Poker Articles

Checking it Once
By Dave Cinch
(All Rights Reserved)

You're probably thinking this is gonna be about Christmas. Nooooooot exactly. It's about a one-man gambling junket I once took to balmy Laughlin, Nevada. Balmy Laughlin, I was to find out, was so hot the locals there go to Vegas to cool off. I admit, that's hot.

It happened like this. I was in Las Vegas for the first time and a buddy of mine, named Jimmy Moore, who was a poker dealer at Caesars, asked if I wanted to go to Laughlin. We were cashing out at the Golden Nugget poker room when he asked me. "Where?" I said. I couldn't believe he was asking me. This was my first day ever in Las Vegas - a big event for me - and he was asking me if I wanted to go somewhere else, and somewhere I had never even heard of at that! 'Fat chance,' I thought.

Well, he talked me into it. We drove down in his prized "Indy Pace Car" corvette, and it didn't take long to get there, I promise. I don't know how many miles it was, but that pace car covered it quick. If it was a race, we won it. Not a single human passed us.

When we hit town we got in an Omaha shootout with some cowboy locals, but before long Jimmy got paged to fill in for a friend at Caesars. He had to head back to Vegas, but I had never seen so many Omaha-playing cowboys in my life - so I stayed.

Now, Omaha's not a hard game to play - it's just hard to win. Add to that the game was brand new at the time (this was in the early 80's), and lots of people didn't have a clue. What we found out was, give a cowboy four cards, a bunch of chips, and free drinks - and the game is on. I predicted then and there that 5-card stud, 7-card stud, and Hold'em would all be obsolete with five years. Looks like I was right. Sure, there's still some people who knit around in stud and Hold'em games, but they're mostly just dinosaurs - relics of a bygone era. Show me a 7-card stud player, and I'll show you one of these guys that used to walk 40 miles to school through the snow, barefooted. It never fails.

But how hard can it really be to play 7-card stud? Start with a premium pair, three suited cards, or three to a big straight. Help it on fourth street or get out. What's that, complicated? Where's the strategy? Gambling is supposed to be hard to figure out (like in Omaha). And don't even get me started on 5-stud. That's been obsolete since Lancey Howard drew out on the "Cincinnati Kid." Nope, Omaha is where the action is. I discovered all this on my first day in Nevada, when I was barely 22, I'll have you know. If that sounds like a precocious age, don't be surprised. After all, I learned my ABC's by the time I was 15, and the multiplication tables within a few years of that. In Kentucky, where I hail from, they were touting me for Rhodes Scholar. I loved it.

Anyway, I ended up in Laughlin, Nevada, playing poker. Hell, I already new rednecks when I seen'em from back home. Once again, I was way in advance of the game, just like in my school years I was telling you about. But locals out there in Laughlin and Vegas is serious about their play. They don't like some sharpie coming in and taking them off for a bunch of chips. They's dead serious about that. They don't cut up much at the table either, and they don't like anyone who does. So I vowed to lighten up the action some.

All the while we played, one of the locals kept describing Omaha as "double barrel Hold'em," as if four cards offer only two possible combinations of Hold'em hands. I could only listen to that for so long. I schooled him (using my trusty multiplication tables), and he took exception to it. Before long, they started calling me "Sklansky," but I didn't know who that was at the time (forgive me, I was still wet behind the ears). I caught the innuendo, though. It was kind of like calling the guy in science lab who actually knows how to do the experiment "Einstein." A sarcastic dig; an insult.

Normally I wouldn't take that from some bowlegged Omaha "expert," but I was feeling quite unanimous, I mean magnanimous, at the time. So I started cutting up a bunch at the table, something which all "serious experts" of the game deplore. I knew that would bother them. I conspired to get the table to join in. When under the gun, I used my patented "Checking it once" line, and most times whoever is in second position will follow suit with "Checking it twice," and before you know it, the party is on. It worked. Within a couple of hours, I had the whole card room singing Christmas carols in the middle of June, with it 140 degrees outside in the shade. That'll get the money. Meanwhile, bowlegged was chewing nails over there. And it didn't hurt my feelings at all that I caught the deck all night, and paddled that ass for him for Christmas, not literally of course, but figuratively speaking.

Maybe that's not exactly a classic Christmas Story - it probably wouldn't rank up there with "A Christmas Carol" - but it's the kind of thing that a man can snuggle up with all comfy in his bed. At least I can. I always harken back fondly to this story during the Christmas season. It gives me the "Ho-Ho-Ho" spirit, nearly as much as a beautifully snow covered countryside and a horse-pulled sleigh. That's my favorite commercial by the way, the one with the Clydesdales pulling the sleigh through the snow and the holiday jingle in the background. Budweiser, I think. When you see that one this year, think of old "Dave Cinch" one time, all snug on his couch wearing his favorite stocking cap, thinking deep thoughts about poker. I do these things over the holidays. A man needs a reason to love Christmas other than preposterous gifts such as neckties, after all. It so happens that cool holiday commercials and yuletide poker stories are what makes the season extra merry for me. I can't help it. When the weather outside is frightful, gambling is delightful - just like Dean Martin used to sing!