Poker and Philosophy

by Bronson, Eric

  WENDY C. HAMBLET

  Cards are war, in disguise of a sport

  —CHARLES LAMB

  Is poker just a thrilling game of chance like any other, or can it be that the ethos of poker resonates with the reigning mode of life in modern capitalist societies, an ethos of unbridled competitivism that is both aggressive and dishonest? Might it be that existence under the thrall of the one-dimensional and shallow consumer ethic demands an appropriately manic ecstasy—what French philosopher Georges Bataille (1897–1962) would name “an unproductive expenditure”—the exhilarating abandon of throwing one’s financial fate to the winds, if only for a few hours a week? Or perhaps the attraction of poker lies in its service as a modern-day rite of passage, a trial of strength and fortitude for men, both young and old, who, soft from the abundance of material life in the rich West, crave the risky battlefield of the poker table.

  There’s a wonderful essay by Charles Lamb (1775–1834), entitled “Mrs. Battle’s Opinions on Whist,” in which two characters discuss the philosophical import of playing cards. Mrs. Battle, an appropriately named card shark, argues that card playing is “a sort of dream-fighting; much ado; great battling, and little bloodshed; mighty means for disproportioned ends; quite as diverting, and a great deal more innoxious, than many of those more serious games of life, which men play . . .”1 A good game of cards gives one the heightened feelings of a pitched and bloody battle in a safe, friendly environment. Summarizing the passage, commentator Robert Frank points out that for Mrs. Battle, “card games dissipate hostile feelings and aggressive instincts.”2

  Mrs. Battle, however, never played poker. Had she tried her hand at Texas Hold’em instead of whist, she might have changed her views about cards. Because even a cursory look at poker’s violent history shows us that instead of dissipating hostile feelings, No-Limit Hold’em can bring out the worst in us.

  The Cheating Game

  No one can be quite certain where poker first arose; its origins have long ago been lost in the mysteries of time. Some believe there exists evidence in the nature of the game itself to support the notion of a shared ancestry with the Renaissance Italian game of “primero” and the French game “brelan.” Other baffled historians of the game speculate that poker may have arrived in the New World with Persian sailors who, they say, taught a “poker-style” card game to the French settlers around New Orleans in the early 1800s. Jonathan Green’s famed book, An Exposure of the Arts and Miseries of Gambling, published in 1843, attributes the origin of poker to Mississippi River gambling boats. And indeed poker can barely be imagined outside its original setting: a muggy backroom grey with smoke and lubricated with booze, loud with honky-tonk music, adorned with bawdy women of questionable reputation and too much perfume and rouge, wheeling proudly up the sultry river, just offshore—out of reach of the law—on the margins of “polite society.”

  Whatever the exotic and circuitous means by which poker took up its residence in the Americas, whatever the mélange of the game’s transformations and variations over time and geographical space, the wild success of poker in the New World has proven profound and enduring. Poker spread boldly and steadily from its steamy riverboat setting and across the Wild West of the United States until every saloon in every town from “sea to shining sea” could boast a poker table.

  From the earliest gambling days on the Mississippi River to the Gold Rush saloons of California to the speakeasies of New York, there soon followed a high wave of violent crime. Individual thievery and organized crime flourished, followed by the rough and rowdy hand of the law not far behind—but always a bit too late to save the day. The impact of the game has been phenomenal from many perspectives. It has found appeal with young and old, tame and criminal. But what attracts so many fans to this ill-reputed game?

  Poker remains, for most people, the paradigmatic “man’s game.” This fact alone may explain the appeal that poker holds for risk-taking women! A great many women love the game of poker and many have become as accomplished at playing it as any of their male counterparts.3 Perhaps this notion of poker also explains why poker is connected, in many people’s minds, with the criminal underworld—where, according to the Hollywood fantasy, the men are larger-than-life macho super-villains and the dames are long-legged beauty queens with painted faces and empty heads. Underworld criminals were just the kind of men whom people expected to find holed up in backrooms of sleazy gambling joints, playing Seven Card Stud, the favored poker game of the more discerning thug before Texas Hold’em exploded in popularity.

