The Education of a Poker Player - Part II

It is not an army that we must shape and train for war; it is a nation.

– Woodrow Wilson, May 18, 1917



In July 1917, Lt. Herbert O. Yardley was given a desk in the code room of the State-Navy-War Building, directly across from the White House. "By lifting my eyes from my work," he wrote, "I could see a tennis game in progress where a few years earlier President Roosevelt and his tennis Cabinet had played every day." He went on to describe the bulky code books and thick stacks of telegrams "from and to consular and diplomatic posts throughout the world" being thumbed by chain-smoking staffers. "The pounding of typewriters specially constructed to make fifteen copies of a telegram mingled with the muffled click of the telegraph instruments" – the sights, sounds, and smoke-marbled humidity of one of the most high-tech rooms in America.



Since few in the military were trained as cryptanalysts, Yardley turned to civilians to staff MI-8. His chief assistant, John Manley, taught English at the University of Chicago, where he'd cut his own code-breaking teeth by debunking a cipher system that allegedly proved Francis Bacon had written the works of Shakespeare. Manley possessed what Yardley called "the rare gift of originality of mind – in cryptology called 'cipher brains.'"



Other gifted or trainable cryptanalysts included the Chaucer scholar Edith Rickert; professor of medieval Latin Charles Beeson; Edgar Sturtevant, an expert on Hittite; Yale professor of Spanish Frederick Bliss Luquiens; and the precocious Yale undergraduate Stephen Vincent Benet, who went on to write the Civil War epic John Brown's Body. One passage in particular might have appealed to his old boss in Washington. A Union soldier not unlike Yardley's father or grandfather has fallen asleep while on duty.



Carter, the telegraph-operator, sighed

And propped his eyes awake again.

He was tired.

Dog-tired, stone-tired, body and mind burnt up

With too much poker last night …



We don't know whether Yardley read the poem, but his training and supervision of such literate women and men put them all in the vanguard of a revolution in code-breaking. "Overnight," writes Kahn, "cryptology outgrew the form of cryptanalysis that had dominated the field for four hundred years: chamber analysis, in which an individual wrestled with a single cryptogram in an isolated room. This shift from artisanal piece work to mass production expanded the functions of the chief cryptologist. No longer was he simply first among equals, solving along with his colleagues and occasionally assigning intercepts to them for solution. Now he managed them."



Yardley proved to be an effective manager, in part because he understood that the power to decode or translate literature was a key aspect of "cipher brains." Like the ability to read an intentionally misleading cipher or poker opponent, a keen eye for intricate narrative language had surprisingly useful code-breaking applications. The result was that book-learnt pencilnecks in Harris tweed jackets were suddenly able to help turn the tide in the trenches.



Promoted to captain, Yardley was dispatched by John "Black Jack" Pershing, commanding general of the American Expeditionary Force, to work with the more advanced British and French cipher bureaus. America's only six-star general, Pershing (1860-1948) had learned to play poker in 1886 while stationed with the Sixth Cavalry in New Mexico; he became so obsessed that he bet hands of draw in his sleep, though he later stopped playing "as an exercise in self-discipline." Even so, a sizable fraction of his officers – including Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower – as well as the Prince of Wales, the medic George Wear, and countless other Allied servicemen played poker in France. Capt. Roger Sermon, who served with Truman in the mud near Verdun, said, "To keep from going crazy we had an almost continuous poker game." One photograph shows four French and British soldiers using an ammunition crate as a table. In a game played just before a mustard-gas attack, William Gill bet his gold watch in a pot won by Carl Grothaus. Gill died in a VA hospital in 1962 of the lingering effects of the gas. Grothaus lived until '91, when his son Dewey inherited the watch and tried to look up the name engraved on its back: "W. B. Gill, Sioux City, IA, U.S.A." But it was only after Dewey enlisted the help of genealogists Peggy Powell and Connie Swearingen that Gill was tracked down and his survivors identified. The watch, complete with its brown leather band, was returned to his grandsons Lloyd and Bill on June 6, 2007, at an American Legion hall in Sioux City.



