Best Hand Wins

Rather Large Pete was messing around with the discards again. He did it only just before he dealt. Curly knew what was happening and was frantically trying to think of some way to stop it, when he realized he needn't bother. No one was opening this hand.

All the hands were thrown in, and Pete had to deal without time to set up the hands. The next round, Curly would have to watch more closely.

It was early in the weekly Friday night home game. The men played no-limit draw poker, $1 ante, $10 minimum, bet or fold.

When Rather Large Pete was next under the gun, he did not open.

Frenchy opened for the minimum.

Curly had two pair, aces and fours. He raised $70. He knew that Frenchy was a sucker for large raises, and at the same time, Curly didn't want anybody else drawing against his two pair.

Clyde on his left showed four clubs before disgustedly throwing the hand away. "First time I get a flush to draw to, and I can't get in. Probably be drawing dead, anyway," he muttered, implying that he thought Curly played only the nuts.

Out of the corner of his eye, Curly saw Pete scooping up the discards, seemingly more interested in watching the hand of the man on his right than the cards in front of him. Hutch often did not protect his hand, and a neighbor could easily see his cards.

Everybody else ditched their hands and the bet got back to Frenchy, who eagerly put the $70 raise in – too eagerly, to make Curly think he already had the best hand.

By now Pete had 30 cards in his hand, those of the six players who had folded, and he seemed to be unconsciously fiddling with them.

"Gimme one," said Frenchy. Frenchy was certainly tricky enough to draw one card to trips, but he would have reraised on any three of a kind, so he undoubtedly had two worse pair.

"One," said Curly. He saw Pete apparently idly shuffling the discards the way many people do before they have the whole deck: cards held in left hand, simultaneously grabbing top and bottom card with right hand. Both cards are slid off at the same time, thumb pulling off top card, index finger pulling off bottom card. You can go through the whole deck this way and partially mix it, but that wasn't what Pete had in mind. After he had a pile of 10 cards, five pulls, he set the remainder of the cards in his left hand on top of the 10. Curly knew what four of the 10 cards were. He'd seen Pete set Clyde 's four clubs at the top of the discards.

There was no more time to devote his full attention to Rather Large Pete's antics; Frenchy was betting.

"You take one? I bet before I look at my card. I know I had you beat goin' in." Frenchy usually lied. He had seen his card, and he was afraid he had not had Curly beat going in. Frenchy shoved in $70. If he'd made the hand, he would have wagered much more. He was betting $70 as a protection bet so that he wouldn't have to call a lot more.

"Raise it," said Curly, putting $350 in the pot. It would take all of Frenchy's chips to call that bet.

"You bluffin' fool, you ain't made your hand. I call." He put in his remaining $250. "Kings and fours."

"What a coincidence. I've got aces and fours."

Curly now knew that Rather Large Pete had "milked up" two hands to "double off" one of the players, and that two preset hands were now on the bottom of the nearly complete deck he held in his hand. As Curly started to pull in the large pot, Frenchy noisily got up from the table.

"Well, I hadda call him." The other players smiled and commiserated with him, and watched him leave. In the confusion, Curly held back his own two fours and raked Frenchy's two fours in with the pot. He had so many chips and would be so busy stacking them that no one would notice the cards under them.

He saw Rather Large Pete perform a few excellent false shuffles that did not disturb the bottom 10 cards, ending with a sixteenth-inch ledge at the end of the deck, on top of which were the key cards, what the mechanics call "shuffling in a brief." As hoped for, Hutch "hit the brief" in the cut, and the 10 cards were again at the bottom. Had Hutch not cut right at the brief, Pete undoubtedly would have hopped the cut – that is, restored the deck to his desired composition, with those 10 cards where he wanted them.

If you could have examined the deck, you would have seen that the cards from bottom up were, alternating clubs and spades, 5, 2, 9, 3, jack, 8, queen, 10, king, ace. Now came the tricky part, the part that took all of Pete's skill.

A young, slightly overweight, flashy dresser called R.C. was just sitting down to Curly's left, Clyde having moved into Frenchy's place between Pete and Curly. R.C. had been lucky the previous week and won $2,000. He liked to show off by having the most money at the table, so he bought $2,000 worth of chips. Pete was the next high man at the table with maybe $1,500.

