"Before sitting into a game of poker anywhere near tidewater out on the Pacific coast you'll always find it a pretty good scheme to make a few preliminary inquiries of your fellow players as to the kind of poker you're expected to mix up with," said a traveling man who had recently returned to the East after a tour on the Slope. "Because I neglected to do this myself on several occasions I got into all sorts of embarrassing situations and all colors of poker trouble all the way from Portland, Ore., to San Diego, Cal., and the fellows with whom I did little stunts at draw—all good people, business men I met with through letters—put me down as the worst jay in a game of cards that ever crossed the Rocky Mountains. The folks out there think we're all jays back here, anyhow, if for no other reason than that we haven't enough brains to migrate in a body to the Pacific Slope, but they complacently told me that I was the worst of the species they had ever seen, simply because I couldn't seem to get the hang of the queer old game they call poker out in that country.

"The game they dub poker out there isn't poker at all, in my opinion. It's a hybrid sort of affair, full of fancy moves that must have been chucked into the original game by early California vaqueros with such a taste for embellishment that they had to tack gilt fringe on to their pants and to encircle their hats with silver cable. Whatever they call it, it's not American draw poker by a darned sight. The kind of poker that I was raised on—the real thing, the article of draw that we play on this side of the Alleghanies—doesn't take any more account of the joker, for instance, than it does of the card case; but out in California they think a man's plumb blind crazy if he registers a kick over having the joker in the deck. I'd as lief play old maid or grab for corn-silk cigarettes as play draw poker with the joker mixed up in it; but out there I had to take the game as it was served up, and, as between poker with a joker and no poker at all, I, of course, accepted the lesser of the two evils and played. But I got dumped on the game for about 2,000 miles of coast line, and that, too, by people who didn't have to count themselves because they were so many at the game. The trouble was that I played the game of draw that I was brought up on and they played their crossbred game, and the result was just about as queer as it would be to see a baseball pitcher chucking up a Rugby football to a cricket batsman with a fence picket in his hands.

"I'll not forget my first run-in with this poker-joker idea. This was my first visit to the slope, you know and, although I'd often heard vaguely that young 'uns, playing draw for beans or tin tags, once in a while shoved the joker into the pack for the fun of the thing. I, of course, never dreamed that rational adult human beings in any quarter of the earth could have the nerve to inflict such a dismal outrage upon the noble game of draw as to slap the joker into a poker deck. But I found out different the very first game of draw that I sat into out in San Francisco.

"It was a four-handed game, and I was the only Eastern man in the bunch. The other three fellows were business men who belong to the Native Sons' organization, which accounts for the weird brand of poker they played. They played what was taught 'em in their youth out there; didn't know any better, and thought, and no doubt still think, that their game is right.

"I was banker, and dished up the first hand. It was 25 cents ante and $5 limit. I gave myself two rattling good pairs, kings up on tens. All of the other fellows stayed, and the man on my right made it a couple of dollars more to draw cards. This let two of 'em out of it, but I thought my two pairs were good enough for a $2 raise, and so I played with the raiser. He drew one card, and so, of course, did I. It was his bet, and he came at me on the double with the limit. I'd caught another king, and had as neat-looking a full house as a man needs to have in any kind of a game.

"'Five more'n you,' said I, and we shuttled the limit back and forth until we each had about $50 in the pot. Said I to myself, 'I've got you beat, my boy, for the percentage of the game is 'way against your holding fours against my full hand, especially on the first clatter out of the box, and, even if you've filled those two pairs of yours—which you probably haven't, for the percentage is plumb against you—you certainly haven't got aces on top.' Now, that was good poker reasoning, the kind of reasoning that has kept me necktie and peanut money ahead of the game anyway for twenty years or so, and I gave him the raise-back just as often as he threw it at me.

"'Finally,' said he, 'we are getting out of our depth and beyond the breaker line, ain't we? I've got you man-handled, but you junipers from the East never can feel the hunch when you are licked, and so I'll skate in my little five and call you.'

