Queer Luck: Poker Stories from the New York Sun

by David A. Curtis

“It is no news to the average newspaper reader,” said the gray-haired young-looking man, “that there has been a vast deal of heavy gambling done in Washington since the capital of the nation was established in that city. Stories without number have been told and retold about famous statesmen who have bucked the tiger in this and that resort, whichever one happened to be famous in its day, and who have won and lost enormous sums as coolly as Englishmen of equally high rank are said to have done when Pitt and Fox played in the London clubs. For one, I have little doubt that many of these stories are substantially true, though most of them are probably embroidered around the edges. Men who make national politics the game of their lives learn to love excitement, and next to politics, gambling is about the most exciting thing out. Some people even put it ahead of politics.

“I am the more inclined to believe these stories, too, because I remember a good deal about what happened in a certain poker club in that city a little while before the Crédit Mobilier scandal. I was a youngster then, but I had some reputation as a cool-headed player, and I was fond of the game, so it was not strange that after I had been properly introduced and had sat in once or twice, I got in the way of dropping in frequently, and finally of spending most of my evenings in this particular club-house until after Congress adjourned and the season was over. My business there was accomplished at about the same time, and I left the city, not to return for several years.

“The place was a modest-looking house, just off Pennsylvania Avenue. It had been designed for a private residence, and was used as such by the proprietor, for, though it was called a club, it was nothing more than a private gambling-house. No one could get admittance without a personal introduction by some one whom the proprietor knew and trusted, but once inside, a visitor was made to feel as if he almost owned the place.

“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, 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. I never saw a professional gambler in the house, excepting the proprietor. He was one, but he never played in his own place, and so far as I know, there was never a suspicion of a crooked play in any of the games that I saw.

“And as to the men who played? Oh! well, it would do no good to name names. Some were men whom nothing could injure in reputation. Some are dead. Others are out of politics. And not a few would be sorry indeed to be mentioned in connection with high play at a time when their ostensible income was not sufficient to warrant it. It was a season, however, in which no man prominent in official circles was obliged to be without money, provided he could be induced to accept it. It is enough to say that one of the unwritten rules of the ‘club’—it had no written ones—was that any man’s I. O. U. was good, but that it must be taken up within forty-eight hours. And I never heard of an infraction of the rule.

“In one or two cases I would have been glad to hear that the man giving his paper thus, had had the nerve to repudiate it and quit the game. One Congressman in particular I remember who might have been a man of distinction according to all indications, if he had been willing to shoulder the odium of an unpaid ‘debt of honor’ instead of lending himself to the lobby and accepting money for his vote. How do I know it? How does a man know anything he doesn’t actually see? I knew the circumstances leading up to his ruin well enough.

“What I did see was the way the lobby tried him night after night, for it was an open secret that this particular poker club was one of the channels through which the crack lobbyists of the season reached their men. A good many games were played to lose, in the big parlor, and more, I reckon, in some of the small rooms, but the man who won in such a game was always a man who was wanted for something. Of course, when it came to handing over the cold cash as a specified payment for a particular service, it was done in private, but different men have to be approached in different ways, and poker affords some peculiar opportunities.

“This Congressman—call him Smith for short—was particularly wanted in one scheme that hung fire for a long time in the committee-room. He was a member of the committee, and for local reasons connected with his home district could have decided the matter either way, but being a conscientious fellow, he had held it up in a way that exasperated the lobby greatly. He had been approached in various ways, but had proved obdurate, and not until he had been introduced at the club did there seem to be any chance of winning him.

“Even then it was not easy, for he refused at first to play for any considerable money, but he was fond of the game and it undid him at the last. He was led on by degrees—the finesse and astuteness of a really gifted lobbyist is something almost diabolical—until, being a fairly skilful player, he found himself encouraged to plunge. Then the real game began.

“At first he was allowed to win. I say allowed, because the men against him were far better players than he, though they did not let him suspect it. One night he won so heavily that at the conclusion of the game he had Jones’s I. O. U. for over seven thousand dollars. Jones was the man the lobby had put against him, and what he had to do was to meet Smith privately next day and hand him the money, and at the same time urge the passage of the bill they wanted. Of course the money could not be considered in any sense a bribe, but Smith, in taking it, could not possibly refuse conversation, and would, it was thought, be inclined to listen favorably to a man who lost money to him as gracefully as Jones did. He couldn’t be expected to know, and as a fact, he did not know, how easy it was for Jones to lose gracefully, since the money was furnished to him for the purpose.