Uncle Sam's Cardroom
If you're reading this, you probably believe that the topics covered in these articles will be related to poker. Well, so far you are slightly correct; the word "poker" will occur from time to time in these stories. If you are looking for advice on how to play suited connectors, how much to raise with pocket aces, or why you keep losing money with 8 3 off-suit, you have come to the wrong place as these articles will serve no purpose in your poker education. I strongly suggest that you do not play your hands anything like the way I or other charecters I write about would, or you will be a losing player.
If you are still brave enough to read the nonsense which is certain to ensue, then you will need a little bit of back ground information on the setting. About three years ago my life was going nowhere; I had been depressed for a few months and didn't know what to do to get myself out of this "rut".
At around 3 a.m. I was watching some tv and getting ready to get some sleep, when all of a sudden an intruiging comercial came on. It felt like it was talking to me when it said something along the lines of,
"Are you stuck at a dead-end job?"
"Yea" I thought, although Wal-mart does offer some very prestigous positions.
It continued, "Feel like your life is going nowhere?"
"Definetly" was my response.
"Do you have a college education? How about technical skills?" it asked.
"Damn!" I had had dropped out of college and couldn't do anything at all.
It finished, "You don't? No problem! Join the U.S. ARMY now!"
I knew what I was going to with my life now. I was going to be a soldier. I was going to serve my country and learn the necessary skills I would need to survive in the world. Unfortunately, that would not be the case. You see, during boot camp we drilled with rifles and I accidentally shot myself right in the foot. I could no longer serve in the army as I was not "physically capable", but at least I was to get a check from them every month for the rest of my life. "Uncle Sam is buying tonight!" I thought.
Actually, my uncle Sam had died a few days earlier. It seemed I was also in his will to recieve something. "Jackpot!" Well, not quite. Uncle Sam was actually quite poor, and his "will" was more like a list that gave his debts to other people. My brother got his corvette, and was pretty happy until he discovered that it was eight payments late and the IRS was looking to reposess it. My sister got his house and everything inside. We had never seen his house but eventually discovered he lived in an old trailor. What was inside? Unpayed credit cards which were somehow under her name...
I considered myself fairly lucky when I heard that I had inherited a cardroom. After looking into it I found out that it was making a small profit, so I decided to keep it. For now, anyways.
My first action, I decided, was to take a look at this place without informing the staff of who I was. I planned on going to the cardroom three times this week to see what sort of things were going on. Knowing uncle Sam, I was not expecting much.
Finding it was a slight problem. The will left out the name of the place, but the lawyer informed me it was on West Mountain Road, about twenty minutes outside of Anapolis. While driving down the road I noticed an elementry school and a church, but no cardroom. After going up and down the street about five times I noticed a small sign reading, "Ray Sist's Cardroom and Billiards." Great, so I own a cardroom on a back-road smack dab in the middle of a church and an elementry school. Factor in the fact that the sign pointed out that it was clearly a place for racists to play cards, and I understood why the profit was so small. Actually, I didn't. How was he getting any money at all here?!
When I entered, I was more than expecting to see a bunch of hicks in white sheets to be sitting around playing some silly poker game (Maybe omaha?).That wasn't to be the case. Actually it took a few minutes to even find anyone playing cards. Now it wasn't that there was a lack of tables to play on. In fact, there were so many tables bunched up together that many had no room for seats. The only people sitting at these tables were just using them as normal tables. They were eating what looked to be some sort of green stew and drinking a beer, completely unaware of the stains they were forcing on the table. Most of the people in the room were sitting at the small bar. None of these kids looked to be even close to twenty-one, the legal drinking age in this country.
Anyways, back to the game in question. Thisre were eight or nine people slouched around the table. Seat one had one of the most dirty looking men I had ever encountered in my entire life, and I was in the army's boot camp for nearly three weeks! Seat two and three looked to be engaged. While playing, they would hold hands and apologize for playing against each other. Whenever they were both out of a hand (Which seemed to be rare), they would just start sucking face for the remainder of the hand.
