Queer Luck: Poker Stories from the New York Sun

by David A. Curtis

“It was the most delicate sort of diplomacy, but it failed completely. Smith was gentleman enough to feel the temptation, and man enough to withstand it. The loss of the money was not considered for a moment by the lobby. They had money to burn. But the failure to get Smith was important, so other tactics were employed.

“There was no necessity for asking him to give Jones his revenge at the game, for he was by this time in the fever of play, and he was at the club every night, looking for the opportunity that somebody was always ready to give him. It did seem almost pitiful to see a man of his talents and character fluttering like a big fool moth around a flame that was almost certain to destroy him, but it didn’t seem to be anybody’s business to tell him what he ought to have known for himself. At any rate, nobody made it his business. I, for one, considered that it was the part of wisdom to say nothing. It’s a good safe rule generally, and I was too young a man to play mentor to one who had reached his rank.

“Nothing was done hastily. The lobby never makes mistakes of that sort. Smith was allowed to play along for perhaps a week before Jones was put at him again. I don’t know exactly, but I think a part of the calculation was to wait till his luck should turn, for he had been winning before he made his big stake from Jones, and he continued to win for several nights, though he got no very important money after that.

“Luck does change, though, and in a week he was losing, not heavily, but enough to whet his desire, and it was noticeable that he grew more and more eager for high play. The time had come for the decisive stroke, and Jones, of course, was on hand at the proper time to deliver it.

“There were only four players in the game that night, and it was played in the big parlor. The lobby never made the mistake of seeking privacy unnecessarily, and Smith, though he was infatuated with the game, was the sort of man to take alarm quickly at anything that looked suspicious. So it happened that I was one of the lookers-on at a memorable contest.

“Smith didn’t know it, but there were three against him that night, although one of them was a fellow-Congressman who was not known to be interested in the scheme, and another was a Westerner, who had only been introduced at the club two or three nights before, and had only played there once. The fourth man, of course, was Jones.

“The play went on for half an hour before anything serious happened. Occasionally there would be some pretty big bets, but they all won and lost so nearly even that no one was much ahead. Then to an outsider it became evident that each of the other three was playing for Smith’s money, although Smith himself did not, I believe, suspect anything of the sort. As I said, the play was straight enough, but three first-class players can bring any ordinary player to grief easily enough in a four-handed game without any crooked manipulation of the cards, if they work in concert, and Smith was soon losing heavily.

“They knew the size of his pile pretty accurately, for they had kept tabs on him closely ever since he began playing, and there wasn’t a detail of his outside business that hadn’t been studied carefully beforehand. So when he had been coaxed along to a ten-dollar ante, with occasional bets of as much as five hundred, they knew that they could reach his uttermost limit easily enough, for he couldn’t have raised much over twelve thousand dollars in cash to save his life, without getting outside help somewhere. Twelve thousand dollars isn’t much of a wad to sit in a game with, if there is unlimited money against you, and the betting runs up into the hundreds, so Smith was on pretty thin ice all the time, though he didn’t realize it until it was too late.

“He had four or five thousand with him in money, but when that was gone the rule of the place made it fatally easy for him to go on, and I really believe that he lost his head as the play went on, and he gave check after check in payment for more chips. The proprietor understood well enough what was going on, and he took the checks with perfect readiness, knowing that he would be protected. Smith bought again and again, keeping no memorandum, until he was in it for over ten thousand.

“Then came the deciding hand. We did not play straight flushes then, so fours of any denomination made even a stronger hand than they do now, and Smith caught four eights. There isn’t a poker player on earth who wouldn’t look on that as a chance to recoup, and very few who wouldn’t risk their pile on the chance. Smith did it anyhow, and came to grief. He risked more than his pile, for, as it happened, the other Congressman held a good hand, too, and bet freely for a little while. Jones had four queens and scooped the pot. The Westerner wasn’t in it.