Jerome’s skills improved steadily over the next year as he moved up in stakes. The legend of his nights beneath the boardwalk spread. He got to know the players, the dealers, the floor managers. He’d spend every minute he could in the casino card rooms playing poker. So he moved out of his parents’ house and got an apartment in Atlantic City. His job and the two-hour bus ride each way was just keeping him away from the action.

But as he improved and moved up in stakes, he needed to spend more time in Atlantic City. Jerome’s telemarketing job raising money for the Fraternal Order of Police helped replenish his ever-fluctuating stud bankroll. Finding somewhere safe and warm to wait for the next bus. Analyzing every hand, even the ones you win. Sixteen-hour sessions at the Taj, jumping up stakes to take bigger and bigger shots against better and better players. But this is what it took in the late 1990s to put together a bankroll. So he slept under the boardwalk as he waited for the first morning bus. The night before he had lost all of his money playing seven-card stud in the Taj Mahal, felted well past the hour of the last bus back upstate to his parents’ house in Roselle. He was underneath the Atlantic City boardwalk, sleeping in the sand. Jerome Graham was awakened by the sun coming up over the horizon of the Atlantic Ocean.

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