  Poker is the definitive “cheating game” and indeed the game enjoys this fond nickname. If there is a single talent that is a crucial prerequisite for success at poker, it’s the ability to look straight in the other players’ eyes and lie through your teeth about what you hold in your hand. The good poker player must be an accomplished and consummate liar. The best players are also aggressive, many are even “poker bullies.” Great poker players must be tough and hard, capable of maintaining a “poker face” whatever the stakes of the game, even when Lady Luck is not smiling. So it seems logical that a game in which the most crucial skills include dishonesty and aggressiveness will ultimately attract criminal types.

  What Happens in Vegas Never Stays in Vegas

  The “cheating game” has, since its earliest days, been consistently connected with the world of crime, not only in the “cultural imagination” of America (every old Western film worth its salt sports a gunfight at a poker table) but in real life drama as well. Violence has followed poker around as an integral aspect of the game. The connections between violent crime and poker are legendary: Bugsy Siegel, Mafia super-don, was the original founder of Las Vegas. The Mafia was knee-deep in poker chips since it became a big money game, involved in many of the big gambling establishments across the United States.

  Another notorious poker don, Benny Binion, a boss gambler in Texas during the Second World War, relocated to Las Vegas when the Texas “heat” on his illegal operations grew too intense. There, from his famed Horseshoe Casino, Binion founded the “World Series of Poker” in 1970. Binion provides us with a real-life glimpse into the sultry world of twentieth-century poker and shows us how violence and corruption accompany the game wherever it goes. Frequently targeted for “hits” by his competitors, Binion also found himself regularly under prosecution by the government, twice indicted on murder charges. He is famed for his cheeky retort to those charges: “I never killed anyone . . . who didn’t deserve it!” Benny’s youngest son, Ted, was recently murdered by his girlfriend (a Vegas stripper) and her new love interest.

  Binion’s Horseshoe Casino is described, in James McManus’s Positively Fifth Street, as “lewd, gaudy, infamous,” and McManus assures his readers that “Benny’s aura of violence still permeates the game.”4

  So it should interest those of us concerned about violence in the world that poker has taken over, not only in the West but in the world, as the number one card game. In recent decades, “the cheating game” has gone global in popularity. Poker has emerged from sultry backrooms and has entered polite society. It now frequents corner pubs, seniors’ residences, and veteran’s legions. Poker clubs are cropping up in small-town clubs, in big-city casinos, and in beyond-the-law gambling reservations across the continent. Poker has even been embraced by internet techies who have turned the game into a major corporate contender, raking in millions of dollars each year. Poker tournaments enjoy such a massive following that they have become internationally televised. Players and fans follow tournaments all around the globe, both in person and through their satellite televisions.

  Poker buffs may not have certain knowledge of the origins of their game, but they do know that poker has composed a crucial and integral chapter in the history of international gaming for more than two hundred years. They can also be assured that it forms an equally seminal chapter in the annals of violent crime. The poker culture has grown to an enormous giant that now straddles the globe. But
what kind of a “culture” is this? What does poker’s enormous popularity tell us about the masses of people who have become addicted to the cheating game?

  A Cheating Culture?

  Prolific poker author Lou Krieger contends that “Poker is a microcosm of all we admire and disdain about capitalism and democracy.”5 Perhaps the cheating game can help us to appreciate that the quality of our lives is not so much dependent upon the luck of our draw, but upon the values we hold dear to our existence (in Krieger’s case: democracy and capitalism). For Krieger, “It [poker, capitalism, democracy] can be rough-hewn or polished, warm or cold, charitable and caring or hard and impersonal. It is fickle and elusive, but ultimately it is fair, and right, and just.”

  How accurate is Krieger’s claim? How “fair, and right, and just” is the world in which poker, democracy and freedom rule with sovereign power? In a stunning new study by David Callahan, entitled appropriately The Cheating Culture,6 and bearing the telling subtitle, “Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead,” Callahan, cofounder of the public policy center Demos, gives the reader an eye-opening portrait of our “culture” where democracy and capitalism—and, yes, poker—rule. “Cheating is everywhere!”

