Queer Luck: Poker Stories from the New York Sun

“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.

“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.

“All the chips were in the center when Smith raised it a thousand, putting up a marker in the shape of an I. O. U., hastily scribbled. The other Congressman dropped out, and Jones came back with another thousand. Smith was fairly white, but he reached over and changed the figures on his I. O. U. from $1,000 to $4,000, saying quietly, ‘Two better.’

“‘Two more than you,’ said Jones, just as quietly, laying four one-thousand-dollar bills on the table. And then there was dead silence in the room.

“Smith paused, and it seemed to me that I could read his thoughts. He was eager enough to go on with the play, but though he did not know, and could not stop just then to reckon how deeply he was dipped, he knew he was over his head. Moreover, four eights, strong as it was, was not an invincible hand, and his better sense urged him to call.

“Finally he did, and when the showdown came, I thought for a moment he would faint. He rallied, however, and like the gallant fellow he was, made some light remark with a half-laugh as he rose from the table.

“‘I’ve got enough for to-night,’ he said, and the game was over. I never knew all the circumstances of the settlement, but I know the bill was reported favorably by the committee within a week, and that Smith used to hang around the club-house more persistently than ever for the rest of the season. As for Jones, I never saw him after that night.”