Poker player

“ Being inclined to play a “little poker,” he inquired of the urbane hotel clerk where he could find a “gentleman’s game.” In due time he was introduced into a private “club room,” where the proclivities of the poker-player might be gratified by a “no limit” game. Of course the frequenters were all “gentlemen;” gentlemen, however, of that peculiarly whole-souled variety who would throw a drowning “sucker” a bar of lead as a life preserver. The man from the “hub” played for several hours, and rose from the table a loser to the amount of about two thousand dollars. ”

“ The proportion of poker playing members is not large and I have never heard of but one man squandering all his means (almost $30,000) there. This was a present member of the Charleston bar, and it took him almost ten years to do it. The other club is the Queen City Club, which is more of a poker club than anything else and where men occasionally lose and win as much as $2,000 in a night. No professional is allowed there, but it is the favorite resort of the non-professional poker player of the city. ”

“ It really seemed like a private game, with all of the players masked.
I watched one more hand, as much to see how the details were carried on silently, as for any other reason, for I knew the game. It was what is colloquially known as “seven-card pique,” though it bears no relation whatever to piquet, being a corruption of ordinary stud poker. Two cards were dealt around first, face down. Then the next card was turned face up for each player. The highest card had the privilege of betting or checking the bet. The next man to the left then could bet, drop, raise or simply check. ”

“ In fact, nobody thought about it after the interruption until it was too late for a showdown and the chips had all disappeared, nobody knew where. It takes a pretty serious happening to destroy all interest in a game of poker just at the moment when somebody has raised the limit in a big jack-pot and each player is confident of winning. ”

“ There was absolutely nothing in the game to distinguish it from any other of the hundreds of games that go on in the family circles of up-to-date New Yorkers every night. The limit was five cents. There wasn’t a player in the game who knew enough of card manipulation to deal a crooked hand, and there wasn’t one there who would have done it under temptation. ”

“ This is the proper way to use the Vest Holdout and if used on this principle any ordinary Poker player with a moderate amount of discretion can use it month after month in 9 out of every 10 Poker Games in the country, it is a fine Invention and any one that plays cards for a living need it more than they do snide Jewelry or Flashy Clothes with holes in their pockets instead of Dollars. There is but one way to gamble successfully and that is to get Tools to work with and have the best of every Game you get into. ”

“ The players must throw away their discarded cards before taking up or looking at those which they draw.
216In poker, as fairly played, every player is for himself and against all others, and to that end will not let any of his cards be seen, nor betray the value of his hand by drawing or playing out of his turn, or by change of countenance, or any other sign. ”

“ These parties have a sort of a telephono-graphosto kind of information, which, many times, it is impossible to detect.
“I will now try to picture to you a successful, and yet strictly honest, and liberal poker player; [43] one with whom many would rather play and lose, than to play with others and win. You have undoubtedly often heard this remark in your club: ‘Well, there is no use in playing with “Smithy,” for he always wins. I know he is a square, nice man, a liberal player, and one of the best fellows, socially, in the club ”

“ The person conducting the game then takes the bottle, in which the balls have been placed, in his hand, and throws them from its open mouth, one to each player. The latter then examine the little spheres which they have received and either forfeit the chips which they have already laid down or make their bets in the same manner as in playing poker. Precisely the same tactics are employed in both games. When the “call” is made the player holding the ball on which is inscribed the highest number wins the bet, by which is meant all the stakes which have been placed upon the table. ”

“ Watch very closely an uneasy player, one who is almost constantly on the move; using the cuspidor often, though neither chewing [25] nor smoking; his hands and arms continually on the move, while they ought to be quiet on, or above the table. The probabilities are that such a player is taking cards from the pack, and secreting them in some place on his person—inside of his neck collar, under his handkerchief, in his lap, up his coat-sleeve, or holding them in the bend of his knee, and using them whenever the hand dealt him can be benefited thereby. ”

“ The players look at the balls they have received, each one noting the number which has fallen to him, and coming in or declining to play accordingly, stake their bets. This being done, a second ball is dealt to each player, and the two balls thus received constitute his hand. The betting now proceeds as at poker, the rules being precisely the same, except that the balls rank according to their numerical value, and that the complications arising from 'pairs,' 'threes,' 'fours,' and 'flushes,' cannot arise. ”

“ Each player in turn looks at his turned card and makes his bet or raise. A common variation of Stud-Poker consists in stopping the deal after two cards, one face up and the other face down, have been dealt, and betting on those two cards. A third card is then dealt and betting again takes place, the process being repeated after the fourth and fifth cards have been dealt, the value of the different hands changing with each added card. A player failing to “stand” any raise must retire from that pot. ”

“ In all, four cards were turned face up for each player, and the seventh and last card dealt face down. Opportunity thus was given for five bets on each hand. All of this money went into the center of the table, and when the final call came, the best five-card poker hand that could be made out of any of the seven-card aggregations won the money.
“Chips at this table are worth five, ten, twenty-five,” assured my monitor. At the end table of this row they sell for twice this amount, while across there,” and he waved his black-draped arm, “is a cheaper game. ”

“ It beats all dice throwing to death. Let all dice throwers who make dice their specialty take notice it will win Dollars where dice wins Pennies. Any man can get a game with it in a Billiard Saloon, and to get a game is to get all the money there is in the house. In his travels with one of these he can win a Million. The game is called High Ball Poker, and is simply this: 2 or 20 players put up their ante the same as in draw poker at cards, then each player draws one ball ”

