I don't know poker, not
really, but I'm learning. It's the most legendary and storied of card games, especially since bridge, once a cornerstone of suburban American living, has mostly faded into the mists of history. Terms like "fold," "ante," and "wild card" are all part of our general lexicon. Regular "poker nights" provide complex characterization and plot foreshadowing in some of my all-time favorite media, including
M*A*S*H and
Star Trek: The Next Generation. For all its history and still-visible presence (we all remember the online poker craze about 15 years ago), there's still a certain mystique to the game. Not only because of the dark, smoky rooms the game brings to mind, or the litany of terms and traditions that have amassed over the years, but because poker is about the
player as much as it's about the game. Analyzing the other players, not only for how the play but psychologically, sniffing out hidden "tells" like they're under interrogation. Likewise, there's a reason "poker face" is a phrase everyone's familiar with (and, despite some irritations with the end of the second season, a
pretty darn good TV series) - we have to counter our opponents' attempts to read us down to the subconscious level, and, ideally, misdirect them as needed. To read as coming from a strong position when our hand is weak, and weak when we're trying to bait them into sticking it out against a strong hand. Poker exists both alongside of, and in opposition to, the roleplaying games we generally talk about here. We play a role, a character for the others at the table, while trying to crack through theirs enough to map out who they really are
personally. Not how they're presenting themselves at the game, or even how they'd present themselves in daily life, in social circumstances, anywhere they'd want or need to keep up some facade.
None of this was evident when I was first learning the rules of the game beyond what I'd seen of the Enterprise-D crew, although I was already getting in the spirit of lies and misdirection... by playing a bootleg copy of Artworx Strip Poker on the Atari 800XL, stolen, as I am truly ashamed to admit, from my cousin. (This may have been the most transgressive thing I'd done in my life to that point, now that I think about it.) Nonetheless, my layers of prevarication (presenting myself as an adult playing a legal, non-pilfered copy of the game) weren't particularly helpful with poker itself in that form, which was better suited to simple probability calculation and luck-pushing. It's also based around the oldest poker variant, five-card draw, making it something of a historical relic now that Texas Hold'em has taken over as the most popular variant, at least in the popular consciousness, along with televised and online tournaments. It's certainly the default in my more recent poker explorations - naturally still via video games, but from the late PlayStation 2-era this time... just when poker-mania was griping the nation. This time, there are actual NPCs to read, learn, and lie to. I've been told it's a terrible way to learn the the complex psychological warfare that is poker with an experienced group, but it's enough for me, living in the constant mental and emotional battle that is life in modern-day America. The game I've been using, one that seems relatively light on the ostentatious casino spectacle that accompanied poker of that era, came out twenty years ago when the stage of today's fractured reality of obfuscation, misdirection, and diversion was first being set... no wonder poker was so popular. Especially online, it was a community based around grift, graft, and corruption, of people hooked on the thrill of getting one over on someone, of winners ripping untold financial glories and the devastation of losers. I didn't, and don't, care about any of that, though. I just like games and the way people play them.
I don't know tarot, not
really, but I'm learning. My mother, on the other hand, has been reading since she was a teenager, and it was part of the general hippie/witchy milieu of the house when I was growing up... and thus something I pushed away from when I reached that age myself, as we all do in finding our own identity. Not that I would have had much opportunity to use them at that age, anyway - I remember some kids in middle school telling me I needed to stop playing with Magic cards, thinking they were tarot cards, and warning me about summoning the devil... can only imagine how that would have gone had I had the real thing. Fortune-telling in itself, the primary way I'd have understood the cards at that point, held no interest for me, although, as a once-aspiring magician, I was certainly intrigued by the subtle ways that "psychics" and the like convince their clientele that their abilities are genuine. Keep things vague enough for the mark to fill the blanks in for you. Toss enough out there that you can hook them on the "hits" and they'll forget all about the "misses." Even the most honest approach is more about getting people to see something for themselves via the fortune telling method, with the medium acting as guide at most. It was this aspect, though, that brought me back to them - there's no reason I couldn't use the cards, knowing that anything I found through them had been within me the whole time. They could be prompts, idea starters, or simply a different framing perspective. Ironically, I did eventually learn that my mother (Jungian psychotherapist that she is) had been approaching them in a similar way the entire time, comparing them to the Rorschach Test. It's an approach particularly compatible with my of art, particularly literary (and yes, games), as a kind of framed mirror, inseparable from the audience's experience and become something unique with each viewing or listen or read. It also didn't hurt that tarot, along with other forms or magic as worldview, had also been featuring prominently in works I'd been enjoying, most notably Thomas Pynchon's
Gravity's Rainbow and the works of Alan Moore (a fellow Pynchon fanatic).
But let's go back to those more prescriptive fortune tellers, the ones who gladly take people's money only to tell that what they want to hear or already know. I'd hesitate to call them "grifters," exactly, since there's usually a willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the client seeking a positive or affirmative experience. That's what they're paying for, and that's what they want - we see stage magicians specifically because they're going to lie to us in interesting ways. On the other hand, there are limits, particularly when a practitioner is continually taking advantage of their client or manipulating them into giving up far more money or time than they can afford. And manipulation is where the threads of these two card systems come together, the reason I wanted to discuss them today. The poker shark leading opponents, particularly newbies, into taps time and again. The fortune teller who keeps declaring that truth and happiness are just around the corner, all the customer has to do is keep coming back. And both seizing upon the desperation and need of their victims, especially those who have been failed by the established and respected systems.
Sound familiar? They're everywhere right now. The supplement-shilling male chauvinism coaches. The
conspiracy fabulist, directed frustrations over failing systems at conveniently inaccessible enemies. The online gambling platform, screaming endlessly to WIN BIG and presenting convenient, easy on-ramps with all the tact and grace of an anglerfish dangling bait just in front of its patient and gaping maw. And, of course, it's the ragebait right-wing grifter, regurgitating endless soundbites and layers of bigotry. You, the listener, the viewer, the reader, have been right the whole time, you've never needed to learn anything new or different or challenging. Your suspicions of anyone looking or living differently than you were always justified, and those are the people responsible for all your problems. Anyone who's asked you to question your values only wants to indoctrinate you into theirs. Like and subscribe. Buy my book. Sign up for my conference. Keep seething, keep fearing, keep hating, it's easy and it's
right.
Is this about Charlie Kirk? Damn right it is. But not just him - while he was by far the most successful of his generation in monetizing his gift, all the rest are falling over each other to cash in on his death. For cash, for clout, for the purge they've been dying to carry out for years, you name it. And it's those same techniques, recognizing what they audience sees and what they want to see, directing their reactions, directing their emotions, all in a calculated direction straight down the gullet.
Let's bring it all together now. The reason I'm building this off of cards and the psychologies around them is that cards are old and cards are versatile. Left to their own devices, societies keep coming up with the concept of cards and the many games they're able to play. You don't need to be literate, you don't even need to speak the same language if you all know the rules. Cards, and what they mean to us, are a microcosm of humanity - why else would we bother putting people on the important ones? And so are the games we use them for, miniaturized and concentrated versions of the interactions we carry out in the rest of the world. As with art, as with all the things we can see our reflections in, games give us the practice, the training, for dealing with everything else. Pay attention, listen, learn. Find yourself in the the game, in the reading, in the production, where you want to be, and where you're being led. You'll find your better at spotting those playing on your instincts, your fears, your desires. And learning to recognize them is the first step in breaking their spell.
- B
Send questions, comments, and vintage strip poker games to neversaydice20@gmail.com.
