The Education of a Poker Player (High Stakes Classic)

Author: Herbert O. Yardley
Publisher: High Stakes
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18 THE EDUCATION OF A POKER PLAYER

usual sliding window and guarded by Runt, the bouncer, so named because of his size. Strangers were welcome after being frisked for weapons by Runt.

Monty had trouble with players looking at the discards after they were tossed face down to the player to the left of the dealer, whose chore it was to gather them up and shuffle after the show-down was over. Finally Monty put up a sign for everyone to see upon entering the poker room. It read:

Please Don't

FRIG

with the Discards Penalty $20

Then under this sign he had impishly written,

MONTY'S CLUB

Vulgar Language Forbidden Beneath the poster he had signed his own name with a flourish, James Montgomery.

When I began to play poker I guessed Monty to be around thirty-five. He could have posed as Gentleman Jim Corbett in height, weight and looks, and judging from occasional fights that he got into to keep the peace, he was almost as good with his fists. Rumor had it that he had killed a man in New York who was fooling around with his wife. No one knew why he picked our town to settle in, though it was wealthy enough to satiate even a gambler's greed. He was defi nitely a man's man, but from the side glances he received in the streets from young girls and married women, he was not without attraction to them, though it might have been that they attached a certain glamour to him because he was a successful gambler who had killed a man.