Last Friday I was invited on short notice to a game of poker, hosted by some of Kynthia’s friends from the IU School of Informatics. It’s hard for me to ever turn down a game of cards. I accepted happily. Playing cards is a deep experience for me. I’m going to take this opportunity to expound profusely on the role that cards played in my upbringing.

A brief history of me and cards
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When my grandmother Ernst died, my mother suggested that maybe we should put a deck of cards in the coffin with her. Although it didn’t happen, the very fact that it was considered gives some indication of the role that card playing played in my grandmother’s life. And, of course, she wasn’t (usually) playing solitaire. She played Bridge as a team with her sister Esther. The two of them would play a three-handed game called “Rabbit” (similar to Euchre) with my father on visits when I was young. I can remember watching groups of my family elders playing a game called “Blue Ray”, which I have yet to seen described anywhere else (including searching on the Internet). And, if it was just the two of them, my father and his mother would play a game called “66”, which is surely one of the most bizarre card games I’ve ever seen (although Durak, which I learned about five years ago, now gives it a definitely run for the money). I’m quite sure that we never paid a visit to my grandmother without the adults playing cards.

I once asked my mother how old I was when they started to teach me to play cards, and she answered “whenever you were old enough to hold the cards.” And I remember little plastic card holders that we had to help achieve *that* goal.

When I got to be a safe age — my grandmother was, um, very *confident* about what was right and wrong at the card table, and a young child’s sensibilities might not have been ready to face the inevitable heat of getting lectured for doing something the *wrong* way — I joined in on some of these games with my grandmother. And, oh, did I mention that my grandmother played for money? No matter what game she was playing? I think the typical rate was “a dime a game and a quarter a ‘hickey'” for trick-taking games (I have no idea where the term ‘hickey’ came into play, but it meant failing to make your bid, aka “going set”). The winner of the game took the pot. I can imagine that it might seem strange to many people that a woman would play against her young grandchildren for money. I guess I even think it’s a bit strange. My uncle Tom had me in stitches a few years ago, telling “when I was a kid” stories of how my grandmother would make him play cards against him and win back a good chunk of his allowance. I have no idea how much he was exaggerating for effect, but… While playing cards is not literally in my blood, it is definitely an honored family tradition, and an important part of my upbringing to say the least. I was definitely an adult before I really put together that not everyone had this kind of familial association with card playing.

The rules of family poker
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My recollection of poker of my grandmother’s house rules was nickel ante and a maximum bet of a quarter. I think there was a limit of three raises. I definitely remember that they didn’t want any “brown money” on the table, so leave those pennies at home. Nickel ante might seem pretty trivial, but over the course of an evening, it’s not hard to make or lose $5 or $10, and who knows how inflation might have affected those rates if my grandmother were still alive. This was also “dealer’s choice” poker, meaning that the dealer always got to pick the variation of poker (or other acceptable game, such as “Acey-Duecey”) that was to be played. My grandmother was quite fond of a variation called Butcher Boy, but we played a wide variety of games. Different wild cards. Different shared cards. Seven card stud games. Different types of draw poker. High/low games, and even occassional low-only games. Etc.

At my parents’ house, the game was penny-ante, three cent max, three raise limit. Again, the slightness of the individual bets can be misleading. If you play poker for an evening, you’ll have a few dollars on the line for sure. But obviously, we’re not playing for big bucks here. However, the reason that we always played poker for money descends from my grandmother: because otherwise, you might just not care. You could bet foolishly, or recklessly, and it wouldn’t matter. Unlike most games, the evening didn’t really end with a single winner. The last game was just about the same importance as any other game. Winning or losing for the evening was about consistent smart play, trying to end up with more than you started with. The game was over when people felt like going to bed. Typically, we did count at the end to see who had won or lost the most, but the point was not to determine the “winner”. If you won $2, you were happy, regardless if someone else won $2.50 or not.

In junior high, I played poker with friends. We were rambunctious and silly, sometimes making up our own games, and generally engaging in antics that would have driven my grandmother crazy. But the general ideas expressed above were all about the same. Small individual bets, play smart the whole night to eek out some extra spare change. I remember when my friend Rob took a very unlucky hit in acey duecey, and actually had to go into his wallet and put a dollar bill on the table. The sight of that paper money was stunning (in Jr. High, we didn’t have jobs, we were playing with our allowance money (the degree to which middle class allowances have inflated in the past two decades is a subject beyond the scope of this post), and I’m quite sure we agreed to some limitation at that point of how much one would ever have to pay. The point, of course, was social. We wanted to play, we liked the challenge of thinking that if we played well we might get a little boost in our pockets, but we weren’t trying to supplement our incomes or anything.

