XIX ONLY ONE SURE WAY TO WIN

“ ‘Pears to me,” said old man Greenhut, as he leaned his elbows on the bar and pulled viciously at a very black cigar to keep it alight, “like there was a monstrous lot o’ foolishness talked about the game o’ draw-poker. Fellers’ll tell you with tears in their mouth about gettin’ beat at the game an’ about the hard mess of luck they have an’ how some other player’ll always hold over ’em or pull out against their pat flushes an’ wipe up the floor with ’em when they’d oughter have the pot cinched according to all laws. Oh, there ain’t no end to hard luck stories. They’re thicker than cold molasses, but there hain’t no sense into ’em. O’ course, a man may get hit hard now an’ again when he ain’t lookin’ for it—he may get kicked by a mule sometimes when he thinks he’s out o’ the mule’s reach; but a man that gets kicked all the time is either a jackass or else he don’t know mules.

“So with poker. No man that knows poker is goin’ to get beat at it all the time, an’ the man that does get beat nine times out o’ ten beats hisself. ’Tain’t the other fellers’ play half as much as it is takin’ fool chances that makes men walk home ’stead o’ takin’ the cars. There’s a heap o’ talk about one man playin’ better poker than another man, but my experience tells me that the principal trouble is not that one man plays better than another, but that one man don’t play so well as another. An’ it stands to reason that when a man don’t play as well as the other feller he’s goin’ to beat hisself.

“There was Jake Winterbottom,” continued the old man, as he straightened himself up and walked around to his favourite seat by the window. Winterbottom wasn’t in the room at the time, or probably Greenhut would not have mentioned him by name.

“There was Jake Winterbottom. Jake is a powerful good player now, an’ I reckon he can hold his end up in the most select circles. He’s played steady with the best talent of Arkansas City for a good many years, an’ any man that can do that don’t have to have no trepidation about settin’ in with the best of ’em.

“But I remember the time when Jake was about the easiest proposition there was to be found all up an’ down the river. ’Peared like there wa’n’t no possible way o’ losin’ money at the game that he hadn’t studied out an’ practised till he had ’em all down pat. He c’d lay down three of a kind against aces up with the same monotonous regularity that he’d bet a straight against a full. An’ he didn’t have no sense about the draw. He’d pull for a flush every time he got four of a suit, an’ sometimes when he had only three, no matter what the odds was in the bettin’. An’ when he did happen to have the winnin’ hand, if he bet it at all, which he wouldn’t half the time, he never got nothin’ to speak of out of it.

“I used to reason with him. There wa’n’t no reason as I know on why I should, for he wa’n’t nothin’ to me, more’n a fair, average customer, but somehow or other I allus cottoned to Jake f’m the time he struck the town till he’d come to be recognized as one o’ the leadin’ citizens. ’Peared like he made a impression on me f’m the first. Anyway, I felt kind o’ sorry to see him everlastin’ly buckin’ up ag’in a game that was too much for him, an’ I told him so, many’s the time.

“ ‘Jake,’ I used to say to him, ‘you hain’t no business playin’ with the Arkansas City crowd. They’ll do you, sure.’ But he’d always say: ‘Greenhut, I’m learnin’, an’ learnin’ is allus expensive. One o’ these days I’ll do ’em.’ So I let him alone.

“ ‘Peared like he learned all of a sudden. He’d been pikin’ along, playin’ a fiddlin’ game whenever he got a chance to stick his nose in, but givin’ no evidence o’ talent till this one night, when there was two strangers come in to do the talent. Jake was here an’ he had about seven dollars in his clothes when they made up a table stake game an’ each man put up fifty dollars. There was six playin’, too, so there was three hundred dollars on the table when they started. Jake, he looked on for awhile an’ never peeped. Didn’t think he’d be let in an’ consequent said nothin’ till three of the home talent dropped out, busted. That left Sam Pearsall playin’ agin the two strangers, an’ he were nervous. He wa’n’t much more’n holdin’ his own, an’ he looked round to see if there wasn’t somebody to set in. Joe Bassett an’ Jim Blaisdell was willin’ enough, but they had no money left, an’ Jake seein’ how things stood, he spoke up kind o’ timid like, an’ he says: ‘I don’t reckon I’d last more’n a few minutes, but I’ll take a hand if you’ll let me play for what I’ve got.’

“Sam spoke up quick an’ says, ‘I hain’t no objections,’ an’ the two strangers says, kind o’ careless, ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ so down he sets. But they was disgusted enough when they seen what his pile was. He dug up seven dollars an’ two bits, an’ bought his chips an’ took a hand.

