Seat 4 was staring at him, like all live players do, in hope of gaining information through some physical tell. The whole idea was laughably primitive to a player of Ray’s proficiency, but that didn’t solve his problem. He hesitated, not for fear of getting called and losing the money but in silent, dreadful anticipation of going over this hand in postgame analysis and finding it flawed, imperfect. Right and wrong were useless old concepts, smelling of sin and judgment and all that sort of nonsense, but optimal and suboptimal terrified him. He reached for three of the yellow chips resting on top of his stack and released them across the betting line. He had bet $3,000, twice the size of the pot.

How he hated himself. Years of playing, millions of hands, endless hours in pursuit of a perfect machinelike neutrality toward outcomes, of a complete, productive concentration on the process of decision-making. Result-oriented poker is the death of a poker player, he used to say; result-oriented thinking is the death of all rational thinking. But as he waited for his opponent to make his decision, to fold and offer him a $750 profit, to call and deliver him a $3,750 loss, there he was, staring blankly into the space in front of him, wondering, hoping, human.