Seat four looked like a fashion statement you couldn't even see at the Grammies; his pants were not only a different color on one leg than the other, but completely different sizes! The right leg was a strange, light green... the kind that only Robbin Hood and his gang of merry men could pull off. The left leg was bright yellow, and when the two legs met up a few inches from his waist, the colors mixed into some foul looking color that can only be described by the word evil. His shirt was a relatively plain, white, button-down shirt. It was everything that was connected to this shirt that made it such a sin against man. He wore what looked to be about ten different ties. They were all tied and hanging down from different parts of his collar. Around halfway down, the ties were all tied to another, and then at the bottom they were tied to yet another! What he was wearing on his head, I'll never know. I'll just give you some words, and you can try to fit them onto a contraption that would fit on one's head: cow, piano wire, goggles, and a small book.
Seat five, six, and seven all looked fairly normal... or at least in comparison to the "man" in seat four. In seat eight, was the defensive end for the New England Patriots. Okay, maybe it wasn't... but she definately could have been. This woman was the meanest looking creature on the planet. She could stare down a lion and make it apologize for even thinking about hunting her. Not that a starved lion would even be able to think of her as a meal without forcing the remainder of his stomach out of his mouth.
Seat nine looked to be either the lucky player of the day or perhaps a half decent player. I watched him fold three hands, in a row! From the look of this game, that was probably a new record or something. Now, on to the dealer... this guy was definately a character in his own rights. If you are not too friendly with your local dealers and think that the only thing they're good for is taking the rake out of all your pots, burning and turning too soon, staring you down with sad puppy eyes to get their tokes, and then making you feel cheap when they give you a very sarcastic "thank you", then you could call this guy one of the best dealers in the world! Practically every hand he dealt, he would accidentally throw one card up, and just call it a dead card. Most people might care and demand a re-deal... but not these guys.
The game seemed to be a 100 dollar buy-in, no limt, dealer's choice game. Many casinos have a dealer's choice game, but they are normally restricted to a few of the more popular games. The games played here were a bunch of a non-sense. From what I watched, I saw all of the following games: Six-card triple draw with jockers, aces, faces, and deuces wild! The hands were so far out that they had to invent more. For example, A royal flush was beaten by five a kind, which was beaten by a 6 card straight-flush, which was beaten by 6 of a kind, which could only be beaten by a SSS which I later found out meant "Single Suited Six". This dealer didn't feel like having to shuffle between the draws, so he decided that this game could be played with a "172 card deck" which was just 3 decks with 6 jokers shuffled around once or twice.When they switched games to something that used a normal deck, he just took off the top fifty or sixty cards and called that the deck.
The next game I saw completely blew my mind. It was go fish! Basically, everyone put in 10 dollars, the cards were dealt, and then the person with the most "books" or "sets" would get three quarters of the pot, with the runner up getting the remainder. This game started many fights, with people accusing each-other of cheating and declaring unholy things about other player's mothers and so-on. Luckily, seat eight was there to end pretty much any fight simply by looking at the other people.
Other crazy games that simply can not be played intelligently at all were: 12-card-stud, Half-Deck Hold'em (Everyone recieve 26 cards, and saw an eight card flop), 9-card-quadriple-draw, Omaha, and more. "What was going on here?!" I thought.
Okay, you should know that I wasn't exactly a card player, but I had played a couple dozen times in my life, and I have yet to see anyone ever play these games, even at a home game where we love playing stupid stuff! (One time our "friend" John tried to introduce us to this "Omaha High-low", but we quickly discovered the error of our ways, stopped playing that, and never spoke to old Johnny again.)
I left and decided I needed a game-plan for changing this place. In a few days, I would come back, observe a little more action here, break the news that I was the owner, and then start turning this place into a half-acceptable establishment. Also, the name was gonna have to change. I found out that Ray Sist was the former owner of the place before Uncle Sam, so I decided it would be fitting to rename it in Uncle Sam's honor.
That concludes the first episode of Uncle Sam's Cardroom. Tune in for the rest later
Thanks for reading