Pete dealt the first two cards off the top of the deck, and then, without breaking his rhythm, the next from the bottom, the next four from the top, and the one to himself from the bottom.

Curly busied himself with his chips, rearranging his current accumulation of $1,300 into neat stacks. The little he saw from the corner of his eye made him admit that Pete was good. With each bottom, he slid the top card slightly to the right with his thumb, so that it looked as if the card was really coming off the top. Many "b-dealers" dealt wooden bottoms – that is, the top card would slide to the right when it was dealt, until suddenly a bottom was dealt, and then the top card didn't move, and anyone with half an eye could tell where the card was coming from. Unfortunately, most players seemed not to have even that much sight, and wouldn't have noticed blue-backed cards in a green deck. Rather Large Pete's bottoms were very good, and each round, first R.C. then Pete received a card from the bottom.

R.C. held his cards so that you couldn't see them by standing behind him, but if he had shown you his hand, you would have seen K-Q-J-9-5, all clubs.

Pete was just picking up the A-10-8-3-2, all spades.

Curly wasn't picking up the cards that had been dealt to him: Four of those were now in his lap. In his hand were the four he had held out, plus one more.

In first position, Clyde folded.

"Open." Curly put in $10.

"Call." R.C. was being cagey, not wanting to frighten anyone with an early raise. Obviously, he hoped for some further action. He would get more than he counted on.

Fold, fold, fold, fold, and .

"Raise," said the dealer. A trace of a smile touched Pete's face and left just as quickly. Pete didn't smile much, except when he anticipated big money. The raise wouldn't be too much: $50 more.

"Call," declared Curly. Pete shot a quick look at him.

"Who's it up to?" R.C. wanted to know. Where had Curly heard that before?

"You know who it's up to!" snapped Clyde , taking away a little of R.C.'s limelight.

"Well, then it's my turn. Now I raise, $100 more."

Pete smiled again, this time noticeably. "And $500." There was a gasp from somewhere at the table as Pete slowly counted out his chips. While attention focused on this rather large bet, Curly's extra four cards joined the discards in the center. To watch him, you would have thought he had pushed some stray chips at the edge of the pot closer to the center of the table, as if trying to tidy the pot prior to its receiving a very sugary sweetening.

"Call," said Curly, resignedly. A flash of annoyance passed over Pete's features, which one might have interpreted as an extra bit of coffeehousing, an attempt to sucker R.C. in, too. Pete relaxed, then looked a bit worried. He still didn't figure Curly for anything better than an excellent draw, maybe one to a straight flush. Chances were slim of that hand being made, but Pete liked sure things. Well, he'd just get another thousand or so.

"All of 'em," said R.C., impressively sliding in the remainder of his massive stack, about $1,800, nearly $1,200 more than Pete and Curly had bet.

"I only have $800 left," said Pete. "You can take back some of that."

"You got me," said Curly, adding the rest of his chips.

Jonesy said, "Wait a second. Lemme count these. There'll be a side pot. Lessee, Pete has $1,502 all told. Curly's short by $215, makes a $430 side pot he can't win."

"Anybody want any cards?" asked Pete.

"Ha, everyone's pat," snorted Clyde .

Curly didn't have to draw. He couldn't help his four of a kind, but he wanted to rub a little salt into Pete's defeat. "I need one."

"None," said R.C.

"I don't need any," said Pete. "I wouldn't've put that much money in if I didn't have a hell of a duke."

Pete burned a card and slid the top card over to Curly. He then set the deck among the discards.

Then, the showdown came.

"I've got a king-high flush," said R.C., spreading his cards.

"Get it fixed. I've got ace-high." Pete tabled his hand and reached for the pot.

Finally, Curly spoke up. "That's good for the side money."

Pete looked decidedly unhappy as he stared at those four little fours. He didn't know how, but he knew he'd been had. He couldn't ever say anything, though, not after the way he'd set up those two flushes. He had been so intent on his own thievery that he had never noticed the deck to be four cards short.

Curly had nearly $4,000. Now, he just had to contrive to gradually lose back $2,000 to R.C. Should be easy .