In his own way, Falafel wanted to be transformed too. He wanted to be healthier, more mindful, more purposeful. “My life, I just got into a situation,” he said. “Some of the hardships I endured, I did so without realizing that they were hardships. I should have a family. That is a big missing part of my own puzzle.”
Once, in an airport, Falafel sat next to a rabbi, and asked him for his thoughts about gambling. The rabbi said that it was not prohibited, but that a life of gambling was unsanctioned by God. Falafel told me, “I see religion for what it really is: just a bluff,” but he couldn’t get the interpretation out of his head. One evening, outside a casino bathroom, I saw him stop a young bearded man in a yarmulke and say, “I have a question for you: do you know what Jewish law says about gambling?” The man was taken aback. It didn’t matter—Falafel was already answering. “I think it is that you can gamble, but that you can’t earn a living from gambling. Is that it?”
At the Menger, Mr. Joseph had rented the Presidential Suite, and on Super Bowl Sunday he filled it with food and with backgammon players. By then, the tournament was over. The mood was relaxed. Falafel had lost in the semifinals, to a longtime player from Texas, and he had been upset. But now, in Mr. Joseph’s suite, the loss was easily forgotten. There was the Super Bowl to distract him—he had bet many rubles on the Baltimore Ravens. And there was his weight. He stood near an elaborate buffet that Mr. Joseph had arranged. “You can eat this,” a player from Germany said, pointing to a tin of celery. Falafel already had a stalk in his mouth. He took a few carrots and a bottle of mineral water and walked over to a couch. A plate of cheesecakes was set down in front of him. “Those pies,” Mr. Joseph said, casually. “Have one of those pies.”
“No,” Falafel said, cradling his belly. “I can’t.”
“I’ll give you 50 bucks right now to eat one of those pies,” Mr. Joseph said, pulling out a crisp bill.
“How many calories?” Falafel said.
“Thirty,” Mr. Joseph said.
“Bullshit!” The Bone said.
Falafel looked at the money and hesitated. “Jeez,” he said. “You’re giving me a 50?” But he held his ground.
It used to be that tournaments were the center of big-money side games, but these days the few players who make their living from backgammon must look in deeper waters for big fish. Before leaving the Menger, one top player told me in hushed tones that he was going to see a billionaire who puts him up in a hotel near his house so that they can play all-night games for $1,000 a point. The billionaire is so obsessive that he can play for 15 hours uninterrupted; the player told me he had to bring a friend to cover for him during bathroom breaks.
From Texas, Falafel and The Bone headed for Los Angeles, where they rented a business suite at a Manhattan Beach hotel. Word had been quietly circulating about a group of wealthy amateurs playing for enormous stakes. Not merely fish—a pod of whales. Who would they be? Ted Turner? Carl Icahn? George and Barbara Bush host a private tournament at Kennebunkport. One of the most-read books in the Bush family is Backgammon for Blood, a handbook from the 1970s. (“Unfortunately, that’s one of the worst books,” a mathematician told me. “It was written under a pseudonym, and some people say it was intentionally bad so that people reading it would play worse.”) Falafel thought he could find a way into the action from the West Coast, but he was fanatically secretive about what he knew. The money was too big—too important to his future. “This is a fantasy,” he told me, by which he meant that the games were just an ephemeral opportunity, a blinding spark.
Falafel’s hotel was a favorite of Jersey Jim’s, who had also come, with his wife, Patty. Every day, they went across the street to a gym the size of an LAX hangar. Falafel was relying on them to help him lose weight. But he did not want to lift, or run, or exert himself intensively. Instead, he decided to restrict his diet to 1,000 calories per day, and to walk. Jersey Jim and Patty worked on him until he agreed, at least, to climb the Manhattan Beach dune: a steep, 270-foot incline near an Army Reserve facility, where athletes like Kobe Bryant come to work out.
On the morning that Falafel and The Bone arrived, a lean man with bleached dreadlocks, shirtless and deeply tanned, was doing yoga on a blanket at the base of the dune. Falafel looked a little intimidated. He watched as The Bone began striding up the incline and then slowed down. “Gee,” he said. “The Bone, he’s realizing that it takes a lot of energy.”