Queer Luck: Poker Stories from the New York Sun

Queer Luck
Poker Stories from the New York Sun
By David A. Curtis
New York Brentano’s 1899
Copyright, 1896, 1897, 1898, by THE SUN PRINTING AND PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION
Copyright, 1899, by BRENTANO’S
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 play was high. The party had played together once a week, for a long time, and the limit had always been one dollar at the beginning of the evening, though occasionally it had gone as high as ten before morning. This particular night, however, the cards ran remarkably well, and by midnight the limit was ignored if not forgotten. Two of the players had laid their pocketbooks alongside their chips. They had not played so before, but the gambling fever had come upon them with the excitement of good hands, one against another, until the friendly contest had become a struggle for blood. Fours had been shown several times since midnight, and beaten once, while straight flushes had twice won important money. Deck after deck had been called for, and tossed aside in turn after a few deals, till the carpet was strewn thickly with the discarded pasteboards, but there was no change in the remarkable run of the cards. Pat fulls and flushes showed in deal after deal, and the luck in the draw was so extraordinary and so evenly distributed that they all grew cautious of betting on any ordinary hand, and a bluff had not been tried for an hour. Yet no one had offered a remark, though the play grew higher and harder. It was as if each man feared to break the run by mentioning it. At length the Colonel spoke.
“The devil himself is playing with his picture books to-night, I think,” he said, with a short laugh, as he lost two stacks of blues on a seven full.
It had been the Doctor’s deal, and he looked up quickly. Gazing at the Colonel, he said: