Queer Luck
Poker Stories from the New York Sun
By
David A. Curtis
❦
New York
Brentano’s
1899
Copyright, 1896, 1897, 1898, by
THE SUN PRINTING AND PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION
Copyright, 1899, by
BRENTANO’S
| PAGE | |
| Why He Quit the Game | 1 |
| Freeze-out for a Life | 19 |
| A Gambler’s Pistol Play | 35 |
| Queer Runs of Luck | 57 |
| Storms’s Straight Flush | 75 |
| For a Senate Seat | 93 |
| The Bill Went Through | 109 |
| Poker for High Stakes | 127 |
| “Overland Jack” | 149 |
| His Last Sunday Game | 169 |
| Foss Stopped the Game | 181 |
| He Played for His Wife | 203 |
| The Club’s Last Game | 221 |
1
Five men of better nerve never dealtcards than the five who sat playing pokerthe other night in one of those up-townclub-rooms that are so quietly kept as to beentirely unknown to the police and the generalpublic. The game proved to be phenomenal.
The play was high. The party had playedtogether once a week, for a long time, andthe limit had always been one dollar at thebeginning of the evening, though occasionallyit had gone as high as ten before morning.This particular night, however, thecards ran remarkably well, and by midnightthe limit was ignored if not forgotten. Two4of the players had laid their pocketbooksalongside their chips. They had not playedso before, but the gambling fever had comeupon them with the excitement of goodhands, one against another, until the friendlycontest had become a struggle for blood.Fours had been shown several times since