"We each had about $80 in the pot then.

"I spread out my three royal gentlemen topping the pair of tens, and was just about to make some good-natured crack about getting a hoe to scoop in my winnings on the first hand, when he spread out his hand and raked in the pot with a smile. His hand consisted of a pair of aces up on a pair of sixes and the joker.

"'What the dickens are you doing there?' I asked him when he raked in the pot. 'Can't you see it's a misdeal? I forgot to take the joker out of the deck.'

"'Misdeal nothing,' he said, still smiling. 'You had a good hand all right, but aces beat kings, you know, anywhere from Tuolume to Tucson.'

"'Yes,' said I, 'but you've only got aces up, and I've got a full hand, kings up, and it's a misdeal, anyhow'——

"Well, they all looked at me like they thought I ought to be in a lunatic asylum.

"'Misdeal?' said my friend who had swiped the pot. 'What the deuce are you giving us, anyhow? I caught the joker on the draw, and it just filled my hand—three aces and a pair of sixes. Don't an ace-full beat a king-full in that desolate Atlantic coast region you hail from?'

"'You mean you call the joker an ace?' said I, the thing beginning to dawn upon me.

"The three fellows gazed at me as if they were trying to find out if I was drunk or not.

"'Why, do you mean to say,' said the man I had played with, 'that you don't know that in poker the joker is any old thing you choose to make it—that, when you get it either on the deal or on the draw, you can call it anything you want to call it to eke out a pair, flush, full house or anything else? Tell you what, old man, you need sleep. You've been working too hard. Turn in and have a long night of it.'

"I couldn't help but laugh.

"'Well,' said I, 'you people may call this joker-jiggling poker, but somehow or another it suggests tag and I-spy and little girls singing "London Bridge is falling down" to me. Why in the devil don't you play poker with a pinochle deck and be done with it? Come on, and we'll build card houses, or what's the matter with playing casino for chalk or pin-wheels?'

"'Why, don't you benighted people back East use the joker?'

"'Yes,' said I, 'we do. We always give the joker in a new deck to babies in arms to cut their teeth on.'

"Another queer kink in the slope game of draw is that straights don't go. I've been catching occasional pat straights and drawing to 'em all my life, and I think the straight is one of the prettiest plays in poker. In playing straights, if the chap across the table draws one card, you've got the fun of trying to figure out whether he's drawing to a couple of pairs or bobbing to a straight or a flush, and it's interesting work. If he stands pat, it's up to you to determine by the mind-reading process whether he's simply bluffing or actually has a pat straight or full hand or flush in his paws.

"Well, out on the coast they've heard occasional rumors of such things as straights being played somewhere or another in the game of draw, but you won't meet one coast man in a hundred that knows precisely what the straight consists of and what the chances are of a man's getting a pat straight or of filling a one-ended or double-ended straight. As for playing straights, they've never even dreamed of such an absurdity. I found that out in the second game of draw I got into out there.

"It was in Portland, and another four-handed game, the other three fellows being business men also. We played along for a while without my running into any snags sticking out of the coast game, and then I got on the deal four cards that had in them the making of a corking good straight, capable of being filled at either end, from nine up to queen, so that either an eight or a king on the draw would have fixed me all right. I decided to draw to it just for luck, although all three of the fellows were in and had stood a rise before the draw. When I caught my king I was glad I had decided to draw to my straight. A king-high straight is a pretty good mess of cards in any man's game of draw as we know draw back in these parts.

"There was a heap of betting on that round, and, of course, with that clipper-built straight of mine, I wasn't going to let any of 'em put it on me. I met every raise and stuck so persistently and confidently that the whole three of them began to regard me as the main guy so far as that deal was concerned and look a bit afraid of me. The last time I raised it they kind o' exchanged looks, and the man at my left called me. The other two men followed suit, and there was a general laying down of hands. The man at my left had three eights, the fellow next to him aces up on treys, and the man at my right three sixes. I projected my right arm to sweep in the good-sized pot after spreading out my king-high straight.

