This is going to be the page where I want to post messages from people telling of their poker successes and poker nightmares. It may look empty now but all we need is a little contribution from all of you, the poker playing public, who read this page and it'll be a wealth of stories in no time. I may as well get the ball rolling so here's the story of the four jacks.

The Four Jacks

It was my second month at uni, I had gone to the freshers fair and joined all of the clubs and societies that I wanted and one of those was the poker society. It was Thursday night and for the first time I was just heading to the upstairs room in the "Bag o' Nails" bar in Lenton where the poker society has it's regular tournaments. I was nervous. The entire administration would be there and I really didn't want to make a fool out of myself, I'd been playing for five years but this was my first game against these guys. Anyway, after about two and a half hours of playing Texas Hold 'Em at a big table (started with 13 players) I was going steadily. The players left in were some unknown guy, a lecturer, me and the head of the society. The first two cards were dealt out and I wanted to burst out laughing. Everyone folded except the prez and I. I'd already consigned half my chips to the middle, it was all or nothing. The flop came down, Jack Nine Jack. I bet some more, so did he. I can't remeber the next card that came down but I do remember him going all in straight afterwards. I followed. Either I was about to pull of a move, or go down in the anals of history as a guy who missed his shot! The last card came down. A two I think. He showed his cards first, he had an ace high flush an was looking very smug. Then I flipped over my cards and came out with a line I still remember, "If it can beat four jacks I'll be very impressed!". Silence. Then a small ripple of applause followed by a shake of the hand by the Prez. Since then we've played a lot, but never quite recreated the drama of that first game at the "Bag o'Nails".

As an epilogue, I didn't wind up winning that game. It ended a draw as the bar had to shut before we finished. I collected about £60 in the end. Not a bad night, I'd beaten the Prez and made about £50 profit. Not bad at all.

Truck Driver in Darlington

Yes! I've won! Oh, wait, hang on.....Damn!!!

It was about six months ago that I was staying with a few friends in Liverpool. The night before I was due to get the train back home we all went to a lovely dingy little pub for a p**s-up of almost Biblical proportions. I forget the name of the place, but it's just around the corner from Lime Street station by way of a couple of side-streets (which puts it somewhere near the back of the Adelphi Hotel if my memory serves me) Lovely place. Smoke hanging in the air, deep, throaty chatter from corner tables and stalls, and a fair shair of bar-hovering drunks. The three of us found a table, sat down, and proceeded to get fantastically drunk. As always, I had a deck of cards on me and pulled it out to do a series of magic tricks with the intention of astounding my friends. It worked. All the hours of practice had paid off and my sleight of hand was damn near undetectable. This should have been a good thing.

In restrospect, it was only the first of my mistakes.

My friends were having a damn good laugh and kept making suggestions like "It's up his sleeve, I can see it." Despite the fact that there was *in magician's voice* "Nothing up my sleeve."

This was the second mistake.

It wasn't long before we found that we had company. A huge, hulking sod of fantastic proportions and his weasely friend asked if we wanted a game of Poker. Now, when you're drunk and you have a deck of cards and someone offers you a game of something, you naturally believe that they're going to be real nice fellas, and you'll have a few great hands of Black Jack or Poker or somesuch and then you'll go home nice and happy. So we agreed to a game. Five card stud. Against the Hulk and Weasel Boy.

This turned out to be our third mistake. And believe me, this was the big one.

Sat in a circle around this table, cards held close to our chests and eyes on all the other players, smoke curling lazilly up into the thick air, we played a few hands. Weasel Boy betrayed his every hand by grinning if he had a good set of cards, and frowning if he had a bad set. He didn't seem to realise he was doing it either. But the big man, The Hulk, he was different. He was stony faced and silent. It was as though through sheer concentration he was willing the cards to change suit under his steady gaze.

Which I don't think they did. But you can never tell.

Now I'm a bit duff at Poker at the best of times, but I was riding a lucky streak a mile wide this night. I was winning money off my friends (which is good) and I was winning money off complete strangers (which is better).

Then it all went wrong.

"You f******g cheat." the Hulk spat (though his actual words were unprintable, even without the help of the moderators), giving me a stare that was *not* in any confusion as to what it meant. This man was miffed. "You f******g switched the cards you t**t."

I ceased raking his coins over to my side of the table and froze.

"You were f******g bluffing and then you go and pull all those cards out of you're sleeve so that you'd win. I saw you."

This was bad. This was very bad.

I rolled up my sleeves. "Look, I'm not hiding anything. It's just plain luck."

The Weasel was also staring at me. in a way that was somehow worse than his big friends beetled brows.

"I saw you doing those card tricks before, Magic Boy. You did it then and you're doing it now."

"Look, honestly, I'm not cheating. I swear." I was sh****ng bricks here. I was drunk, so were my friends, and this psycopath and his ratty freind were going to kill us.

He didn't actually say as such, but my imagination was playing out all the nasty scenes from 'The Krays' on constant loop.

"Alright." the Hulk lowered back into his seat, "One more." and he started dealing out the cards. We played in complete silence. No one daring to stand up and say "You know what? Stuff this. I'm taking my winnings and going to bed you hairy knuckled throwback. And you, yes you, you little rodent, stop looking at me like that. Got it? Good."

We played on.

And we lost.

The big man had a Royal Flush. The rodent had a high straight. Me and my friends had nothing but the odd pair. The Hulk took the money up in his beg fists and sneered, rising from the table and storming off out the door with his pet weasel following just behind.

No one spoke. No one even moved. And then I picked up the deck and flipped over a few cards. As I said earlier, I'm a petty magician, and because of that I immediately noticed something about the cards. The b****d had rigged them. Somehow (probably when he accused me of cheating) his little friend had ordered the cards so that, starting with the Hulk and dealing round, ending with the Weasel, they would pull out all the best cards. I flipped over a few more. If I or my friends had dropped any more cards, we would have picked up nothing but rubbish.

We'd been screwed.

For money or dignity or whatever. We had been screwed.

There's a lesson in there somewhere.

(TDiD's Note - I was so tempted to call this one "The Hulk and the Weasel")

The Apathetic