"'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.