_When You Get into a Game of Draw in California It Is Well to Ascertain
the Rules in Advance._
"Before sitting into a game of poker anywhere near tidewater out on the
Pacific coast you'll always find it a pretty good scheme to make a few
preliminary inquiries of your fellow players as to the kind of poker
you're expected to mix up with," said a traveling man who had recently
returned to the East after a tour on the Slope. "Because I neglected to
do this myself on several occasions I got into all sorts of embarrassing
situations and all colors of poker trouble all the way from Portland,
Ore., to San Diego, Cal., and the fellows with whom I did little stunts
at draw--all good people, business men I met with through letters--put
me down as the worst jay in a game of cards that ever crossed the Rocky
Mountains. The folks out there think we're all jays back here, anyhow,
if for no other reason than that we haven't enough brains to migrate in
a body to the Pacific Slope, but they complacently told me that I was
the worst of the species they had ever seen, simply because I couldn't
seem to get the hang of the queer old game they call poker out in that
country.
"The game they dub poker out there isn't poker at all, in my opinion.
It's a hybrid sort of affair, full of fancy moves that must have been
chucked into the original game by early California vaqueros with such a
taste for embellishment that they had to tack gilt fringe on to their
pants and to encircle their hats with silver cable. Whatever they call
it, it's not American draw poker by a darned sight. The kind of poker
that I was raised on--the real thing, the article of draw that we play
on this side of the Alleghanies--doesn't take any more account of the
joker, for instance, than it does of the card case; but out in
California they think a man's plumb blind crazy if he registers a kick
over having the joker in the deck. I'd as lief play old maid or grab for
corn-silk cigarettes as play draw poker with the joker mixed up in it;
but out there I had to take the game as it was served up, and, as
between poker with a joker and no poker at all, I, of course, accepted
the lesser of the two evils and played. But I got dumped on the game for
about 2,000 miles of coast line, and that, too, by people who didn't
have to count themselves because they were so many at the game. The
trouble was that I played the game of draw that I was brought up on and
they played their crossbred game, and the result was just about as queer
as it would be to see a baseball pitcher chucking up a Rugby football to
a cricket batsman with a fence picket in his hands.
"I'll not forget my first run-in with this poker-joker idea. This was my
first visit to the slope, you know and, although I'd often heard vaguely
that young 'uns, playing draw for beans or tin tags, once in a while
shoved the joker into the pack for the fun of the thing. I, of course,
never dreamed that rational adult human beings in any quarter of the
earth could have the nerve to inflict such a dismal outrage upon the
noble game of draw as to slap the joker into a poker deck. But I found
out different the very first game of draw that I sat into out in San
Francisco.
"It was a four-handed game, and I was the only Eastern man in the bunch.
The other three fellows were business men who belong to the Native Sons'
organization, which accounts for the weird brand of poker they played.
They played what was taught 'em in their youth out there; didn't know
any better, and thought, and no doubt still think, that their game is
right.
"I was banker, and dished up the first hand. It was 25 cents ante and $5
limit. I gave myself two rattling good pairs, kings up on tens. All of
the other fellows stayed, and the man on my right made it a couple of
dollars more to draw cards. This let two of 'em out of it, but I thought
my two pairs were good enough for a $2 raise, and so I played with the
raiser. He drew one card, and so, of course, did I. It was his bet, and
he came at me on the double with the limit. I'd caught another king, and
had as neat-looking a full house as a man needs to have in any kind of a
game.
"'Five more'n you,' said I, and we shuttled the limit back and forth
until we each had about $50 in the pot. Said I to myself, 'I've got you
beat, my boy, for the percentage of the game is 'way against your
holding fours against my full hand, especially on the first clatter out
of the box, and, even if you've filled those two pairs of yours--which
you probably haven't, for the percentage is plumb against you--you
certainly haven't got aces on top.' Now, that was good poker reasoning,
the kind of reasoning that has kept me necktie and peanut money ahead of
the game anyway for twenty years or so, and I gave him the raise-back
just as often as he threw it at me.
"'Finally,' said he, 'we are getting out of our depth and beyond the
breaker line, ain't we? I've got you man-handled, but you junipers from
the East never can feel the hunch when you are licked, and so I'll skate
in my little five and call you.'
"We each had about $80 in the pot then.
"I spread out my three royal gentlemen topping the pair of tens, and was
just about to make some good-natured crack about getting a hoe to scoop
in my winnings on the first hand, when he spread out his hand and raked
in the pot with a smile. His hand consisted of a pair of aces up on a
pair of sixes and the joker.
"'What the dickens are you doing there?' I asked him when he raked in
the pot. 'Can't you see it's a misdeal? I forgot to take the joker out
of the deck.'
"'Misdeal nothing,' he said, still smiling. 'You had a good hand all
right, but aces beat kings, you know, anywhere from Tuolume to Tucson.'
"'Yes,' said I, 'but you've only got aces up, and I've got a full hand,
kings up, and it's a misdeal, anyhow'----
"Well, they all looked at me like they thought I ought to be in a
lunatic asylum.
"'Misdeal?' said my friend who had swiped the pot. 'What the deuce are
you giving us, anyhow? I caught the joker on the draw, and it just
filled my hand--three aces and a pair of sixes. Don't an ace-full beat a
king-full in that desolate Atlantic coast region you hail from?'
"'You mean you call the joker an ace?' said I, the thing beginning to
dawn upon me.
"The three fellows gazed at me as if they were trying to find out if I
was drunk or not.
"'Why, do you mean to say,' said the man I had played with, 'that you
don't know that in poker the joker is any old thing you choose to make
it--that, when you get it either on the deal or on the draw, you can
call it anything you want to call it to eke out a pair, flush, full
house or anything else? Tell you what, old man, you need sleep. You've
been working too hard. Turn in and have a long night of it.'
"I couldn't help but laugh.
"'Well,' said I, 'you people may call this joker-jiggling poker, but
somehow or another it suggests tag and I-spy and little girls singing
"London Bridge is falling down" to me. Why in the devil don't you play
poker with a pinochle deck and be done with it? Come on, and we'll build
card houses, or what's the matter with playing casino for chalk or
pin-wheels?'
"'Why, don't you benighted people back East use the joker?'
"'Yes,' said I, 'we do. We always give the joker in a new deck to babies
in arms to cut their teeth on.'
"Another queer kink in the slope game of draw is that straights don't
go. I've been catching occasional pat straights and drawing to 'em all
my life, and I think the straight is one of the prettiest plays in
poker. In playing straights, if the chap across the table draws one
card, you've got the fun of trying to figure out whether he's drawing to
a couple of pairs or bobbing to a straight or a flush, and it's
interesting work. If he stands pat, it's up to you to determine by the
mind-reading process whether he's simply bluffing or actually has a pat
straight or full hand or flush in his paws.
"Well, out on the coast they've heard occasional rumors of such things
as straights being played somewhere or another in the game of draw, but
you won't meet one coast man in a hundred that knows precisely what the
straight consists of and what the chances are of a man's getting a pat
straight or of filling a one-ended or double-ended straight. As for
playing straights, they've never even dreamed of such an absurdity. I
found that out in the second game of draw I got into out there.
"It was in Portland, and another four-handed game, the other three
fellows being business men also. We played along for a while without my
running into any snags sticking out of the coast game, and then I got on
the deal four cards that had in them the making of a corking good
straight, capable of being filled at either end, from nine up to queen,
so that either an eight or a king on the draw would have fixed me all
right. I decided to draw to it just for luck, although all three of the
fellows were in and had stood a rise before the draw. When I caught my
king I was glad I had decided to draw to my straight. A king-high
straight is a pretty good mess of cards in any man's game of draw as we
know draw back in these parts.
"There was a heap of betting on that round, and, of course, with that
clipper-built straight of mine, I wasn't going to let any of 'em put it
on me. I met every raise and stuck so persistently and confidently that
the whole three of them began to regard me as the main guy so far as
that deal was concerned and look a bit afraid of me. The last time I
raised it they kind o' exchanged looks, and the man at my left called
me. The other two men followed suit, and there was a general laying down
of hands. The man at my left had three eights, the fellow next to him
aces up on treys, and the man at my right three sixes. I projected my
right arm to sweep in the good-sized pot after spreading out my
king-high straight.
