Court Opinion

ID: 9507940
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 21:26:32.980725+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:07:25.989344
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE SHEEHY,
dissenting:
Draw-80 Poker machines, say the majority, are full of evil designs As if they had never thrilled to four aces, or even kingsfull of nines.
The county attorneys oppose the machines although twenty-six of them have licensed such machines coyly.
Now they contend Draw-80 isn’t poker because it isn’t listed in Hoyle.
Well, I have looked at Hoyle, and to tell you no lies
There are as many kinds of poker as it has entered into the heart of man to devise.
Hoyle lists Stud Poker, Draw Poker, Hold-Em, Low Ball, Cincinnati and a lot more, but my, oh my oh,
Among those not listed in Hoyle, to name a few, are Kings Wild Low Ball With Two Jerks, Duffner, Deuces Are Wild in The Presence of Clubs, Sullivan, Payday At Kelly Shaft, O’Donnell and Steubensville, Ohio.
Lest your senses go batty,
The game of Steubensville is so-called because it is close to Cincinnati.
One thing above all the majority should have kept in mind:
Poker is any game where two pairs beat a pair, three of a kind beat two pairs, a straight beats three of a kind, a flush beats a straight, a full house beats a flush, four of a kind beat a full house, and a straight flush beats four of a kind.
Any game that has winning hands in that progression is poker
With or without a joker
And no judicial opinion, no matter how weighty,
Can make anything but poker out of Draw-80.
Draw-80 may seem sinister
To one’s minister,
But putting fences around what poker means is as preposterous
As arguing how many angels can stand on the point of a rhinoceros.
But oh, say the majority, it takes two to play poker, just like it takes two to tango,
Forgetting that when poker players want to play poker, they are not interested in the fandango.
Draw-80 Poker can be described in terms the simplest:
It is one-draw poker with five possible discards and no joker, and the house has two kings to beat, as any poker player could tell you from senior *148citizens to the pimplest.
The majority read into the statute that poker is not poker unless one is taking cards from a human dealer
Which would be all right if the dealer ain’t a peeler.
Many a poker player on an ego trip
Has dropped a bundle to a dealer with a mechanic’s grip.
It makes a real poker player panic
To see a pack of bicycles in the grip of a mechanic.
But this Court has been so busy expanding the law of torts and interpreting wills
It forgot about shills.
So now, instead of a tamper-proof device to play with,
Montanans must seek out human dealers to gamble their pay with.
Finally, if there is anything that a Draw-Poker machine can be thought to mean
It is not a slot machine.
A chimp can be taught to play mindlessly on a one-armed bandit
But most humans won’t learn not to discard aces or not to draw to an inside straight, if we are the least bit candit.
The Draw-80 machine owners should not have lost this case but they did.
They came to this Court with this case holding aces and eights, and you know what that hand did to Billy The Kid.
In the shortest of synopses
They lost to the blue probosces,
Now while the Order of the Blue Nose relaxes,
Cities and counties can go about replacing lost revenues by raising other taxes.
Poker players of Montana, unite!
Come out of the closet, or at least turn on the closet light.