“ Ante.—The stake deposited in the pool by the dealer at the beginning of the game. At Straight Poker each player puts up an Ante.
Blind.—This name is given to the bet made by the eldest hand before the cards are cut to be dealt.
The eldest hand alone has the privilege of starting the Blind, though the player to the left of him may, if he likes, double it, and again, the next player, still to the left, may straddle it, which means double it again. ”

“ The thoroughbred running horse is a peculiar animal. While he is often beaten, the very wisest veterans of the turf have a favorite maxim to the effect that "The ponies can't be beat"—meaning the thoroughbred racers; which sounds paradoxical enough. Poker, too, is a mystifying affair, in that all men who play it appear, from their own statements, to lose at it persistently and perennially. There is surely something weird and uncanny about a game that numbers only losers among its devotees. However, poker-players are addicted to persiflage. ”

“ So long as they have in reserve a fair supply of “chips,” French-Canadian poker players excel at the game of “bluff.” They possess in a remarkable degree the effrontryeffrontry and cool “cheek” necessary to successful poker playing for which they manifest a predilection almost from childhood. Professionals and merchants alike gamble at night at their clubs or at each others residences, and students and clerks, imitating the practices of their employers and elders, assemble for the same purpose in each other’s rooms.other’s rooms. ”

“ Witness the following, which is culled from the circular issued by one of the 'Sporting Houses':—
'To smart poker players.—I have invented a process by which a man is sure of winning if he can introduce his own cards. The cards are not trimmed or marked in any way, shape or manner. They can be handled and shuffled by all at the board, and without looking at a card you can, by making two or three shuffles or ripping them in, oblige the dealer to give three of a kind to any one playing, or the same advantage can be taken on your own deal. This is a big thing for any game. ”

“ Five men of better nerve never dealt cards than the five who sat playing poker the other night in one of those up-town club-rooms that are so quietly kept as to be entirely unknown to the police and the general public. The game proved to be phenomenal. ”

“ The remainder of the pot—a goodly sum—lay in a confused heap in front of him, and before speaking he looked at it steadily for a space wherein one might count fifty. At length he said, raising his hand, as if registering an oath:
“I am done with poker. I have nothing to say against the game. You all know how well I love to play. To my mind there is no other sport that equals it. None, I believe,15 so shows the skill and the mettle of a man as this does. Yet, loving the game as well and admiring it as much as I do, I give it up from this moment, forever. ”

“ When one of the pricked cards is felt, the dealer slips it back and deals from under it until he comes to himself, when he secures it for his own hand, thus gradually obtaining a pair of aces or kings, sometimes two pairs, and occasionally three of a kind. When this trick is successfully performed, the professional is usually able to “clean out” a greenhorn with the utmost ease and dispatch. It is a favorite mode of swindling at poker, inasmuch as it requires no partner, no stocking of cards, and admits of their being fairly shuffled. ”

“ Those who don't understand much about poker would find it unintelligible, and those who do would probably find it tedious; and to specify even the approximate amount of the stakes is unnecessary, for to some it might seem unbelievable, and to others it might seem insignificant. It is sufficient to say that every man at the table was an experienced gambler and each of us regarded it as a stiff game, an exceptionally stiff game for even the Bristol. ”

“ I never saw anything but poker played in the house, but the game was sometimes for tremendous stakes. Everybody seemed to have almost unlimited money who came there to play, for money was plentiful in Washington that year, and a thousand-dollar bet was no more an occasion for surprise than one of fifty dollars, though a five- or ten-dollar limit game was common enough,114 too. You could play a modest game if you liked, for there were several tables going every night, but if you preferred, you could generally get into a table stakes game and flash any sort of a roll you saw fit. ”

“ No game is too small for them, though they will play heavily at times, but they manage to live on their little skill by worming their way into friendly games of poker, such as are played all over the country, but perhaps more openly in the West than in the East.
“When Dick Bradley happened along our way and stopped over at our town, we had, though we did not realize it immediately, all the elements of a drama right at hand. ”

“ It was a part of his regular patrol of the boat, and he was as particular to see that nothing was going wrong at the card table as he was to see that everything was right elsewhere on the boat. Of course, poker itself was not considered wrong. It was part of the regular routine of life. A man could play or not, but a man who would object to anybody else playing would have been as lonesome as a prohibitionist in Kentucky. ”

“ What is the matter with settling this thing with poker? We can play freeze-out, and three games will settle it, the winner dropping out each time.’
“The proposition caught me. You know I used to pride myself on my poker. After a little hesitation the others agreed. The man who proposed it had the cards, and we counted out six hundred coffee beans for chips and began playing on a blanket folded and laid on the ground. You would think the details of a game like that would fix themselves in the memory, so that I would be able to tell you every hand I held and every bet I made, wouldn’t you? ”

“ It can be introduced into club rooms, and made to take the place of draw poker with cards. It is attractive and fascinating, and played the same as draw, and the novice would rather play it, as he knows there will be no shuffling up on him, no monkey work with the cards, and he has as good a chance as the gambler and won’t be afraid to play alongside of him any more than he would at faro bank. ”

“ And, Gordon, here’s your pistol. I think it will be safer in your hands than it was a short time ago. And now I am going to give you a few parting words of advice.
“In the first place, young fellow, don’t gamble. If your blood is too red to heed this admonition, learn to play poker. It’s a scientific game and a square one, usually—always so among gentlemen. Never bet against another man’s game, nor play against a percentage. Gambling games of that kind are like the play of life, the percentage is in favor of the dealer, and it fetches you sooner or later. ”