‘The Master Mechanic’ - TwoPlusTwo Short Story Contest Winner

With very little fanfare, the News, Views, and Gossip forum over at 2+2 threw together a short fiction competition. With a pretty good prize put up by Mason Malmuth of any five books from the 2+2 library. Since Malmuth’s own books are on sale there, one can only spec.

In the end though, the prize pulled in just three entries which despite their tiny number still managed to vary wildly in tone and content.

(Photo: Youtube.com)

The Runners Up

‘An Officer and Degenerate’ tells the story of a crooked cop who shakes down minor traffic offenders for his poker money. At a few hundred words long the story is pretty efficient, setting up the character and situation, and then getting out. No muss, no fuss.

The brevity is also probably its biggest weakness, feeling somewhat rushed and incomplete.

The other runner up / loser was ‘The Goat’ a madcap sci-fi poker comedy full of furry-porn and poker in-jokes – most of which involve referring to real life things with slightly different names (e.g. cyber-web poker) – some of which even work. Telling the story of Thomas Dwayne, a goat man and poker-champ, and his run ins with organised crimes and the law.

It is pretty stupid, but not in a totally bad sort of way. And most of us are hoping it’s some sort of cry for help from Tom Dwan.

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

The winning story ‘The Master Mechanic’ tells the story of a recreational gambler who is offered a shot at making decent money on the side by one of the dealers at his local casino and ends up getting in a little deeper than he initially intended.

The story is somewhat clunkily told, but has some interesting ideas and after a slow start has twists in most of the right places.

It’s the story that would have got my vote.

(Photo: BBC.co.uk)

Better Luck Next Time

All three stories were all clearly written by poker players- the prose leaving a fair amount to be desired and the pacing in all three is all over the shop. But for something thrown together in a side forum it was a pretty fun little collection.

Hopefully there’ll be a follow up competition, just in case there is, I’ll be working on my script for Rounders II.

At the moment the names / handles of the author’s have yet to be released.