"'Hold up, there!' they all yelled at me at once. 'What's all this? What
are you trying to do--hypnotize us?' And the man who had laid down his
three eights made a reach for the pot.
"It was now my turn to think the whole three of 'em looney.
"'Is there so much smoke in here,' said I, 'that you three people can't
perceive that I've got a king-high straight?'
"'Straight?' said the man with the three eights. 'Straight be damned!
You've got one king up on nothing. How old are you, anyhow--seven?
Straight? Listen to him!' And the three of 'em gave the hoarse hoot in
chorus. I asked 'em to get around me and pinch me, because I wanted to
find out if I was dreaming or not, but they were too busy leaning back
in their chairs and roaring like so many wild asses of the woods to pay
any attention to me. That's what I got for not inquiring beforehand into
the kind of draw I stacked up against in Portland.
"The next poker knock I got was down in Santa Barbara. I got into a game
of draw with three hotel clerks, all good fellows, but all addicted to
the nursery poker they play out there, and again I forgot to nail 'em up
against the wall and make 'em exude information about the kind of game
they purposed playing. We got along all right for an hour or so, and at
the end of the time I was comfortably well ahead of the game. It kind o'
tickled me, too, when I caught the joker on the draw three or four times
and beat 'em out on their own game-- which is a silly game, and about as
brainy as bean-bag, all the same. I also kept away from my inclination
to draw to straights, and, having made this much progress, I really
didn't think I was in for any more rude and costly surprises in the
game. That's where I did the leap-year figuring.
"I gave myself a neat mess of clubs--four of them--with the ace for a
capstone. I have always been lucky in bobbing to flushes, and this
looked good. Two of the other fellows drew two cards each, and the other
man asked for one. I gave myself another club, and tried to look gloomy
and depressed. An ace-high flush has always been good enough for me on
this side of the continent, and I bet it for all it was worth. The three
hotel clerks evidently thought they were pretty well fixed, too, and,
although there was nothing frantic about the betting, it was nice and
smooth and even, and the pot grew in a way that suited me down to the
ground. When it got so large on five-dollar raises as we thought it
ought to be there was a general suggestion for a call and a show-down.
Two of my fellow players had threes, small ones, and the other two pairs
that we wouldn't stay with very long back in this neck of the woods.
Well, I flashed my ace-high flush of clubs on them, and was just about
to say something about easy money when the man with the best threes
scooped in the pot.
"'Must have left your specs at home, my boy,' said I, thinking he was
only fooling. 'Pass that pile over.'
"'For why?' said he.
"Then I looked him over and saw that he was serious.
"'For why?' I repeated. 'Well, the instructors at whose feet I sat to
learn what is learnable about the game of draw poker always taught me to
believe that a flush is better than threes.'
"'Yes,' said he, 'but didn't you draw a card?'
"'What the devil difference does that make?' I inquired.
"'Oh,' said he patronizingly, 'I see you're a bit new at the game. You
see, you can't draw to flushes. You've got to hold 'em pat.'
"Well, that was the worst jab I had yet received, but I had to stand for
it, on the 'do-as-the-Romans-do' principle.
"In San Diego I got into a game with some fellows who were so warm that
they wouldn't play anything but jack-pots. At the start-off of the
game--the first hand--none of the four of us could open it. It went
around three times, and on the fourth deal I caught a pair of queens.
Two of the other fellows stayed. I caught another queen, and played the
hand for all it was worth. When I was called I showed down my hand, and
had 'em both beat.
"'Foul hand,' said they. 'You didn't have openers,' and they looked at
me suspiciously.
"'The dickens you say!' said I. 'I went in with a pair of queens and
caught another one--there they are.'
"'But you needed aces,' said they, all at once. 'It went around four
times, and jack-pots are progressive, of course. D'ye mean to say you
didn't know that? Sorry, old man, that we'll have to split the pot.'
"'Are they always progressive out here?' I asked.
"'Always,' they answered, and that settled it. The pot was split."