Decks Cold and Colder

The first time the word "poker" appeared in print was an account of a cold deck in James Hildreth's memoir, Dragoon Campaigns to the Rocky Mountains, published in 1836. Hildreth describes a late-night game between two officers not far from their barracks. He reports that the major "lost some cool hundreds last night at poker," then pauses to vaguely define this new term in a footnote: "A favorite game of cards at the south and west."



Played as it is alongside a bayou near New Orleans in the early 1830s, the game is almost certainly 20-card poque. Hildreth doesn't comment on the overwhelming likelihood that cheating has occurred – poker and its odds are foreign to him, after all – even while reporting that after half a dozen raises, the major, who throws down four kings, lost his hundreds to the captain's four aces. "'D-m-n!' roars the major, at the same time splitting the pine table with a blow of his fist." But instead of the genuinely scary implications of his captain cold-decking his major, Hildreth's concern is that "we shall probably have an hour's extra drill in the morning to make up for" the major's losses.



Well before the straight flush moved to the top of the hand rankings around 1850, four kings losing to four aces had become a cliché in the lore about cheating. When in 1845 a captain holding quad kings lost his two-thirds stake in his riverboat to a sharp showing down the inevitable hand, the captain went to his quarters and shot himself through the heart. The note found beside him bemoaned the cold fact, learned moments too late, that "a man who would bet his last dollar on four kings doesn't deserve standing room on earth."



As Bret Harte made his name with "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," Mark Twain made his with "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," a story about cheating gamblers during the '49 Gold Rush. His Huckleberry Finn is no sharp, but he crosses paths with plenty of them as he and Jim float down the Mississippi on a raft in the early 1850s. Besides Twain's, Harte's, and Johnson Jones Hooper's fiction and exposes by Jonathan Green, there were scores of other best-sellers detailing the practices of one blackleg or another.



The poker game in Twain's "The Professor's Yarn" takes place on a steamer headed from Acapulco to San Francisco. The man telling the story – a professor looking back on his days as a surveyor – is able to catch only glimpses of the action as he passes a posh stateroom on the texas deck, the door of which has been left "a little ajar to let out the surplus tobacco smoke and profanity." He and the other passengers assume the game is rigged by professionals.



The surveyor is soon befriended by John Backus, an Ohio cattleman of "countrified simplicity" and "beaming good nature." Bending his new friend's ear, Backus goes on – and on and on – in minute deal about the cattle business. He even shows him his life savings hidden in a trunk in his stateroom. "She's all there – a round ten thousand dollars in yellow-boys." Why this weird disclosure? Because he'd like to propose that the surveyor "survey in such a way" that the best grazing land in California winds up in their hands. The narrator's response is unequivocal: "I am not that kind of surveyor." Yet they change the subject pleasantly enough, with no damage done to their friendship.



Meanwhile, the blacklegs press Backus to play in their game. He turns them down half a dozen times, but just before the ship reaches the Bay, he agrees to play a few hands. The blacklegs ply him with glass after glass of champagne, throwing theirs over their shoulders. Pretty soon Backus' eyes are bloodshot as he blearily agrees to let the stakes be raised yet again just before the last hand is dealt.



"How many cards," asks one of the sharps.



"None!" replies Backus.



The sharp named Hank Wiley discards one, the others three each. A round of $20 bets and raises ensues, forcing everyone but Backus and Wiley to fold. "I see that," says Wiley, "and go you a hundred better!" Backus reraises a hundred. "Oh, that's your little game, is it?" says Wiley. "I see your raise, and raise it five hundred!"



"Five hundred better!" says Backus.



After another pair of raises, the pot has reached $10,000. At this point Wiley tosses a large bag of coins on the table. "Five thousand dollars better, my friend from the rural districts – what do you say now?"



"I call you!" shouts Backus, putting the last of his yellow-boys on the table. "What have you got?"



"Four kings, you damned fool!" replies Wiley, turning over his hand.



"Four aces, you ass!" thunders Backus, covering Wiley with a cocked revolver. "I'm a professional gambler myself, and I've been laying for you duffers all this voyage!" At this precise moment – as if the story weren't melodramatic enough – the anchor smashes into the rocks below the wharf.



When Backus and the surveyor bump into each other the following week, Backus admits the sharp who dealt the last hand was his "pal." The other sharps believed he was going to deal Backus four queens. "I don't really know anything about cattle," he adds, "except what I was able to pick up in a week's apprenticeship over in Jersey just before we sailed."



Once again, conniving and teamwork had yielded the gold; what we would call poker skill was never an issue. Instead of studying his opponents' faces and betting patterns, Backus had countrified his wardrobe and smile, boned up on animal husbandry, and negotiated a division of spoils with his partner. Instead of the pot odds while drawing to a straight, he'd calculated the maximal bribe-to-profit ratio.



As poker stings got more elaborate and equal rights for women became a front-burner issue in American life and politics after the Civil War, it was inevitable that at least a few ladies would enter the work force as blacklegs. "It was on a trip from Memphis to Natchez that I first saw a woman gamble in public," recalls a gentleman interviewed by a reporter for the New York Sun. "The boat wasn't crowded, but there were perhaps 50 passengers on board, and among them were six or eight ladies and this woman. That she was a social outlaw was evident enough at a glance. Not only were her clothes of a fashion too pronounced for respectability and her jewelry too ostentatious for daylight wear, but there was a frank devilry in her eyes, and a defiant swing – almost a swagger – in her carriage." Traveling alone, she refuses to speak to the female passengers and talks to the men with a pronounced French accent. Just who is this she-devil? Our witness discovers "that she was a notorious character in New Orleans, where she was known as 'Flash Kate.'"