  One may argue that the existence of a modern “cheating culture” is impossible to prove, but Callahan’s book is rich with convincing examples that evidence the dawn of a new era of capitalist-democratic “values” that are anything but “right, and fair, and just.” Callahan describes a brave new world where cynical crimes are the everyday reality. Recently exposed lies and scandals show that “the cheating culture” does not stop at business and personal unscrupulousness, but pervades American foreign policy as well.

  Callahan offers a prescient warning to Americans regarding where they may be heading if they do not regain their moral bearings. Every great empire that has fallen by the wayside has first crumbled morally from within. Many philosophers, however, wonder whether the problem is not even more foreboding than Callahan suggests. Since American culture is fast being exported across the globe to the farthest reaches of the planet, and given the integral connection between cheating and violent crime, the moral collapse of a global “cheating culture” may have far broader consequences than the most pessimistic observer can fathom.

  Everybody’s Doing It

  Callahan notes that more and more Americans are doing bad things simply because everyone else is doing them too. He argues that American culture is encouraging and rewarding people who cheat. Why do we cheat on our taxes? Because we’ll make more money if we get away with it. And we are likely to get away it because everyone else is doing it, too. One of the more disturbing questions that arose from the Martha Stewart insider trading scandal, was not whether she was guilty or innocent, but whether it made sense to try her for a crime so universally practiced. Echoing Callahan, The Boston Globe ran an editorial (11th March, 2005) on what the Stewart case tells us about ourselves. Stewart, it seems, “symbolizes America’s ambivalence about honesty. She is seen by some as a queen of the culture of cheating, condoned because ‘everybody does it.’”7

  So why has poker so exploded onto the popular culture scene in recent times? Perhaps it has something to do with our growing “ambivalence about honesty.” Poker rewards the liars and cheaters in all of us. There’s nothing wrong with that, you tell yourself, so long as others are doing it too.

  So is lying and cheating becoming more fashionable in America? During the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s, we asked ourselves the same question. But let’s not put all the blame on poor Nixon either. Tricky Dick’s first congressional campaign would never have gotten off the ground in 1946 if he hadn’t been an expert poker player.

  ______

  1 The complete essay can be found at http://www.angelfire.com/nv/mf/elia1/battles.htm

  2 Robert Frank, Don’t Call Me Gentle Charles! (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1976), p. 88.

  3 For a discussion of the rise of female poker professionals, see Chapter 18 in this volume.

  4 James McManus, Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheatahs, and Binion’s World Series of Poker (New York: Farrar, Straus, 2003), p. 41.

  5 http://www.loukrieger.com/quotes05.asp

  6 Orlando: Harcourt, 2004.

  7 http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2005/03/11/the_new_martha/

  The Players

  ANNE BARNHILL is a graduate student in philosophy at New York University. Her philosophical interests are in ethics and feminist philosophy, and she is writing a dissertation on sexual morality. Anne prefers to play no-limit Texas Hold’em, and she prefers to be called by her poker nickname, All-Anne.

  GREGORY “SHORT STACK” BASSHAM is Head Dealer of the Philosophy Department at King’s College, Pennsylvania. A frequent contributor to the Popular Culture and Philosophy series, he is the co-editor of The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy (2005), The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy (2003), and the forthcoming Basketball and Philosophy (2007). Having grown up in Oklahoma, he suspected the worst when he overheard two Texans in an Atlantic City elevator speak of a “back-door nut flush.”

  RAYMOND ANGELO BELLIOTTI is distinguished teaching professor of philosophy and chairperson at SUNY Fredonia. He has published books on the topics of philosophy of law, sexual ethics, personal and ethnic identity, Nietzsche, the meaning of life, human happiness, and philosophy of baseball. Rumors that he plays poker while wearing x-ray lenses that allow him to identify his opponents’ hole cards are unfounded.