In college, I occassionally joined in poker games, and in general found them to be very similar, not that that was remarkable at the time. I learned some new games, and certain conventions definitely differed. But, the general spirit of the game was the same as what I’d played with my grandmother, with my parents, and with my friends. And, during one social game in Seattle a few years ago, I found the exact same thing. I don’t want to overstate how much I’ve played or how many different places I’ve played in. I’m a casual, social player. But I’ve certainly played well outside the sphere of influence of my family, and always understood the game to be basically the same game…

Coincidence, or TV?
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… until recently. A year or so ago, I played a game of poker at the home of some good friends here in Bloomington. Most of people at this table were younger than I and had been playing poker with each other since THEY were in Jr. High, and I came prepared to learn new games and conventions, etc. But, there was definitely a different feel here.

Most obviously, a significant number of players only wanted to play “Texas Hold ’em” I don’t know the history of the game, but I certainly know that if we left the table that night and turned on the TV, we could have seen people playing Texas Hold ’em on at least one channel. Maybe there was a whole subculture of people who just loved that game before it became the hot thing on TV. Maybe it was hot in the casinos and that gave some “authenticity” to the game which then spread into the realm of social poker. Certainly, many social card players did not approve of the wide variety of games my family enjoyed, but I always pictured those folks playing Straight Seven or Jacks to Open, Trips to Win or something like that. I don’t know the history. But somehow, I know I started meeting more and more people who believe that Texas Hold ’em is to poker as Eight Ball is to Pool. This was definitely new to me. Frankly, if I had to rank it in order of preference, it’d be somewhere near the middle of my list, and that’s higher than it’d place on my mother’s list.

Anyway, to these folks, if you were going to play something besides Hold ’em, that might be ok, but it shouldn’t be too weird. And if there are wild cards involved, that’s really bad. One fellow, who refused to play if the rules were too weird, claimed that this was because “it ruins the odds”. I was very pleased with my quick retort: “Well, the odds that you know already”. “Ruin odds?” I thought, “How can you ruin odds?” The only way that probability can be ruined is if you’re cheating. Every situation has its own probability equation, just because they aren’t the odds that you’re used to calculating, if you’re dealing an honest deck, the odds are not ruined. There’s always an equation to estimate, which is part of my love of the game.

As the game continued, there was another very notable difference. Not only was there no limit on the size of the bets, there was actually an expectation of going “all in”. All in? Why would I want to bet all of my money? I mean, the obvious reason, to me, is that I am really confident on this hand, and I want to make as much money as possible with it. But, the risk is not only that I lose a great deal of money, but… what, I don’t play for the rest of the night? Or, even if I win, then the other person doesn’t have anything to play with!? I came here to play cards wth my friends! Why would I want any of us to not be playing for the rest of the night?! “Oh,” I’m told “but, if you lose your all in bet, you might be allowed to buy back in.” ?? Well, then, I really wasn’t “all in” was I? In the social poker circles I was accustomed to, you brought money to play with, you left with whatever you had when you left the game. There wasn’t a sense that we had an amount of money that we were pretending was everything we owned. I definitely haven’t gotten used to the “all in” practice yet, and on the night I’ve been describing, I really didn’t understand why it was desirable.

Poker as a tournament game
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Well, last Friday I got a better sense of it. I arrived late to this over-crowded game, but volunteered to wait until someone left. That wouldn’t take long.

This was the other world.

To the best of my awareness, no consideration was given to playing a game other than Texas Hold ’em. And, I guess it really wouldn’t have made sense for what they were playing. This was not “win what you win, lose what you lose” poker. The purpose of this game was to determine a single winner. We were playing a tournament. The rules of the evening: $10 buy in, 4th place gets $10, 3rd place $15, 2nd place $25, “winner” takes the rest. It actually took me a really long time to grasp that.

There was a ridiculous (in everyone’s opinion) amount of conversation about how much the chips were worth. The answer was that to the four colors were worth “10, 50, 100, and 200”. Cents? I figured that must be it, but … no. When I bought in, I got “1500” for my $10 buy in. I joked that we were playing for Canadian cents. (I didn’t consider until later that, adjusted for inflation, the smallest chips on this table were certainly worth less than the nickels that were the smallest denomination of money allowed on my grandmother’s table 20 years ago.) But really, as someone joked at the time, the correct answer was that we were playing for “units”. And, since the point was to determine a winner, rather that to take what was made on each hand, it didn’t really matter what those units were. Eventually I got that notion through my head. When I did, I turned to Brian next to me, asked about why it seemed expected that we were going to be playing until everyone but one person had lost all of his/her money, and he said “Oh, yeah, that’s the way the game is played.”

blink blink

I’m not trying to be a snob here… the fact that some people play poker differently than my family does is not news to me, and in fact I love that people play cards differently in different places. But, something about that statement, that this was just a *fact* of poker, really threw me for a loop. I was quite sure I knew “the way the game is played.”