Though several poker games are in progress, the spectators focus on the biggest one, in which "each man had a wad of greenbacks lying alongside his chips [and] bets of ten or twenty at once were common." Altogether, "several thousand dollars" are in play, and it's clear to our witness that two of the players, Alcott and Keene, are professionals. Their targets are a cotton factor (a trader, that is) from New Orleans, with a reputation as a bold speculator; a military man the others address as "Major"; and a "nondescript" cattle dealer named Downing. Action on the first night proceeds without any huge pots won or lost, and no violence. But our witness understands that the sharps "were laying the foundations for the second night's play."



By the time it begins, anticipation has reached fever pitch. Even a few women have come in to watch, though they cling to their husbands' arms tightly. It's the first time our witness "ever saw ladies look on at public gambling." But the wives find it too much to bear when Flash Kate enters the cardroom alone, and they all leave the room in a huff.



The ante has been raised to $10, and $50 becomes the most common bet. Flash Kate takes a position directly behind the cotton factor. The spectators watch in stunned awe – one of them audibly gasps – as Keene holds out an ace. "It was cleverly done, and yet I marveled at his nerve in trying such a trick under so many watching eyes. He relied, of course, on his skill, which was really marvelous." When our witness exchanges a look with the fellow who'd gasped, "I saw that he was equally certain. Neither of us was fool enough to say anything, for interference meant fight." Indeed, everyone seems to accept a riverboat ethos in which professionals openly cheat but will injure you if you accuse them.



The deal now rotates to Downing, who apparently has spotted the hold-out, as well, because he tosses the rest of the cards on the floor, saying, "Bring us a fresh deck, Mr. Clerk, of another color." This cattleman is nobody's fool: "He shuffled and dealt the cards as if nothing out of the way had happened. Neither could I see any trace of chagrin or disappointment on Keene's face as he was thus cleverly checkmated."



A few hands later a jackpot goes around a few times before Alcott finally opens for $100. Everyone calls. Alcott draws three and bets $100. The Major draws one card and folds without further ado. Downing draws two and calls the $100 without even looking to see whether his hand has improved. Keene, who drew two, as well, studies his hand intently before calling the bet, at which point the cotton factor, having drawn three, raises $100. "I could not see his cards," our witness reports, "but I learned afterward that he had a queen full."



Alcott, who has three of a kind, raises back. After finally peeking at his hand, Downing reraises $200. Keene folds. The factor raises $500 more, trying to win the pot right there, but Alcott "without a quiver" raises $1,000 more. Downing tosses his hand in the muck. The factor studies his hand while fingering his bankroll. "I haven't as much money here as I'd like to have, but I'll see your thousand and -"



"If Monsieur cares to back his hand and will allow me, I will put up any amount he likes." This bold interruption has been made by Flash Kate. "[N]o man would have ventured to do so," our witness observes. "I was looking at Alcott, and I was sure I saw a gleam of satisfaction, totally unmixed with surprise, on his face. The situation was getting complicated."



Red-faced, the factor says, "Thank you, but I never play with borrowed money, and I never borrow from a woman." He later tells our witness that "when the woman spoke it flashed upon him that there was a conspiracy somewhere, and that he didn't care to play against it." He only pretended to study a moment longer before throwing down his cards.



As Alcott rakes the huge pot, Keene invites Kate to take a seat in the game. She accepts. Although he doesn't object, the Major seems uncomfortable playing with a woman. Our witness, for his part, feels "morally certain that it was a case of three against one, for the Major was not much in evidence." And indeed the three sharps "stacked the cards, not once, but half a dozen times, giving [Downing] excellent cards." Each time, however, the cattleman pretends to have weak hands or to have lost his nerve, but other hands he plays with rash aggression. Within 20 minutes, he has the pros thoroughly rattled.



Now comes a hand that our witness calls "the boldest and neatest thing I ever saw at a card table." It is Keene's turn to deal and Downing's to cut, but instead of cutting, in the blink of an eye Downing slips in a cold deck. "It sounds like an impossibility," our witness admits, "but wonderful things are possible to a sleight-of-hand performer, and he was the best I ever saw."



Much betting and raising ensues before the draw. All three blacklegs then make four of a kind, but since their partner Keene is dealing, they remain unsuspicious. After a round of even wilder betting and raising, the pot contains over $20,000. At the showdown, Keene turns over his jacks, Alcott his queens, Flash Kate her kings – and Downing the inevitable aces. Alcott and Keene lunge forward to grab the money, but a revolver appears in Downing's right hand as he suavely rakes the pot with his left. "That was no square deal!" Alcott shouts.



"Think not?" Downing drawls. "Well, you ought to know. Your pal dealt the cards." Grinning behind the revolver, he adds, "As for me, I reckon this'll do me, unless some of you want to play any more."



The blacklegs decline, with Kate adding, "Monsieur is a most excellent player." Downing orders champagne for the spectators, and Kate is later seen with Alcott leaving the boat at Vicksburg, having learned a hard lesson.



The Hildreth, Twain, and Sun stories epitomize how the long money changed hands in those days: not always by marked or held-out aces, but sometimes by outsharping the sharps – recruiting the perfect "pal," for example, to fix a few decks cold and colder, or "ringing" them in yourself via swift sleight of hand. Acting was required not to sandbag or bluff but to build your victims' confidence, the better to catch them off guard. But maybe the ultimate lesson was this: Whoever got the drop with the most lethal weapon was the one who'd make off with the loot.