The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-02-26
GREAT POKER CAME PLAYED OUT WEST
Jack Caten Lost an Eye But
 Killed the Engineer
GREAT STAKE IN TIE GAME
The Engineer Kept Putting Up Money Until Ready to Call the Gam blers Bluff-Then the
 Trouble Began.
From the Washington Star.

From the Washington Star.
 "A man who sits into a game of poker in region that is new to him without as it is played in said region is liable to stack up against worse trouble than did the British soldier who clomped into a Mohammedan mosque with his boots and spurs and helmet on," observed an old Californian who is visiting Washington For there's a heap of different kinds of poker played in this country And the worst of it is that the man who plays the kind of a game he was raised on in his own section is always blind to the beauties of the entirely different game that he drifts into when he gets away from his own neck-of-the- woods Poker is a good deal like Injun talk I can talk pretty fair Modoc Iajun, but I reckon if I'd talk Modoc to bad Shoshone or on how my top hair would do for tepee lining And there are more mixed brands of draw poker played around the United States than there are Injun dialects.
 T once saw a game of poker that re- suited pretty seriously for both players on account of the lack of an understand ing between them before the game started as to just what the hands were worth. This happened in Benecia, few miles up the bay and the San Joaquin from San Francisco, in '6S
 ''I was in Jack Caton's big Benecia faro mill one Sunday afternoon--for the game was wide open then on Sundays as on week days-trying to pump a little sense into the fool head of a friend of mine who had chubbed away nearly every dollar he had in the world at Benecia's brace games when one of the look-outs, who knew the interest I took in watching good game of poker, although I never played except with friends, came over to where I was standing and said:
 Jacks got good game of draw on with a new man upstaiN. Go up and look it over"
 Caton Great Player.
 Now, in those days Jack Caton-who was shot and killed by Billy the Kid in Arizona, many years later-was about the hottest poker player on the Pacific slope. He ran faro games in most of the size able towns in California for the money there was in it, but he just played draw poker for fun. And he always played on the level, for he wasn't a man who cared to mix pleasure with business, and he would not have found any entertainment in stacking the papers or dealing from the bottom or middle in any game that he got into just to enjoy the study of the percentages.
 When l went upstairs to the poker room Caton was sitting In his shirt sleevea opposite a solid-1oolxing man of 40 ,or thereabouts, dressed in the uniform of steamship officer. When I was told that he was chief engineer of one of the big Panama steamers I didn't have much trouble in figuring where he'd got hold of the huge sack of gold coin he had with him. For in those days the chief engineers of the west coast ships used to have charge of the coalng of their yes ses and they considered 1t quite legiti- mate to take rake-down of several thousand dollars every time they coaled ship. Coal cost from s20 to so ton, and the chief engineers had the making of the report of their bunker space and entered into the arrangements with the ship coalers on the west coast. It was the custom of the day for the chief engineers of the Panama steamers to feather their neSIA III lnlS way anu hpDONS oPPNoiNN to think anything of 1t.
 "This chief engineer had just been transferred from the east to the west coast, which accounts for the ignorance of the rules of the California game of poker When I turned up I found that he'd been jabbing Caton pretty hard since the beginning of the game. But the two different brands of poker played by the two men hadn't yet come Into conflict
 You see, they don't play straights out on the slope. The sloper who hasn't travelled or played poker with eastern men doesn't know what the word straight means as applied to the game of draw. Caton, of course, knew all about straights, but he never played 'em with anybody, and I never think he had right to as- sume that any man who played draw with him in his own territory ought to know the rules of the game in that territory.
 Big Jackpot.
 'There was d big jackpot heap In the center of the table when l went upstairs to look at the game. It had been sweet ened probably half a dozen times, and already contained something close on to 5000 in double eagles. But neither man seemed to be able to catch openers. It went around between them eleven times altogether, and every time it passed both men sweetened 1t for lump. The chler engineer dealt the twelfth mess. Caton was one of those cool chaps who picked up his cards leisurely and one by one, and when he had thus got hold of his first two papers, he calmly joggled S20O into the middle and remarked that it was open, before looking at the others.
 q nese tickets of mine are worth $500 more said the chief engineer, who was a pretty self-contained chap himself, show ing the yellow stuff into the pot.
 Then you want to play it for keeps, pardner said Caton, standing the raise before the draw, and disearding two.
 '"The chief engineer took one paper. He picked it up. looked at it for a second or two, and then carefully closed up the hand like a fan and laid 1t on the table in front of him.
 Do your bluffing,' he said to Caton
 .IIaur ahal1t S1 ann zunrlh 2, inn1airna