Neither a Borrower …

I have played cards in cardrooms for a great many years. In that time, I have been hit up for temporary loans by all types: railbirds, players at the table, players posing as friends. The other day I got approached in a way I have never encountered before. I was asked for money in an on-line cardroom by another cyberplayer.

When I first started playing in cardrooms, I got burned a few times lending money. The big contributor to a game would go broke and ask for "just a hundred. I'll pay ya back the next time I come in." I was up $100; I could afford it. And he probably would lose that, too. Well, he did, but not to me. In fact, I had a few good hands beat and ended up about even. And, guess what? The live one didn't come back again. I never saw him again. So, I was actually out nearly $100 for the session.

Or, another guy asked me to cash his check. Same situation. He was creating all the action in the game. "Why don't you just take it to the cage?" "I'm not set up. I've never needed to cash a check before. I'm post-dating the check, because I don't get paid till Friday, but you can deposit it then. Don't worry, it'll be good." This was on Wednesday. On Friday, I deposited the check in my account. Not until the following Wednesday did I get the check back in the mail from the bank, marked "account closed." Fortunately, I knew where the guy worked, one of those warehouse discount places. I collared him on the job and demanded the money in exchange for his check. He tried to put me off, but I said I was going straight to his supervisor if he didn't give me the money right there. He quickly pulled some bills out of his pocket. Never did he give me an apology for having written a bad check. Now, if anyone is foolish enough to ask me to cash a check in a cardroom, I just say, "Why should I cash a check for someone the management of this establishment isn't willing to cash a check for?"

I also don't lend money in cardrooms. I haven't in decades. The best thing that can happen when you lend someone money in a cardroom is that you get it back.

For several years, Rocket Rick played every day in the medium-sized cardroom I also regularly frequented when I was making my living as a player. He became friendly with most of the regulars. Sometimes he'd borrow $20 here or $100 there, and he'd always pay it back when promised. He was a likable sort, and everyone trusted him. His best friend was the manager of the cardroom, who always treated him specially. That friendship seemed to add to Rick's trustworthiness. One week he went on a borrowing binge. It happened so quickly that those he had hit up hadn't had the opportunity to mention it to others, and, besides, it never occurred to them to do so. Then, the club had a change of ownership and management. The new owner brought in a whole new staff, and, seemingly overnight, the old manager moved to North Carolina to settle down raising horses on a large spread he had bought. The manager took Rick with him. It took a few days before the enormity of the sum Rick had managed to borrow spread among all those he had tapped. Rick had made off with something over $10,000. No one individual had been hit for enough to go chasing off to North Carolina, and, besides, the former manager had not left a forwarding address with anyone.

Before I even started playing poker, I worked summers as a tour guide and private car chauffeur in the Canadian Rockies. On payday night, the boys would all get together for a night of gambling, consisting mostly of stook, a Canadian game that sort of resembles blackjack, but one in which bluffing is possible, and one with more skill than blackjack. The last night of the summer was my night. I was ahead more than $200, a lot for a kid during the 1960s. And this was when the Canadian dollar was worth more than the U.S. dollar. Buzz, who I thought was my friend, kept putting IOUs in the pots. This was well before I'd learned my lesson. As the big winner, I had all the IOUs, so my profit was literally all in paper. Buzz had bought a big old Buick Limited, a very rare 1948. The next day he was going to drive across Canada, and take three of us along. He would swing down to Minneapolis to let me off at my parents' home. We were to meet at 2 p.m. in front of the tour company's dorm, where I had bunked all summer. He had been living in a hotel. The game finally broke at 8 a.m. I slept till 1 p.m., hastily packed, and was waiting at the appointed spot at 1:45 p.m. I waited until 4 p.m. before I realized he wasn't going to show. I phoned his hotel, and wasn't surprised to hear that he'd checked out at 9 a.m. I took a bus to the Calgary airport, managed to get a flight to Winnipeg (the only thing I could afford; I didn't have enough money for a flight all the way home), and took a bus from there to Minneapolis. I didn't even know Buzz's address, and wasn't sure what city he lived in, just that it was somewhere in Prince Edward Island, so I couldn't even ask for my money. And the next year when I went back to Banff for my last summer driving tourists around the Rockies, Buzz didn't come back – of course.

Now, when people try to hit me up for a loan in a cardroom, I'm polite about it, but I tell them firmly, "Sorry. My policy has always been never to borrow or lend money in cardrooms, and I'm not about to break it now."

So, I was playing poker at a popular on-line site, and was doing reasonably well. I like to keep the mood happy when I'm playing, if I can, so I tend to participate in the chat, commiserating with someone who gets hands beat, and regularly typing "nh" (nice hand) when someone makes a good hand or wins a big pot. One player, AcesFull666, had been playing particularly badly, but was also running unlucky and bewailing his luck in the chat area. I wanted him to remain as a happy camper. Part of my motive was ulterior, of course. Happy players are much less reluctant to vanish suddenly when losing than disgruntled same. It's a lot easier to leave a cybertable than a table in a real, live cardroom. So, I sympathized with him when he lost a hand to a lucky draw. I told him his luck was just about to change. It was a small game, $2-$4, and he was down to about $10 of the $60 he had started with. Suddenly, he asked me for a loan, $20. I was amazed. The concept of lending someone money in an on-line cardroom had never even occurred to me. More for information than anything else, I asked AcesFull666 how one could lend money in cyberspace. I should have just ignored him, but I don't like to be rude, and he was getting pretty insistent. He immediately shot back that I could use PayPal to send him some money. He was getting paid on Friday, and would give me $30. "How can you lose?" he typed. "You'll be getting $30 for my $20." I was so flabbergasted that I couldn't even bring myself to type something about not even knowing who he was. Players don't reveal their real names on line, not in Internet cardrooms. I have my own cardroom alias and no one recognizes me for the internationally known raconteur and bon vivant that I am. I certainly would never blow my cover. And I didn't think it likely that AcesFull666 would while at a table full of others, and even if he did respond something, I would have no way of verifying it. Furthermore, if he couldn't come up with playing capital, where would he come up with $30 on Friday. (And where had I heard that day before?) "What if you lose the money I loan you?" I also wanted to ask, but didn't think I should. It was certainly likely he would lose anything he could get his hands on, the way he played. As someone said about the father of the main character in Hearts in Atlantis, "He never saw an inside straight he didn't like."

AcesFull666 kept after me, but I just vaguely put him off – nothing direct, I just didn't respond to his request, and quit offering comments about his luck. He finally realized he wasn't getting anywhere with me, so he directed his question to the table as a whole. Of course, they had already been privy to the interchange, since cardroom chat areas are available to all players. The others studiously (so I imagined) avoided his pathetic requests. AcesFull666 became abusive, accusing the others of being a bunch of tightwads and unsympathetic sharks, and finally, amid a swirl of uncomplimentary epithets, disappeared from our screens. I haven't seen him since.