I started playing poker with a new group of guys in The Villages about six weeks ago. There’s a guy from Virginia, one from Pennsylvania, another from Maryland and three from New York. Nobody drinks alcohol. They’re focused on the cards. They take fifty cents from each pot until they reach twenty-five dollars (fifty hands), and one of the guys buys snacks, bottled water, and new playing cards for the group with the money.
They play split pot games with unusual names and unique rules: The Clock 7-Low, The Clock with Runs, Rufus’s Game (named after a deceased friend named Rufus), Fifty-Two, Columns, Wagon Train, Pyramid, Christmas Tree, The Good the Bad and the Ugly. The list seems endless. I’ve never played, or heard, of them before. They play at least twice a week and deal as fast as they can. I’ve learned several new games and stirred some old memories.
I played for several years with a group from Hillsdale and the surrounding area. We were good friends gathered around a poker table every other week. I started as a substitute with the group and, ultimately, worked my way in as a full-time participant. That’s how I met my friend, Jim. We played poker together and discovered we had a similar outlook on life.
We played exactly seventy hands each time we met. We took a dollar from every pot. When we had seventy dollars, the night was over. We saved the seventy dollars until we had several hundred and then planned a gambling trip to Las Vegas or Atlantic City. If we played every two weeks as planned, we’d have a total of $1,820 at the end the year. We either purchased tickets for the trip or divided the money as our “stake” once we arrived at the gambling site.
One time we used the money to purchase junket tickets to Atlantic City. This was a designated flight filled with people who wished to gamble. There were one hundred and six people on board. We were asked by the flight attendants if we’d like to place our first wager during the flight. They explained that if everyone put up $5.00, they would hold a drawing and award half the money to two people. With one-hundred and six people on board, we’d have two pots of $265. Everyone bought in. Our crew of five agreed to split the $265 equally. Each of us would receive $53.00 if one of us won. The two winners were determined by a random seat draw. Each of us wrote our seat number on the five-dollar bill we put in the pot.
The drawing was held just before we began our descent into Atlantic City. My five-dollar bill was one of the winners. A flight attendant gave me a brown paper bag with fifty-three five-dollar bills. We were ahead before we even touched down.
TBC