  ERIC “HI-LO” BRONSON heads the Philosophy and History Department at Berkeley College in New York City. He co-edited The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy and edited Baseball and Philosophy. Bronson’s only noticeable tell is screaming fire in crowded casinos when he’s drawing dead.

  JONATHAN ELLIS is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He works primarily in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and the philosophy of language. His most recent publication concerns the philosophy of color. Ellis is convinced that Socrates would have made it to the final table at this year’s WSOP, and that Wittgenstein would have been out in the first round.

  DON FALLIS is Associate Professor of Information Resources and Adjunct Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona. His articles on epistemology have appeared in Journal of Philosophy, American Mathematical Monthly, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, and Philosophical Studies. But he has more books on poker than on epistemology in his library.

  DAVID HAHN received his Master’s in Philosophy in 2002. He currently lives in Toledo, Ohio, and never sits with his back to the door when playing poker.

  WENDY C. HAMBLET gambles her future at Adelphi University, New York. As a violence scholar, Hamblet is convinced that violence permeates and animates all aspects of social relations—so, for her, all of life and its varied relations amount to a (more and less) rowdy game of poker.

  MARK J. HAMILTON is a professor of philosophy and NCAA faculty representative in charge of compliance for athletes at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio. He is married with two daughters, one of whom plays poker. He is published in the area of sports ethics and philosophy of religion. He enjoys competition but struggles with how to manage his emotions when playing cards because there is no umpire or official to yell at.

  REBECCA HOUSEL teaches writing and literature in upstate New York. She has also contributed to Superheroes and Philosophy (2005) and Monty Python and Philosophy (2006). She has published a series of five children’s novels, The High Seas Series (2001), written articles for magazines like Redbook, and dabbles in the occasional book review. Her next book is a creative non-fiction on female illness narrative through the University of New South Wales entitled Images of Athena: The Truth about Women with Cancer. Rebecca, unlike her poker-idol Annie Duke, has no poker face and loses money to her fifteen-year old son and his friends on a regular basis.

  BRIAN HUS
S is an instructor of philosophy at York University in Toronto. He works on issues in epistemology and philosophy of psychology, and has published on cultural differences in reasoning. Like Homer Simpson, Brian sometimes infuriates his poker buddies by having the winning hand and not realizing it.

  DAVID R. KOEPSELL has a law degree and a Ph.D. in Philosophy. He is an adjunct Assistant Professor at SUNY Buffalo, and Executive Director of the Council for Secular Humanism. He is the author of The Ontology of Cyberspace (2000) and Reboot World (2003). Admittedly not much of a poker player, when Koepsell’s chips are down, it can only mean the CPU on his iBook is on the fritz.

  PHILIP LINDHOLM is a doctoral student and occasional tutor in theology at the University of Oxford, as well as current visiting researcher in philosophy at L’Ecole Normale Supérieure. He has presented at a variety of academic conferences on subjects ranging from the Dead Sea Scrolls to Maimonides’s esotericism to Levinasian metaphysics to Mormon hermeneutics. His recently finished collection, “Mormonism’s Eleventh Commandment,” is due out on shelves in the near future. Philip has a great poker face, until he loses!

  KENNETH G. LUCEY is Professor of Philosophy and Chairman at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is the editor of On Knowing and the Known, What Is God?, and a number of articles in epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion. Ken reports that his Golden Retriever, Teak, is a terrible poker player: every time she gets a good hand she wags her tail vigorously.

  MARC “THE BIG CHEESE” MARCHESE is an associate professor of human resources management at King’s College. He’s been at King’s for over twelve years after receiving his doctorate in industrial and organizational psychology from Iowa State University. Marc has authored instructors’ manuals and student study guides for a leading textbook. He has also published articles on a wide range of topics including employment interviewing, unemployment, obesity in the workplace, and work-family conflict. The Big Cheese confidently believes that this upcoming NFL season will be the year for the Buffalo Bills to overcome the curse of Norwood.