Hearts (heavy revisions)

[original]

I met Danny Kannberg covering the 2004 International Hearts Championship for ESPN the Magazine. The field was the largest in tournament history, mixing a large group of veterans who had been on the circuit for years with timid rookies who felt as if they had something to prove. The tournament split into two camps along these lines, with old rivals and new strangers often looking out for each other in games.

Kannberg was an exception. He stood outside the fray, scoffing at and even openly mocking the newly-formed alliances. At twenty-six, he was one of the youngest veterans there. He was loud, brash, and damn good, and he was easily the most magnetic personality in the tournament. He bragged about being able to guess a player’s entire hand based on how they had played the first three tricks. “See this guy here?” he asked me early in the tournament, referring to a bewildered rookie at his table. “He played an Ace of Spades on the second hand before me or this guy went, then the Three of Spades right after that. Now that means he knows neither of us have the Black Lady,” he said, referring to the Queen of Spades, worth thirteen points and therefore the most feared card in the game. “And now he’s out of spades so he played that heart, and he didn’t have to play that Ace” Kannberg continued loudly, “which means he doesn’t have the Queen either but he knows where it is because he passed it to this one.” He now pointed at the fourth player at the table, Steve Nastanovich. Three hands later, Nastanovich laid down the Queen of Spades, just as Kannberg predicted.

“If you liked that,” Kannberg told me, “would you be impressed if I told you I could have called every single card played from trick two to the end?” He grinned confidently and proceeded to trounce his overmatched opponents.

Kannberg isn’t only remarkable for his raw skill. He is also as proficient a master of human psychology as you will find in any academy. He didn’t just see his opponents’ cards in his head; he shared what he knew with everyone else. Danny would predict which cards someone would play before his unsuspecting opponent could move, warn players about mistakes they had made before anyone else had realized it was a mistake, and sometimes even list an entire player’s hand for everyone to hear—often only missing a single card. He was simultaneously one of the most respected and reviled characters in Hearts.

At the final table, Danny jumped out to an early lead. He was leading by twenty-five points when one of his opponents was poised to go over the edge (a low score being desirable in Hearts), ending the tournament. Danny gloated and took it easy, taking his mind off the game a bit and chatting confidently with spectators on the side. While he wasn’t paying attention, his closest competitor shot the moon). This rare feat, achieved when a player intentionally collects the Queen of Spades and every heart in the deck in any one hand, gives twenty six points to everyone else at the table. The game was over and Kannberg had lost by one point. He held his head in his hands and hid under the table for almost four minutes while the winner’s celebration went on around him.

That night, as he was leaving, I asked Danny if I could follow him for a year to watch his preparation for the next year’s tournament. He refused angrily, swearing and pushing me out of the way at the door. I called him again ten months later. This time, he agreed.

___________

I started playing Hearts when I was, uh, I must have been six or seven. My grandfather would play with two of my uncles and my Aunt Elaine. Then one day my Uncle Murray died and my grandfather just pointed to me the next time they played and just nodded. And I knew what he meant. So I joined them and I won the first game I ever played and I just blew them out of the water. It wasn’t even close. I think I shot the moon twice which, you know, isn’t that uncommon for a player like me these days when I play against opponents on their level, but this was my first time, you know?

To tell you the truth, I’m not sure how I was so good. I don’t know how I am so good for that matter. I don’t know if I was just born that way or if I picked it up from watching them play, but from that very first game, I knew I was something special. I—I don’t know how to explain it really—I just knew. Everyone around the table knew. From that first day, I knew I had to be a Hearts player. That’s all I could do. I wouldn’t be happy any other way.

___________

While other players practice almost nonstop in the weeks leading up to a big tournament like the International Hearts Championship, Danny is much more casual about his training regimen. We arrived in Oklahoma City, the site of the 2005 tournament, at midnight. While most of his competitors checked into their hotel and went to sleep almost immediately, Danny treated himself to a night on the town.

We went to a bar in downtown Oklahoma City. The bar was almost empty but Danny chose a seat next to an attractive woman who looked out of place. He introduced himself to her and she looked away, but Danny was undeterred.

“So what do you do?” she asked when she realized Danny wasn’t going away, running her finger around the lip of her glass slowly. Danny grinned. This is what he wanted her to ask. He would later confess that he loved answering this question more than he loved the game itself.

“I play Hearts.” The woman suddenly turned, looking at him right in the eyes. Danny leaned back on his stool against the bar and subtly raised an eyebrow, the right side of his mouth curling upwards.