Yardley's assignment was cushier. Entertaining his opposite numbers at the Ritz and the Crillon, he learned what he could while deferring to those who'd been surveilling the Germans since 1914. Though tactically cooperative, his British counterparts decided Capt. Yardley wasn't sufficiently discreet to be trusted with their most strategic methods. They detected in him an unfortunate tendency to drop names and exaggerate his accomplishments.



After the Armistice was signed on Nov. 11, 1918, most of Europe rejoiced. With Hazel home in Washington, Yardley's orders kept him in Paris monitoring German press reports for another four months. This left him plenty of time to play poker, sample French cuisine, and revel in the company of a beautiful black-haired dancer named Jacqueline. They rented an apartment in Passy and spent New Year's Eve at the Mumm family mansion with 1,500 other delirious, war-weary celebrants. More than 3,000 bottles of champagne were uncorked, enough to require several ambulances to take over-served guests to the hospital. Departing Paris the following March, Yardley left a briefcase containing highly confidential documents on a counter of the Gare de Lyon. Although it was recovered by an MI-8 colleague, losing it seemed to confirm British skepticism about his ability to keep vital secrets.



The most notable single achievement of MI-8 had been decoding messages that identified a German secret agent who was subsequently executed for espionage. Its larger accomplishment was, in Yardley's words, "the large and constant stream of information it has provided in regard to the attitudes, purposes, and plans of our neighbors," friendly or otherwise. He had helped his country get up to speed in an area of national defense that continues to be of vital importance. Yet while no one would dispute that he was one of the best code-breakers of his generation, it was how he used what he found out that became the main sticking point during the next 15 years of his life.



Yardley and his MI-8 staff were moved to plush New York offices at 52 Vanderbilt Avenue at the corner of 47th Street just as the '20s began to roar. After the deprivations of war, and despite Prohibition, what Gertrude Stein called the Lost Generation was bent on enjoying itself. Flappers cut off their Edwardian tresses, kicked up their heels in short frocks, and spoke easy. New York City alone had 32,000 speakeasies, many of which were attached to cardrooms and brothels. George H. Fisher put it this way in the Stud Poker Blue Book: "As the doughboy said when his grandmother sent him cherries preserved in brandy, the important thing is the spirit in which an article is offered."



Because the cables Yardley's agents intercepted were thought to be confidential by those who sent and received them, MI-8 had to operate on both sides of the law, which kept it morally in sync with speakeasy culture. In 1920, the poker-playing whiskey lover Warren Harding defeated James Cox in a landslide. In 1927, Babe Ruth, fueled by "hot dogs, beer, and women," hit 60 home runs, more than any other team in the league, though fellow Yankee Lou Gehrig was named MVP. Gehrig's future wife, Eleanor Twitchell, was living in Chicago then. "I was young and rather innocent," she recalled, "but I smoked, played poker, drank bathtub gin along with everyone else." Chicago was every ballplayer's favorite town to visit because of the blues and jazz thriving there; the speakeasies of Dion O'Banion, "Hymie" Weiss, and Alphonse Capone; and the abundant supply of free-spirited "circuit girls" like Twitchell. Capone's most notorious club, the Four Deuces, was a brothel named after a poker hand. The city Carl Sandburg called "crooked" and "brutal" probably had a lower percentage of legit poker games than anyplace else in the country.



Meanwhile, a more threatening sun was rising across the Pacific. After defeating Russia in 1903 and dominating the Eastern Hemisphere during World War I, Japan continued to build up its army and navy. This forced the U.S. to spend enormous amounts of peacetime dollars to maintain its tied-for-first ratio of 10:10:7 in naval tonnage with respect to Britain and Japan. In October 1921, President Harding convened a conference in Washington in hope of curtailing the arms race.



Because of the serene composure he maintained during international crises, Tomosoburo Kato was called "the poker-face premier" by diplomats and journalists. His ambassador to Washington, Kijuro Shidehara, had a similarly cool disposition. A page-one headline in the Nov. 7, 1921, New York Times declared, BARON SHIDEHARA COMPARES NATIONS TO POKER PLAYERS AND SAYS MR. NIPPON HAS A GOOD HAND. The article reported that the ambassador "speaks this way because he has a very good hand and knows it, reports to the contrary having been circulated for betting purposes. There are sometimes fortunes to be made by interested persons in judicious deception. Mr. Nippon, being only human, like other gentlemen, has made other errors in playing the old game of bluff, but the game was one that had been forced upon him."



