Neither a Lender

Just before being stabbed by Hamlet for his officiousness, Polonius offered his son Laertes a considerable amount of gratuitous advice. One nugget applies to poker players. People usually remember only the first part of the quote, but the whole thing applies:

"Neither a borrower, nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend."

What this comes down to for poker players is that it is very good policy neither to lend nor borrow money in a cardroom.

Early in my career as a poker player, I did make the mistake a few times of lending money. The way it often worked was someone would go broke in a game and ask for $10 "until tomorrow. I'm in a good game and I'm gonna see if I can get even. If I can't, I'll call it a night." This was a long time ago, and the games were small, but not that small; $10 was one buy-in and might last only one or two hands if the player got involved. And of course he would have to get involved to get even. Anyway, sometimes the guy would come out ahead and give the money back that evening. Otherwise, he'd give it to me "tomorrow," or the next time he saw me. And he'd keep it up, borrow $10 or $20 and always promptly pay it back the next time. Then would come a time when he'd be in a bigger game. "Gimme $50 till tomorrow. I get paid then. You know I've always paid you back." Well, how could I turn him down? It was certainly true that he had always paid up promptly. And that might be the last I'd see the guy, because he wouldn't come back tomorrow – or the next day. Had he quit playing for good? Sometimes, because he couldn't borrow any more and was flat broke. But more often, the guy would go play at another cardroom and not come back to the one where I played. He had been playing at my cardroom five or six times a week for more than a year. You wouldn't think someone would suddenly quit playing at one particular cardroom over a $50 debt, and he probably didn't. He had likely been hitting up several people, maybe on different days, and now he owed regulars in this cardroom several hundred. So, he would just move, as they used to say, "down the street." But it was a pretty big street. He now might start playing in some other town maybe 50 miles away.

And sometimes a guy to whom I had lent money would not spontaneously return it the next time I saw him in the cardroom. I'd see him in a game, with plenty of chips, and ask for the money. "I can't give you the money. These aren't my chips. I'm playing for Jim." Or, "They won't let me take chips off the table." (This is true in most cardrooms. You have to leave the table if you want to remove chips.) "I'm stuck and it's a good game. When I cash out, I'll give it to you." The guy usually had more stamina than I. If he didn't go broke, he'd still be playing after I'd put in my six- or eight-hour session. Maybe he was just waiting till I walked out of the club. One fellow with a huge stack told me, as I was about to leave and asked him when he was going to cash out, that he was still stuck and was going to stay till he got even. I walked out the front door, waited five minutes, and came in the back door, and there he was at the cage. It didn't do me any good, though. I didn't get my money. The guy had "just borrowed $100 from Sam and I've got to give to it him right now." Sure enough, there was Sam, and the guy handed him $100 of the $102 he'd just cashed out. You see, it's an unspoken rule among frequent borrowers that they have to pay back the most recent lender first. That's what programmers call LIFO: last in, first out. So, when I lent someone $20, I would hate it when he went broke and went to someone else for a fresh cash infusion. That meant I was in trouble, and would have to wait for the most recent loan to be paid off first.

Borrowing is just as hazardous. You're stuck and might have to go home, when you see someone cashing out a nice score, so you ask him for $20 "till tomorrow." And of course you, being an honest sort, pay him back as promised. And maybe you'll never need to borrow again. But you may be in trouble anyway, because when the guy comes to you a week later and asks to borrow $20, or $40, or $100, you can't turn him down because he lent you money.

If you lend people money, you'll find the truth in the second half of Polonius' advice. The person to whom you lent the money suddenly turns cold and won't talk to you. He resents you because he owes you. You'll walk in the cardroom and see him leaving via the opposite exit. You may lose a friend.

Even worse than the habitual railbirds looking for a stake or someone to listen to a bad-beat story are the mooches. You have to learn to be firm. After having been burned a few times, I finally learned to say, when asked, "Sorry. It's my policy never to lend money in a cardroom." And I stuck by it. And soon the bustouts learned not to ask me. However, some of them have no shame or else have trouble with the concept, "What do you find difficult to understand in the word 'no'?"

Back in the '60s, I played in Palo Alto's Cameo Club, a cardroom known for its huge no-limit lowball games. There were also smaller games, $2 minimum bet, $10 buy-in. There, I first ran into Smiley. No one had ever seen the guy crack a smile. In fact, no one had ever seen any expression on his face. He definitely had the axiomatic poker face. They called him Smiley in much the same way that people nickname a basketball player Shorty. The first thing I noticed about Smiley was that he kept his pants up with a rope instead of a belt. I was pretty young then, and he looked to be at least 60. Either he never had enough cash to buy a belt or he never thought cash was worth investing in anything other than a hot game. He was perpetually broke, and hung around the club hoping to get staked in a game. In those days, the house would sometimes stake players to get games going or keep short games from breaking up. A staked player fulfilled the same role as a proposition player does now, except he played house money. At the end of the shift, if he was ahead, he would get to keep half of his winnings, and was not responsible for any losses. A player like Smiley would hang around for 16 hours hoping to get staked, and, while waiting, try to hit up likely candidates for playing money. The main reason Smiley was usually broke was that he was a terrible player, and for that very reason, a shift manager would use him only in desperation. Smiley had a unique pitch. He would offer to pay back $15 for $10 "when I get my check." He was on disability, and got a check for maybe $2,000 once a month. On that day, most of his creditors would make sure to be at the club first thing to collect. If you got there late, you might not get paid, because he might run out of cash.

Smiley tried borrowing from me a few times, but by this time, I had learned my lesson, and always repeated my mantra about not lending money in a cardroom. One time, early in the '70s, I got sick of his approaching me every time I walked in the door, so I told him, "Look, I'm not ever going to lend you any money and I don't want you ever to ask me again." He was pretty persistent by nature and I didn't think it would work, but it did. I played there for another 15 or more years and he didn't ask again, although I regularly saw him approach other suckers. In Smiley's case, lending him money was an investment that might eventually increase in value – if you managed to catch him on disability check day before he ran out of money. Sometimes lenders had to wait months to get repaid.

The Cameo Club closed in 1993 and I did not see Smiley for many years. He should have been in his 80s by this time, and I figured he had passed on. Then, in 2000, I saw him at Garden City Casino in San Jose. He looked like he was maybe 70, so my first estimation of his age had to have been wrong. Even though I had never been particularly fond of the guy, it's always nice to see an old face from the past, so I greeted him with a pleasant, "How ya been, Jack?" (I was one of the few people who knew his real name, having worked as a cardroom cashier 25 years earlier.) He responded, "OK. Say, can you lend me $20 till I get my check? I'll give you back $30." I guess he'd forgotten what I'd said 30 years back. I just said, "Sorry." He'd heard that often enough, and moved on, looking for another mark.

Yes, I know, in the very high echelons of play, some of the big-time players borrow and lend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. I also know that there are some household names who owe literally millions – and have no hope of ever coming up with the money. Yet, people lend them more, knowing that the only hope they have of ever getting repaid is if the recipients get lucky and make a score. Anyway, I'm talking about the low rollers here.

Something you hear from cardroom old-timers makes a lot of sense: "Why would you want to lend anyone any money? The best thing that can happen is you get your money back."

Michael Wiesenberg's The Official Dictionary of Poker is the ultimate authority on the language of cardrooms. Order it online at CardPlayer.com. And look for The 1,000 Best Casinos in the World early in 2005.