“Hearts?” she asked. “Like the card game?” Danny put his right pointer finger in the air, as if to stop her. The woman arched her spine a little bit, backing away from him but staying in her seat. Danny reached into his pocket and pulled out a fresh deck of cards.

“Have you ever played before?”

“No,” she asked, her voice flat. “I prefer Spider Solitaire.”

“Spider Solitaire, huh?” Danny chuckled. “Not bad, not bad. I mean it’s a challenging game, I’ll give you that. But you’re just playing against yourself and the deck.” He began effortlessly shuffling the cards with one hand. “It’s a whole different ballgame when you enter human psychology into the equation.”

“Card game.”

“Pardon?”

“It’s a whole different card game, technically.”

Danny shrugged, unaffected if he understood. “Let me show you something,” he said, dealing cards.

“I have to go, actually,” the woman said, hastily grabbing her purse and making her way towards the door. Danny watched her go and looked at me, chuckling.

“Don’t worry,” he said to me, winking. “There’ll be others.” He finished his drink and we left.

___________

It wasn’t easy to be the best from the start. Or fun even. You know, it was hard to find a good game. My aunt and uncle and grandfather didn’t like playing with me because whenever I sat down at the table, they already knew they were going to lose. Which was part of their problem because, you know, you can never ever let your opponent get in your head. Especially me, because when I get in your head, it’s pretty much over right then and there. I make your head my home.

So anyway, uh, my uncles and my grandfather couldn’t stand to play with me after a while. They couldn’t win a hand. Ever. Sometimes I felt bad for them, but I thought letting them win would just cheapen the whole thing and would be condescending, you know? Plus I think they’d have known just because—how else are they going to win? And I know I sound cocky when I say that but that’s just how it was, really. That’s what they were thinking, I’m sure. But anyway, it would just be me and my aunt Elaine. I’d be playing three hands at once and she couldn’t beat my combined three-hand score with her one number. I mean maybe I had an advantage working with three fourths of the deck, but she would still reach one hundred before I broke twenty-five counting all three of my hands combined. She committed suicide when I was ten. Not because of that, she was a—she was a messed up woman. But I guess that couldn’t have helped.

___________

***serendipity3338 has joined the table
***gameyman2003 has joined the table
***whistlingpenguin has joined the table
***spiralkannberg has joined the table
spiralkannberg: all right, children clear out plz
spiralkannberg: there’s a professional at the talbe.
gameyman2003: lol
spiralkannberg: *table
whistlingpenguin: asl
spiralkannberg: something funny?
spiralkannberg: besides how badly i'm about to beat you?
whilstlingpenguin: 14/f/miss
spiralkannberg: don't know why you'd find that funny, are you a sadist?
serendipity3338: 44/f/ny
gameyman2003: i think you mean masochist
spiralkannberg: actually i think i meant "about to have your ass handed to you in hearts."
gameyman2003: lol
gameyman2003: 15339 games played, spiral, lol, what do you play all day every day?
***ballbag96 has joined the table
***ballbag96 has left the table
spiralkannberg: i’m a pro
spiralkannberg: i have to keep in top shape
spiralkannberg: practice makes perfect
spiralkannberg: there's a free lesson for you
gameyman2003: lets just play the game dumbass
spiralkannberg: are those the cards you’re passing serendipity?
spiralkannberg: this is gonna be even easier than i thought
***serendipity3338 has left the table
spiralkannberg: shame
gameyman2003: shut the fuck up i just want to play
spiralkannberg: can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen, gamey
whistlingpenguin: asl
whistlingpenguin: 14/f/miss
spiralkannberg: 27/m/YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE
***gameyman2003 has left the table
***whistlingpenguin has left the table

___________

Playing online is tough, because unfortunately when you have a public site like Yahoo, where I play most of the time, then you just get a lot of kids who don’t have anything to do on a Friday night, you know, a lot of jokesters who don’t take the game seriously, you know? I mean obviously, it’s not pro-level competition. But it is what it is. And it’s something you have to do to stay on top of your game.

You can only play Hearts against the computer for so long. Computers can outsmart you most of the time—well not me at Hearts, but like at math they could—but they don’t have that extra human element. There’s no psychology in a computer. There’s none of that unpredictability. If you play Microsoft Hearts enough, you start to notice patterns. See, most of the time, if you have the Black Lady—that’s the Queen of Spades—you want to hold onto your spades so you have a nice little security cushion so you don’t have to let go of the thing too early and end up taking it, basic stuff. But Pauline doesn’t seem to know this. She’ll come out playing spades hard and you’ll think that Ben or Michele has the Queen so you get sloppy and play a high Spade in front of Pauline and Boing! There’s the Queen. Heading straight for your bucket. Thirteen points. If you don’t know what you’re doing, anyway.