"'Hold up, there!' they all yelled at me at once. 'What's all this? What are you trying to do—hypnotize us?' And the man who had laid down his three eights made a reach for the pot.

"It was now my turn to think the whole three of 'em looney.

"'Is there so much smoke in here,' said I, 'that you three people can't perceive that I've got a king-high straight?'

"'Straight?' said the man with the three eights. 'Straight be damned! You've got one king up on nothing. How old are you, anyhow—seven? Straight? Listen to him!' And the three of 'em gave the hoarse hoot in chorus. I asked 'em to get around me and pinch me, because I wanted to find out if I was dreaming or not, but they were too busy leaning back in their chairs and roaring like so many wild asses of the woods to pay any attention to me. That's what I got for not inquiring beforehand into the kind of draw I stacked up against in Portland.

"The next poker knock I got was down in Santa Barbara. I got into a game of draw with three hotel clerks, all good fellows, but all addicted to the nursery poker they play out there, and again I forgot to nail 'em up against the wall and make 'em exude information about the kind of game they purposed playing. We got along all right for an hour or so, and at the end of the time I was comfortably well ahead of the game. It kind o' tickled me, too, when I caught the joker on the draw three or four times and beat 'em out on their own game— which is a silly game, and about as brainy as bean-bag, all the same. I also kept away from my inclination to draw to straights, and, having made this much progress, I really didn't think I was in for any more rude and costly surprises in the game. That's where I did the leap-year figuring.

"I gave myself a neat mess of clubs—four of them—with the ace for a capstone. I have always been lucky in bobbing to flushes, and this looked good. Two of the other fellows drew two cards each, and the other man asked for one. I gave myself another club, and tried to look gloomy and depressed. An ace-high flush has always been good enough for me on this side of the continent, and I bet it for all it was worth. The three hotel clerks evidently thought they were pretty well fixed, too, and, although there was nothing frantic about the betting, it was nice and smooth and even, and the pot grew in a way that suited me down to the ground. When it got so large on five-dollar raises as we thought it ought to be there was a general suggestion for a call and a show-down. Two of my fellow players had threes, small ones, and the other two pairs that we wouldn't stay with very long back in this neck of the woods. Well, I flashed my ace-high flush of clubs on them, and was just about to say something about easy money when the man with the best threes scooped in the pot.

"'Must have left your specs at home, my boy,' said I, thinking he was only fooling. 'Pass that pile over.'

"'For why?' said he.

"Then I looked him over and saw that he was serious.

"'For why?' I repeated. 'Well, the instructors at whose feet I sat to learn what is learnable about the game of draw poker always taught me to believe that a flush is better than threes.'

"'Yes,' said he, 'but didn't you draw a card?'

"'What the devil difference does that make?' I inquired.

"'Oh,' said he patronizingly, 'I see you're a bit new at the game. You see, you can't draw to flushes. You've got to hold 'em pat.'

"Well, that was the worst jab I had yet received, but I had to stand for it, on the 'do-as-the-Romans-do' principle.

"In San Diego I got into a game with some fellows who were so warm that they wouldn't play anything but jack-pots. At the start-off of the game—the first hand—none of the four of us could open it. It went around three times, and on the fourth deal I caught a pair of queens. Two of the other fellows stayed. I caught another queen, and played the hand for all it was worth. When I was called I showed down my hand, and had 'em both beat.

"'Foul hand,' said they. 'You didn't have openers,' and they looked at me suspiciously.

"'The dickens you say!' said I. 'I went in with a pair of queens and caught another one—there they are.'

"'But you needed aces,' said they, all at once. 'It went around four times, and jack-pots are progressive, of course. D'ye mean to say you didn't know that? Sorry, old man, that we'll have to split the pot.'

"'Are they always progressive out here?' I asked.

"'Always,' they answered, and that settled it. The pot was split."