Anyone For A Friendly Poker Game?

Although poker suffers from a spotted history of duels, quarrels, and gunfights from America’s old West culture, the addictive card game offers fun and excitement to many today. Countless film scenes or book settings include the image of several guys seated around a table with a bowl of chips and mugs of beer, cigars clenched between their teeth, each nurturing a hand of five cards from others’ view. There is even a widely publicized poster of several dogs dressed as humans, proverbial cigars and all, snookered at a table with their holdings in hand. The game of poker is firmly entrenched in popular culture, no doubt here to stay. What makes this classic activity so alluring for so many? Perhaps it’s the male bonding ritual that often occurs in those men-only sessions otherwise known as the guys’ night out. As the masculine equivalent of the women’s bridge club, poker night offer an escape from crying babies and nagging wives that draw men of all ages to their neighbors’ homes for a game that can last to all hours of the night. Many wives wait patiently at home for this primal event

to be over, but some create feminine diversions, like the well-known cosmetics parties, where they try on and perhaps order a favorite brand of makeup or eye shadow. Returning home, the lovely wife embraces her enriched husband as both retire to a night of celebratory romance. Poker replaces older traditions of hunting and fishing for many men, becoming the new sport of choice in the middle-class suburbs. Playing cards now substitute for guns, fishing lines, and knives that served as a source of recreation and family sustenance in the past. Is it any wonder that the word “poker” more often conjures the idea of a royal flush than that of a fireplace in the minds of those that hear it?