But the point is these “people” were programmed. And they have their own little personalities and quirks that can keep you occupied for a while, but not forever. You start to notice patterns in their passing and, uh, the way they start and how they react when they start piling up the tricks. The Microsoft people have done an admirable job trying to program these things, but there’s only so far you can take them before you need to reintroduce the human element. The spontaneity, you know? You can play the computer all day long, but you’ll never become a champion until you learn how to cope with the human element and make that a part of your game. You need to see your opponent sweat and face someone who’s willing to crush you when you’re struggling and have the feeling that you can’t be sure exactly what’s coming next. When I play the computer, I can see the whole game from the very first trick. You don’t have that luxury in tournaments. And that’s why you need these public games.

___________

Danny put his hands on his head and stood up out of his chair. He paced around in circles a few times before returning to the table, standing by his seat.

“All right,” he said, his voice straining. “I know what you three are doing and I’m sick of it.” Two of his opponents looked at each other, confused. The third, Takahashi Ningyo, a middle-aged Japanese man wearing a maroon blazer over a red tee shirt, just laughed. He knew Danny well. They had clashed before and they thought of each other as adversaries, even enemies.

“It’s always a conspiracy with you when you lose, isn’t it Danny?”

“Well I think it’s fairly obvious to anyone who’s watching closely what’s going on,” Danny shouted. The tournament room, which had just been buzzing with excitement and tension, was now perfectly silent. “Every time I hold onto the Black Lady, you three play nothing but spades. When I pass it, it’s right there in the first trick I take. When I have a good hand to shoot the moon, you hand a heart to someone else within three hands. When I clear my hand of one suit I get three high cards of that suit right back into my hand. What gives guys?” His opponents just looked at him. Ningyo let a sly smile creep across his face. “Is someone going to be honest with me and tell me what the deal is here?”

Ningyo just shook his head, chuckling a bit. “Poor Danny.” Danny looked at him, his fury giving way to confusion and disbelief as he considered the possibility that he was actually being beaten. Ningyo’s laugh, his contempt, his disdain, had cut Danny’s legs out from underneath him. Danny’s greatest strength had been turned against him. “Poor poor Danny.”

“Collect your trick please, Mr. Kannberg,” the tournament director said quietly. Danny looked at him for a moment before calmly taking his place in his chair. He looked at the table for a second and relived the hand. He had opened with a five of hearts. Lauren played a four of hearts, Omar played a Jack of clubs, and then there was Ningyo’s Queen of Spades. He moved the cards into a pile. He slammed down a nine of diamonds and ran his fingers through his hair, looking down at the table. He had kept score in his head and his seventeen points (so far) would put him over the edge. The game would be over after just a few more cards. Another championship had slipped away.

___________

***scottywood2k has joined the table
***masfoera has joined the table
***spiralkannberg has joined the table
spiralkannberg: i hope none of you were planning on winning tonight
***big1fat1mario has joined the table
masfoera: Danny??
masfoera: Danny Kannberg, COrrect??
spiralkannberg: yeah thats right
spiralkannberg: how do yo uknow me?
masfoera: This is NINGYO!!!
spiralkannberg: oh
masfoera: Will this be a repeat of our Match last week??
masfoera: Danny???
big1fat1mario: gl all
***spiralkannberg has left the table

___________

Well yeah, it does bother me that I’ve never won the big one. I try not to let it get to me, but it’s difficult. I know I belong up there on the pantheon of great Hearts players, but unfortunately, people in this world aren’t measured by their raw skill. You need something to show for it. And I’ve been there eight times now and I still don’t have a title. It stings. It—it really does.

I honestly—I think I feel like I could beat anyone—anyone in the history of the game—on any given day of the week. And I have beaten some of the best in the world. But it’s just when I get into that tournament room and when I get to that final table—well I don’t know what happens. If I knew, I’d fix it. But something happens. The good hands just never come my way. And I used to know I could beat anyone but now—you can only lose so many times before it gets into your head. And follows you around. It’s disheartening.

I don’t think that it’s fair to judge my worth and skill as a Hearts player simply on championships. But that’s how the world works. And right now, in the eyes of those people who look at championships as the ultimate decider in these kinds of things, I’m—I’m nothing. Just another one of those flashes in the pan who make some noise but ultimately don’t make a lasting mark. And I want to make a mark.