“It were a dollar jack an’ one o’ the strangers opened it for four dollars, an’ Jake he throwed down. The stranger he win it, an’ the next deal it were Jake’s ante. He put up two bits, call four, an’ the others all come in an’ he wouldn’t make good. That left him just six dollars, but it were his deal.

“When I seen that deal I kind o’ says to myself that mebbe I’d sorter mistook Winterbottom, an’ mebbe he’d been practisin’ some. It were Pearsall’s ante, an’ he made it a dollar to play. The first stranger, he were a little cross-eyed man, he come in, an’ the other feller raised it two dollars. Jake he made good, takin’ three dollars, an’ Sam he raised it five. Then the cross-eyed man made it five more to play, an’ the other one stayed, an’ Jake called for a sight for his pile.

“Sam took two cards an’ the cross-eyed man took one. The next man took two, an’ Jake took two. Well, they all filled. Sam made a full, the cross-eyed man filled a flush, though it wa’n’t the straight flush he were after; the next man made a seven full, Sam’s bein’ nines, an’ Jake caught a fourth deuce.

“O’ course, all the bettin’ was amongst the other three, Jake on’y havin’ a show for the twenty-four dollars his six called for, but Sam raked in considerable over a hundred on the show-down.

“The next pot were a jack on the fours, an’ Sam made it five dollars to play. Neither one o’ the strangers opened, so it were up to Jake, an’ he busted it for nineteen dollars, bein’ his pile. Sam stayed out an’ the cross-eyed man came in, but he failed to fill, an’ Jake was on velvet with forty-eight dollars in front of him, havin’ opened on two jacks.

“There was nothin’ doin’ on the next deal, so that made it a dollar jack, an’ Jake’s first say. He opened it again for the size o’ the pot an’ got h’isted twice, so it cost him twenty more to play. When it come to the draw, he said he reckoned he’d split his openers, an’ he laid aside a queen, holdin’ up four spades.

“Well, that made a rippin’ good pot, for he filled his flush an’ bet all he had before he looked at his draw. Just naturally, Pearsall an’ the cross-eyed man both saw the bet, Sam havin’ three aces an’ the other man three kings.

“By this time they was all gettin’ pretty sore to think they’d let Jake in with his seven dollars, but it were too late to kick, an’ when it come his deal again, as it were, the next hand, I says to myself that I’d just about make up my mind accordin’ to what he did with the cards. If he was to lose, I’d consider it a streak o’ luck that he’d been havin’, but if he was to deal ’em as well as he had afore, I’d conclude that he was a-learnin’ the game.

“Well, after that deal was over, I never had no more doubts about Winterbottom. O’ course, havin’ as much money as he had to play with, ’twa’n’t necessary nor proper to look after Sam’s interest in the pot, so he didn’t deal Sam nothin’, but he gave the cross-eyed man three aces an’ the other feller a pat straight, takin’ care to have a seven spot handy when it would just fit into his sevens up on the draw. An’ the bettin’ just come so’s’t he had a chance to give the second raise an’ he scooped about a hundred an’ forty dollars on that pot.

“That left him winnin’ tol’able near all there was on the table, but the two strangers they both dug, an’ Sam stayed along with about thirty dollars that he had left, an’ the game went on.

“But, Lord bless ye, them fellers didn’t have no show. They couldn’t win, no matter what they did, an’ the game broke up in about twenty minutes, with Pearsall forty dollars ahead, an’ Jake winnin’ all the other money in sight.

“I ast him about it next day an’ he told me that he’d been a-studyin’ the game all the time since he’d first begun to play, an’ the way he sized it up it were no use for a man to bet on any cards unless he had a pretty good notion what was out against him. ‘Some fellers seems to know it by instinct,’ he says, ‘an’ some has luck, but I never had no luck to speak of, an’ when I come to tryin’ to judge of another man’s cards by instinct, I didn’t never seem to strike it right, so I made up my mind that the on’y thing for me to do was to study the cards an’ get so’s’t I c’d tell ’em by the feelin’. It takes a heap o’ work learnin’, but I worked, an’ if I do say it, Greenhut, I don’t reckon there’s any man on the river that can come nearer’n I can to tellin’ what cards is out, specially when I’ve dealt ’em.’

“Well, just naturally, a man with such talents as that ain’t a-goin’ to have his light hid under no bushel basket not for very long. The boys reco’nized his talents as quick as I did, an’ there ain’t no man in Arkansas City as is more respected an’ more thought of than Jake is. The best of it is that he’s square an’ don’t never play it low down on the home talent. But when it comes to a difficult proposition, such as sometimes has to be tackled when there’s a couple o’ clever strangers in town, I never feel safe without thinkin’ Jake Winterbottom is in the game. An’ if he is, why, the strangers don’t never get away with no alarmin’ amount of Arkansas City money.”