Photo by Cynthia Larsen

Bettor: late and never

By Ed Goldman

By the time I started kindergarten at New York City’s Public School 106 when I was two months shy of my fifth birthday, I had two skills most of my classmates lacked: (1) I could tell time, and (2) I could play poker. 

In fact, there’s a funny photo somewhere of my dad, middle brother Stuart and me playing poker at our kitchen table in our apartment.  I’m wearing Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, pajamas, in homage to one of the least expensive TV show ever produced. Stu’s wearing a sweatshirt and my dad’s in a flannel shirt, meaning it’s close to my bedtime but not Stu’s, and wintertime. 

We lived in a one-square-mile community called Parkchester, which consisted of 111 eight- and 12-story brick buildings in an area called The Bronx, home of the New York Yankees. I mention the locale to indicate that when we were kids, winter weather necessitated our staying indoors a lot when we weren’t at school or when Mayor Robert F. Wagner declared it a Snow Day. Not that we actually stayed indoors on Snow Days, which usually found most of the kids in Parkchester preferring to sled down a fairly innocuous incline of boulders which we ominously dubbed The Rocks. We also played “catch” with seeming snowballs that were actually stones we covered in snow. If you got hit by one, you would burst into tears and you may experience a dreadful nosebleed. My childhood was a hybrid I like to call urban/bucolic. 

I also should clarify that the only poker my dad, brother and I played was five-card draw and seven-card stud. We didn’t know about those exotic versions of the game like Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Badugi, Razz, High-Low Chicago or Follow the Queen. To further clarify, I STILL don’t know anything about those—and I’m not sure I want to (although Follow the Queen sounds like it might be fun if it didn’t require players to accessorize with boas). 

By the time I was an adolescent, we had moved to California and I became close with my dad’s dad, Grandpa Max. He taught me to play gin and gin rummy. He and my dad both tried to teach me the game of pinochle and bridge but those seemed as hard to learn as repairing a carburetor or assembling a home-entertainment console from IKEA. 

I have a feeling this may be making it sound like I hail from a long line of gamblers or card sharps, which isn’t the case. Oh, there could have been a line but it would have been a short one. Grandpa Max often got into all-night pinochle games that were “high stakes” in only a relative way. A popular hatmaker in those days, as Max was, could take home as much as a hundred bucks per week, and if he was the big winner at a game he might put $25 to $30 in his jacket pocket. Needless to add, we’re not talking Vegas, Monte Carlo or even Laughlin, Nevada money. (Laughlin—where my mom went to gamble with a bus-full of her peers when she was widowed the first time—is the lowest profile of those gambling Meccas, though very popular with empty-nesters for whom pickleball is too adrenaline-rich.) 

By the time my dad was playing cards with his pals from work or his temple, all-nighters were strictly verboten by the wives and winning more than three or four dollars a game could get you accused of being a “ringer”—a player who, unlike the competing participants, is highly skilled. It’s like hiring a former professional ballplayer but only for the duration of your company picnic’s softball game against your business rival. 

The first time I went to Reno and played poker for actual money, many years later, I got lucky in more ways than one. Which is to say I won about $500 and knew I could easily become a compulsive gambler— but didn’t. I was further tempted when I made a long-odds dual bet in 2014 that not only would the San Francisco Giants win the National League pennant but also the subsequent World Series.