In light of such public analogies, we should note that Harding played stud at least two evenings a week in the White House. Regulars in his game included senators Albert Fall and Charles Curtis; Speaker of the House Nicholas Longworth and his wife, Alice, a daughter of Theodore Roosevelt; and senior members of Harding's administration, who came to be known as the Poker Cabinet. "Forget that I'm President of the United States. I'm Warren Harding, playing poker with friends," he would say, "and I'm going to beat hell out of them." In spite of the 18th Amendment, Mrs. Harding served their guests bootleg highballs. But while the poker stakes were often substantial, the rumor that Harding lost the White House china in a pot is merely a bit of embroidery.



Since the likeliest theater of hostile operations was the Philippines, the U.S. and Britain demanded extra tonnage to compensate for how far their ships would have to travel to engage the Japanese. Secretary of State Charles Hughes' proposal was to limit the U.S. and Britain to 500,000 tons each and Japan to 300,000, for a 10:10:6 ratio. Shidehara insisted on 350,000 tons, or 10:10:7.



Given his poker-faced adversaries, it would be enormously useful for Hughes to know what they were saying in private. Yardley told him. Working seven days a week, including Thanksgiving, in 12-hour shifts, MI-8 had cracked the Japanese code. The Nov. 28 cable from the negotiating team to Kato began, "Koshi, Washington URGENT 0073 vrxpm dozoorupuh uteletamme fuinfridy …" Decoded and translated, it said, "We are of your opinion that it is necessary to avoid any clash with Great Britain and America, particularly America, in regard to the armament limitation question. … In case of inevitable necessity you will work to establish your second proposal of 10:6.5." Another message revealed that Shidehara believed "many of our own people … desire the reaching of an immediate agreement through some compromise." Such cables confirmed Hughes' impression that Tokyo's position had softened, allowing him to negotiate more confidently. Even a skeptical member of his staff could tell the decoded cables had "stiffened Mr. Hughes' attitude."



When the poker-face premier signed off on 10:10:6, Yardley's apt comment was, "Stud poker is not a very difficult game after you see your opponent's hole card." For his role in a major diplomatic victory that lowered international tensions and saved his country hundreds of millions of dollars, he received a bonus of one week's salary, $184. Awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, the nation's highest honor for a noncombatant, he was cited for developing, "out of a practically unknown field of mystery and doubt, a science by which he was able to translate the most secret messages and obtain information of vital importance." (Can there ever be a better description of what pokeraticians like Yardley and Sklansky have done for their millions of readers?) Pershing praised Yardley's "exceptionally meritorious and distinguished services in a position of great responsibility." Hughes said MI-8 under Yardley, having "developed its facilities to a very high degree, is of the utmost value to the Department of State." Then they cut Yardley's budget by 30 percent. It was peacetime, after all, and the Army's new cryptographic systems had superceded MI-8's work. It was moral righteousness, however, that finally doomed the Black Chamber. When Henry Stimson, appointed secretary of state by Herbert Hoover in 1929, found out about it, he was neither impressed nor grateful. Furious, he quashed its funding on the grounds that "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." Much as the poker world was torn between sharp and square principles, Stimson's view reflected U.S. ambivalence between the world wars about the new frontiers of ruthless intelligence gathering. Despite what Yardley had accomplished under Wilson and Harding, it was now apparently ethical to mow down the enemy with machine guns but not to decode an encrypted letter between "gentlemen" that might head off warfare.



MI-8 had several highly placed supporters, but Stimson prevailed. The Black Chamber was shut down for good on Hallowe'en 1929, 48 hours after Black Tuesday, when most "blue-chip" stocks became suddenly worthless. The Roaring '20s were over, America's steepest Depression was well under way, and Herb Yardley, medal and all, was officially out of a job.



Next: poker and code-breaking in China and Hollywood.