Poker

“ 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 is now all confused, an impression of events with out sequence, a mass of little prominent purposeless things like rock conglomerate. I remember leaning my elbows on a low window-ledge and watching a poker game going on in the room of a dive. The light came from a sickly suspended lamp. It fell on five players,—two miners in their shirt-sleeves, a Mexican, a tough youth with side-tilted derby hat, and a fat gorgeously dressed Chinaman. The men held their cards close to their bodies, and wagered in silence. Slowly and regularly the great drops of sweat gathered on their faces. ”

“ 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 opened two doors, to find only the usual poker table, with the winners sitting quietly, their cards bunched in the palms of their hands, and the losers, growing more voluble as the night went on, buying chips recklessly, drinking more than they should. ”

“ In the mad rush of those times men could not sit still long enough to play poker or any other similar game; they must needs stake their all on the turn of a single card, or on one whirl of the wheel. With the decline of the banking games, however, poker leaped into favor, and many were the elegant quarters fitted up in the upper stories of buildings in the central part of the town, where gentlemen were wont to gather in the evening to indulge in what rapidly became a favorite pastime. ”

“ But when we come to real life, the poker is in the fore, and, ten to one, if we would grasp it, we find it too hot to hold;—lucky for us, if it is not white-hot, and we do not have to leave the skin of our hands sticking to it when we fling it down or drop it with a loud or silent cry! ”

“ Poker itself, though usually interesting while it is played, is merely repetition of inanimate detail when retold. Suffice it to say of that game that I followed instructions to the letter. In three hours of play I squandered nearly two hundred dollars, some of which I could have saved by taming my recklessness. ”

“ That the game of poker flourished on the river as it never has elsewhere, before or since, seems entirely probable. I have seen games that made me hold my breath because of the size of the stakes, and because of the fact that I knew the players were all armed, and a shot or a stab was certain to follow a hasty word or a suspicious act. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A very popular charm for reviving a fire when it has burnt down is to set the poker across the hearth, with the fore-part leaning against the top bar of the grate. The poker and top bar thus combined form a cross, and so defeat the malice of the witches and demons who preside over smoky chimneys. One notion is that the poker when in this position creates a draught, but the real meaning of this harmless superstition is, perhaps, the one that we have just given. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was while I was making this little journey, hitting a high place only once in a while, that I came to the determination that for a man who could not fight shy of bull-head luck any better than I could, the game of draw poker was altogether too exciting and spirit-ruffling for health and peace of mind ”

“ Outside of “banking” games, however, there is one which is almost as peculiarly American as is base ball. “Poker” seems to be, for some unexplainable reason, looming up as a National pastime. Some reference has already been made to gambling at the fashionable club house and in the family circle. Under such circumstances poker is the game par excellence. Stakes ordinarily run high, no matter how small the introductory ante may be. ”

“ The principle underlying draw poker is that a hand is valuable exactly in proportion to the difficulty encountered in getting it—that is, according to the smallness of the chance you have of holding it. Fours were supposed to be the hand that was the hardest to get, and so fours were the winning hand. When somebody discovered that the chances of holding a straight flush were fewer than the chances of holding fours, the straight flush took its place strictly in accordance with the rules of the game as already formulated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Poker seems also to be a game evolved by gamesters of the United States from the old Primero, with its ancient derivations, for so many of the rules and expressions common in the modern game may be traced to the fourteenth century. It is played by four or more persons, who bet on the value of their hands, a pair being the lowest and a straight flush being the highest hand, the names of which were inherited and explain themselves. ”

“ The proceedings in the elevator and tunnel were the same as on the previous occasions.
Five minutes later I was seated at one of the tables inside, with five hundred dollars' worth of chips before me, gambling as I never had gambled before in my life. The game into which I went first was straight poker. I chose it because it was the card game with the highest stakes of the evening. I played carefully, yet with a desperation that meant I should win, given an even break in the luck.
That even break did not come to me at the straight poker table. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Taking the gamblers apart, one by one, I lent each one of the four two dollars, with which to sit in a poker game which I told them I was about to open and in which I proposed to take a hand myself. To an old and penniless gambler, the prospect of enjoying all the excitement of poker playing without any risk is an alluring prospect. ”

“ If the inexperienced, unsophisticated reader will carefully peruse the foregoing paragraphs, he will have but little difficulty in reaching the conclusion that playing poker is about as hazardous as “encountering the tiger in his lair.”
STUD POKER. Another variety of poker in great favor among the gambling fraternity is called “stud poker,” a stud poker table being now considered a necessary adjunct to every first-class gambling house. The necessary outfit for the game consists of checks, cards and a table large enough to seat 10 or 12 persons. ”

“ I want to impress strongly upon you the fact also, that the game of Draw Poker is an expensive recreation. It’s only a question of time, and means at your command, as to the amount of money you will lose. The longer you play, and the more means under your control, the [15] more you will be out of pocket in the end. Like the ‘Outside Public,’ in Wall Street, it is only a question of time. At some other time, my boy, I will talk to you about Wall Street, but not now. With many, the loss of money at Draw Poker is the smallest item. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The game of 'high-ball poker' is one which is essentially American, both in origin and character. It is somewhat simpler than the proper game, but possesses no particular advantages over poker, as played with cards, beyond the fact of its comparative simplicity. On the other hand, the appliances required for playing it are more expensive, and not nearly so convenient. ”

“ Now, as a game for recreation and pastime, I do not object to it; it is said to possess qualities as an intellectual game, superior even to whist. But when engaged in for the purpose of gambling, I class it with other games in which professional gamblers live and thrive, by cheating and robbing those with whom they play. It has been said there is no such thing as a [10] ‘Square Gambler’; and a well-known Wall Street banker has said: ‘Whoever plays poker will cheat.’ I can not agree with the latter, but, with my definition of a gambler, I fully agree with the former. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I then forced the poker into the earth, and by rising and falling with nearly my whole weight hammered it down with my chest; about two feet behind I did the same with the stake, fastening a small line from the upper part of the poker to the lower part of the stake: this done, we made the well-rope secure round the poker, and gently let it down through one of the grooves in the rampart, which receives a beam of the draw-bridge when up. ”

“ I thought I was great at poker by the way I gathered in the beaver-skins at the Rendezvous, but here the slick devils beat me without half trying. When they'd slap down a bully pair, they'd screech and laugh worse than trappers on a spree.
“Says one, ‘Mr. Hatcher, I reckon you're a hoss at poker away in your country, but you can't shine down here—you ain't nowhere. ”

“ One of the youngsters asked me to79 join in a game of poker a little while ago, and I was going to do it, for I like poker when the stakes are not too heavy, but he told me they were playing with a joker.
“Now, they may get up a game of poker one of these days with high, low, big and little casino, and the right and left bowers in it, and it may prove to be a game that will be much liked by those who play it. ”

“ Another side table was surrounded by a gathering of Broadway statues and gambling house hangers-on, who were engaged in a game called 'hide the heart,' and the last table had a circle of big, heavy-bodied and solid-looking men about it who were putting up on a game known as 'stud-horse poker.' The reporter and the clerk were quickly accommodated with seats at the center table, where 'draw poker' was in operation. The colored attendant with the white tie was at hand, and pulling out a ten-dollar bill the clerk gave it to the negro with the request to get him that amount of chips in return. ”

“ As soon as supper was over and the first guard had taken the herd, the poker game opened, each man being given ten beans for chips. We had only one deck of cards, so one game was all that could be run at a time, but there were six players, and when one was frozen out another sat in and took his place. As wood was plentiful, we had a good fire, and this with the aid of the cook’s lantern gave an abundance of light. ”