead you’ll use the friendship the two of you have shared for the last decade against him.

You’ll ask him about his gay son.

He’ll start shrieking and throwing cards and chairs in every direction. It’ll take three security people in black suits and dark glasses to drag him out of the front door. You’ll shake your head at him as he goes, still shouting “faggot” as the top of his lungs, lazily casting your cards on the table.

You’ll give the judges a look and shrug, and they’ll be left speechless. They’ll look around amongst themselves and shrug too, and then the oldest one of them, the one with the moustache, will hand you a giant sack with a dollar sign painted on it.

It’ll have enough greenbacks in it for you to pay back all of your debtors and buy a nice cottage in the hills. The casino expected you to gamble it all away in seconds, but you’ll shock the world by walking out and into a cab, which will take you to the local Mafia Headquarters™.

There you’ll pay back your debt, and the mob will cut off your left hand as a penalty for lateness, which is pretty much what you expected. You've been in this business a while.

You’ll toss your hand into a trash can at the city limits and start hitching with the remaining half-mil, dreaming of a city with a night sky.

Congratulations on Discarding Your Hand! Get it?!