The details of the evening’s play are not the point of my story, but the story does grow out of it, so… here’s basically the way it went. These people obviously knew more about Texas Hold ’em than I did. However, I figured that if I came in 4th, I still broke even, and even coming in 3rd would net $5, so… yeah. Play to tie, more or less. Don’t worry about losing, just don’t go broke. This ended up being pretty easy to do: Just don’t go all in. Naturally, one could lose one’s entire stake on small bets, but as long as I won a hand here or there, I was able to stay well above the zero point. And, since other people seemed downright anxious to go all-in, all I had to do was fold and let them duke it out. Most of the time someone goes all in, *someone* loses everything, so the best place to be is gone.

I watched the field dwindle from 9 to about 5 this way, pretty much under the radar of the other players. By the time there were only four of us left, I had *by far* the smallest stack of chips. Indeed, I had fewer chips than the last few players lost on their “all ins”. But, hey, I broke even for the night, pretty much by doing nothing.
Of course, eventually, I have to do some more serious betting. If others realize that I never go all in, all they have to do is go all in every time, and eventually I’ll have nothing left. So, I did, played some hands pretty well, and got very lucky on a hand or two, and found myself one of the last two players, albeit still with a fraction of the chips of my opponent. By this time I almost didn’t care… I was up $15 no matter what, so … whatever! I bet a bit more recklessly (the kind of play that, in my family’s tradition, playing for money is meant to discourage), again got lucky on a key hand or two, and was definitely ahead at one point. The people who weren’t playing, who by far outnumbered the players at this point, were enjoying the spectacle, and enjoyed offering play-by-play and commentary.

Finally, one big hand, I lost because my opponent had a straight with an Ace low. “Aces are high” I cried. “Except at the low end of a straight” I was told. “I’ve never heard of that”, I said. They all assured me that was normal. Woah. “I bet it’s not in Hoyle,” I said. Brian said “what’s Hoyle?” ???? “Who am I playing with here?!?” I said in mock-indignation. It turns out that it *is* in Hoyle, which makes me wonder how it could have escaped me… did I forget? Did my family play with different rules? I don’t know. Anyway, I don’t portend to have Hoyle memorized, so I’m willing to admit when I’m wrong, and even if it weren’t in Hoyle I would have been willing to play by the house rules…

…But… wow. Has social cards — especially this more competitive strain where there’s money on the line and the rules really matter and disputes are common — really escaped the gravity of Hoyle’s *Official Rules of Card Games*? I certainly don’t expect everyone to have their own copy of Hoyle.. many people there hadn’t played a lot of cards. But Brian was one of the organizers, the regular card players, a person who, like me, would love to play a lot more than he does. For generations this has been the definitive source on rules. How could this lover of card playing be totally unfamiliar with the name? If not Hoyle, then what?

The answer, painful to me, is almost certainly TV, or specfically, casinos on TV. What we were playing here was “The World Series of Poker”. We wanted chips with big numbers associated with them, so that we felt like we were betting a lot even if though the actual value was chump change. We wanted to use the right slang terms: the “flop” the “turn” and the “river”, which have no bearing whatever on the game, and to me are about as interesting as Emily Post’s guidelines as to when it’s ok to wear white clothing. We are religious about “burning” cards before they are dealt, although no one suspects that the deck is marked and most don’t even know that that’s why the practice originated. We want to determine the winner of the night… and that’s not the person who eeked out a few more cents than the next person, but rather the person who took ALL of the money. Basically, we want to fantasize that we’re one of the players on TV, with computers displaying our odds of winning to the audience at home, and announcers offering color commentary about what’s going on. (And, boy, was there a lot of commentary, debate about rules, etc. I estimated that it took us about three times as long to play a single hand as what I’m accustomed to.)

So, at the risk of sounding the familiar old fogey “when I was a kid” line, I have to say that I’m going to resist what I see as a trend of TV influencing social poker. My parents watch a good deal of TV, and my grandmother seemed to watch it almost constantly. But it had nothing to do with cards. I’m sure my grandmother developed her strict sense of “right and wrong at the card table” before there was television. She got it from the circles of people she played with. Card playing is a folk activity. And really, I’m ok with it being co-opted by television, as long as the game that I’m used to lives on. I don’t care about the relative popularity of the two, but I don’t want *The World Series of Poker* to really become “the way the game is played”. It’s the same argument about authenticity as we see in folk music, folk art, etc… While I’m not a historian, I’ve seen first hand the role of card playing in parts of pre-TV small-town America, and it’s important to me, in the same general way that folk music is important to me and many others. That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy some modern corporate blues or bluegrass or country music or what have you, and it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy poker on TV (although I’ve never actually watched it at length). But just as I’m glad to hear a fiddler play *Soldier’s Joy* in what is probably much the same way that Bill Monroe first heard it, I’m still glad to play Butcher Boy in much the same way as my grandmother first played it. So, carry on, *World Series of Poker*, but if anyone wants to bring a bag of pennies over some evening, I’m almost certainly ready for some “three cent limit” poker. I’ll teach you to play Jersey Shore… and watch yourself, or I might take you for a few bucks.