The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-12-29
THE GAME OF STUD POKER.


/
At One Time it was Highly Thought q
in the Wild and Woolly West
You don't see q game Of stud very
often nowadays" remarked the Old
time sport but 1t had its day. In the
earlier times stud poker and faro were
about the only gambling games in the
west, and | think stud poker was
played more than faro, because no eX-
tens!ve layout was needed for stud, as
is the case with faro.
There have been games Of stud po-
ker running in Kansas City within the
past few years but don know of any
now The law got after them very
hard, and then the percentage was too
big in favor of the house. The game In
its prime was played where there was
licensed gambling. Then one man, an
ebploye Of the house dealt all the time,
played a hand himself and ran the
bank as Well This gave the house
chance to manipulate the cards If 1t
could, 1t gave the dealer the advantage
of always playing from big stack OF
Chips, and..every time pair showed up
a chip went into the hole in the center
of the table. -Four OF five fellows could
sit down to same With five dollars
apiece, and In couple of hours all the
money originally IN sight had gone into
that hole as percentage. 1t was a great
graft" the old sport remarked, regret
fully.
THE game of stud poker he cortin-
ued, was played like any other game
of poker, so far as the values Of the
cards are concerned, and the difference
was all in the dealing. The first card
was dealt face down on the table, or
buried This was called the card in
the hole Every man put up his ante
after looking at his hole card if he
thought it was good enough. The. next
card was dealt face up, and the man
with the highest card in sight led the
betting. the others staying in or not as
they saw fit The other three cards
were then dealt, all face up, the man
with the best hand in sight doing the
betting after each card was dropped.
At the end the whole thing depended
upon what a player might have in the
hole A man with three aces in sight
was no better than the man with three
kings, for the latter might have
fourth king in the hole On the other
hand, the holder of the three aces in
sight might have a fourth in the hole
and 'cinch hand
1T was great game to draw a man
on. for if he had a good hole card or
in sight he hated to let go,
so if the other fellow was betting pref
ty strong on a leading hand it became
Ne 1o auyI
was dealt. This was a great game for
in the mining camps, and It
was a quiet crowd at the table you'd
sometimes see. A cowboy or miner
or two might be playing with Chi
naman, a negro and a half-breed Indi-
an. The soldiers used to play ii gr at
1eal in the towns near the garrisons.
There were some big stakes played
n these games of stud. When the
whole thing depended on the hole card
things used to get pretty exciting at
times. | saw fellow write a bill of
sale for three thousand sheep one night, |
when sheep were worth five dollars
lead, and make a raise with the paper. |
The bluff went, for it was a bluff, but
ne had a good hand in sight and it
;hook the other fellows nerve.
The buffalo hunters used to come
nto the little towns along the Yellow
stone river in the spring and drink and |
play stud until their hardearned mon |
" was gone. While it lasted times |
we're lively around the stud tables The |
game was such an apparent good thing |
or the house that it led to the first leg
sation in the west against gambling. !
\ law was passed in Montana making |
t a misdemeauor to play percentage |
stud The law defined the game as be-
ne one where one men dealt all the
ime and the table had q hole In it for
he percentage The gamblers got
around the law by letting the deal go |
lround and letting the man playing for
he house extract the hole percentage,
NE doom of stud poker came when
dontana and nearly every other west
rn state and territory abolished IL
ensed gambling, but after all, If men
lad to gamble in the company of
trangers it was about the best game
hey could play, barring faro,"-Kansas
'ity Star.