Prime

Primes are good.

I have 77 in my hand. Two, a pair, a duo of primes. Two is prime. Two primes together. 7 5 2 on the flop gives me a set, three primes. The 5 pairs on the river and I have a house. My heart beats in a slow rhythm as all is right in the world – I measure out a bet. £29 should do the trick into the pot of £31. It will cost Nemo a prime number to call and he does so. A nice pot of £89 is taken down.

I was late for the game. It took me 19 minutes to leave the house beforehand. Taps off. Check. Plugs out of the wall and in the middle of the room. Check. Back door triple locked. Check. Commit double lock of front door to memory via visualisation. Check. Pull/Push front door 3 times. Check.

My chips are set neatly in front of me. 5 neat stacks. A single £100, three £25s and thirteen £5s. The singles are more problematic. I have exactly one hundred of them. A terrible number, divisible by more numbers than I could care think of. A promiscuous aberration penetrated numerous times, and at numerous angles. I have solved this conundrum by stacking two piles of 47 and 53.

All is right, I am calm. The world has order. I notice some rogue fluff next to my stacks and it bothers me. The felt hasn’t been vacuumed and the irregular outline of the item is offending my orderly stacks. I decisively bat it away onto the Baron’s stack. He doesn’t notice. No attention to detail if you ask me.

Another hand has come up. I try not to let the Jack, Queen and King offend me. The fact there are four of each could be a problem, but they are justified in my head as a family of 3. This board is an issue though: T, 4, 6 with two spades. A horror with no redeeming features. Despite holding the fine 9 7 for a gutshot I fold quickly. My breathing returns to normal. I have to slightly adjust my stacks to account for expenditure on the hand. If I can’t make primes, I simply make superfluous stacks of 3 units. The sense of order is worth the effort.

“Change please” says the dealer, chucking a £25 chip in front of me. No! What’s he doing? He reaches over to my stacks as I break out into a cold sweat. Five singles are taken as well as four £5s. I’m left with four £25s, Nine £5s and an even number of singles. Disaster. My hand shakes as my mind does backflips trying to figure out how to re-prime my inventory. I now have cards as well – Kings. With a sense of foreboding, I have to play them. A minor consolation is that the resulting devastation to my stack leaves me with a much easier to order set of chips. Calm again. Phew! That was close.

I have to leave now. I want to re-stack the DVDs before I go to bed. It was only done last night, but order is important. I may have made an error. Or Shazbo might have moved one. I’m sure I’ll find as always, they are perfectly in sequenced, but I want to re-affirm. Need to re-affirm. Not a moment of sleep for me otherwise.