Well, I Declare

A while back I got a call from my brother Ira to wish me a happy birthday. Ira, who lives in a retirement village in New Jersey, meant well, but birthdays increasingly are becoming an occasion I'd just as soon forget. I mean, when you're suddenly old enough to have children who could qualify for Oklahoma Johnny Hale's Seniors tournaments, it gets grim.

Anyway, after the usual obligatory jokes about my age, he said he had a technical question to ask me about his home poker game. In a new book called Poker Nation, Andy Bellin talks about small-limit home games where players get nervous if someone pulls out a $20 bill. In my brother's game, a $5 bill makes them freak out. And no matter how often I explain that I am a brilliant writer but a mediocre player (as opposed to other Card Player columnists who are brilliant players but mediocre writers), he still thinks that just because I write for the magazine, I must be an expert. So, I keep getting questions, most of which are rather amateurish, though some, I must admit, are truly idiotic. I braced myself.

"You play high-low, don't you?" my brother asked.

"Well, Omaha," I replied.

"Omaha? What's that?"

"It's a game where you get four cards, and you have to use two for high, and two … " I could hear Ira making funny noises and realized that I might have been talking Swahili for all he'd comprehend, so I shifted the conversation. "You must mean high-low stud," I said. "What do you want to know about it?"

"Well, when it's time to declare, is it one coin for low, two for high, and three for both ways, or no coins for low, one for high, and two for both ways in the casinos?"

"Well, as a rule, casinos don't have declare games."

There was a long pause. "They don't? Then how do they know which way each player is going?"

"Everyone just turns his cards up, and the hands speak for themselves."

There was an even longer pause as this revelation sunk in. "Yeah, I guess that would work, too. But we play declare, and in some games they declare one way and different in others, and it gets very confusing. What should we do?"

"Well, maybe I could mention it in my column and my readers could take a vote on how many coins to use."

"Don't get smart. Shouldn't there be a way to standardize the rules?"

"Well, they keep trying in casinos, but I don't know of any governing body for home games. What difference would it make, anyway?"

"Plenty," Ira replied hotly. "Just last week I was in this game and a really big pot built up. I went low and a new player named Crybaby Davey, who's kind of slow, and who's used to different rules, by mistake also declared low when he had a full house, and then everybody started laughing and Davey started crying, and I felt sorry for him and tried to give him back his 90 cents, but the other players wouldn't let me because they said that would destroy the integrity and professionalism of the game."

"I see," I said solemnly. "Can't have that, can we?" I searched my memory for when I used to play high-low declare in home games. "There's another way," I explained. "In this method, everyone in turn declares verbally which way he's going, starting with the high hand on board."

"On board where?"

"The board refers to upcards – cards that are showing," I added hastily, before he asked me what an "upcard" was. That way, players can't make mistakes with coins in their hands, or chips, or whatever you use."

"But lots of our players are pretty deaf," my brother explained, "so that might cause even more confusion. And their memories aren't so good, either. So, by the time everybody declared which way he was going, most of the players would have forgotten how everyone else was going – and maybe even forgotten which way they were going. No, we'd better stick to coins declare."

Be patient, be patient, I thought to myself. "OK, so what you do is this: Just before it's time to declare, the dealer reminds everyone: 'One for low, two for high,' or whatever you decide the drill is. That should solve everything, right? Well, goodbye, Ira. I really appreciate your calling me for my birthday."

"Not so fast," he yelled. "There are other problems. Some players hate to be the first to declare. Like, they have a bad hand, and the only way they can win is if everyone else goes different from them, so they wait to see how everybody else is going, and if other players go both high and low, they'll just throw their hands away, but sometimes you have two or three players with bad hands like that, and they wait each other out, and one time over a half-hour went by, and these two players, Morris and Albert, got stubborn and refused to drop their coins first, and it got time for our break, and the host wouldn't serve coffee and cake until everybody dropped his coins, and it was just terrible."

"So you have the dealer say, 'One, two, three, drop your pants … I mean, drop your coins,' and everybody has to act at the same time. Now, are we all set?"

"Well, not exactly," Ira said slowly. "We have another problem. Sometimes when players declare, all the coins don't drop out of their hands and they hide them. We once caught this guy Murray who was sticking coins to his hand with ear wax to control how many he dropped."

"So just have a rule that every player has to turn his palm completely up."

"We tried that, but some of the players have arthritis and can't turn their hands completely around."

"Then buy a metal detector," I said, gritting my teeth and trying not to scream.

"That's an idea," Ira said. "Do you know how much they cost?"

"No, but you can probably find one cheap at a garage sale. Look, Ira, I have a friend named Bob Ciaffone who's always writing columns about standardizing rules. Why don't I give you his phone number? I'm sure he'd love to talk to you and help you out. I've gotta go now. I have an appointment with my hair stylist."

"Just one more question," Ira said hurriedly. "Do they have Indian casinos in California?"

I sighed. "Sure, lots of them."

"OK, then. When you play Indian poker there, and you hold a card in front of your head, how long do you have to keep it there before … "

Click.