Sept. 28, 1883.] 



KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



203 



POKER PRINCIPLES. 



ri'^HE following specimen of American humour will amuse 

 X our readers : — 



" It is a long way from the stars to poker," says the 

 Chicac/o Tribune, " but Richard A. Proctor has made the 

 jump, and in the Septembernumber of Lon//inan's M^agazine 

 he discusses learnedly the topic, ' Poker Principles and 

 Chance Laws.' It might be expected of a man whose turn 

 of mifld is scientific, who reasons on hard facts and cold 

 deductions, that he would treat even a game of poker in 

 the same cold, calculating manner, and Mr. Proctor does 

 this. After describing the game, for it is not yet fairly 

 acclimatised in England, he calculates in a cold-blooded 

 manner the chances for each diflfei-ent hand at poker. He 

 finds that the total number of poker hands is 2, -598,960. 

 He then enters into an exact mathematical calculation, 

 and finds that in these hands there may be 40 flush 

 sequences, 624 fours, 3,744 full hands, 5,108 common 

 flushes, 10,200 common sequences, 54,912 triplets, 123,552 

 two pairs, 1,098,240 pairs, and 1,302,540 other hands. 

 With these data for starting points, he devotes 

 page after page to abstruse calculations of chances 

 on given hands, and finally winds up by saying 

 that ' poker-playing generally, as a process for making 

 money more quickly, is much improved and enlivened by a 

 slight degree of intoxication ' — a condition which seems 

 highly problematical if the player is expected to remember 

 the involved mathematical processes which he lays down, 

 and certainly implies a moral laxity which makes one 

 shudder at the mere thought. If Professor Proctor really 

 believes that intoxication is an aid in perfecting and 

 applying mathematical deduction, it is easy to understand 

 why he has so often slipped up in his celestial mathe- 

 matics." [My Chicagoan friend should have shown when 

 and where ; since, however, the remark about intoxica- 

 tion was not mine, but was made by an American writer 

 on Poker Principles, the Chicagoan's \ague idea about 

 errors in my calculations may be taken for what it is worth 

 —nothing.— R. P.] 



" The most startling feature of Prof. Proctor's discussion 

 is the manner in which he treats blutling. He gravely 

 recommends intoxication as a prime condition for playing 

 a good or poor hand, and regards it as mathematically 

 moral — but ' bluffing should be omitted, as practice in this 

 department of the game is really practice in the art of 

 lying with unchanging face, and this is an undesirable art, 

 whatever rogues may think. The gain which can be made 

 by skill in lying is more than matched by the loss which 

 a reputation for such skill is sure to bring.' This, it need 

 not l)e said, is a narrow English view of a purely American 

 institution. It is not poker as Minister Schenck taught 

 it to the court and people to which he was accredited — a 

 boon which has made his name famous in the annals of 

 diplomacy. It is not the kind of game played by Clay and 

 Webster, which Mr. Proctor cites, in which after each had 

 §2,000 on the board, Clay called Webster on an ace-high, 

 and found his opponent had a pair of deuces, in comment- 

 ing upon which the astronioner learnedly says : ' The 

 strange part of the story is that Clay should have called, 

 for, apart from any question whether AVebster were 

 lilulUng or not, ace-high is not a hand on which to call.' 

 Mr. Proctor will never induce those who have once come 

 under the fascination of the game to a\oid lilulUng. To 

 play the game on such a condition involves about the same 

 degree of thrilling interest one would experience in sitting 

 down to calculate a table of logarithms or to work out an 

 endless lennth of sines and cosines." 



" Unwittingly, perhaps, he has stripped the game of all 

 that has made it so dear to the American heart. By his 

 methods it loses all its airiness of contour, its mysterious 

 glamour of illusion, its dashing assaults, its leadings of 

 forlorn hopes, its thrilling surprises, its ruthless blights of 

 expectation, its oscillations from hope to defeat, and is 

 reduced to a mere dry, hard, cold mathematical computa- 

 tion, which is not even mitigated by his recommendation 

 that the players get intoxicated. It plucks the very heart 

 out of the game, and slaughters the mystical sphinx whose 

 riddle at poker no man has ever yet read. If a full hand 

 must always be beaten by fours, or two pairs by a triplet, 

 what inducement is there to play poker 1 Better casino and 

 old maid than this game emasculated of that mysterious, 

 subtle, always-appearing-when-least-expected quality which 

 makes it possible for a jack high to sweep the board against 

 three kings or an ace full. No ! Mr. Astronomer. Poker 

 knows no laws and spurns all conditions. The man is its 

 measure, and he who has the genuine poker afilatus, though 

 he were a clown and had but a pair of deuces, would be 

 dangerous to Mr. Proctor with a straight flush, even were 

 he to follow his own recommendation and get as drunk as 

 a lord. Let Mr. Proctor take his heaps of calculations and 

 come into these Western wilds, if he wants to know the 

 legions of possibilities that lurk in this noble game." 



[As I never took a hand at poker and am not likely to, 

 the legions of possibilities in poker will for ever remain 

 unknown to me, except as indicated by mathematics. — 

 R. P.] 



The American Telegraph System. — A correspondent 

 of the Daily Telegraph recently wired as follows from 

 Washington : — " The Committee of the United States 

 Senate appointed to inquire into the American telegraph 

 system and the advisability of its acquirement by the State 

 on the English plan met to day. The principal witness 

 examined was Mr. Jay Gould, the eminent financier and 

 president of the Western Union Telegraph Company, who 

 emphatically denounced the scheme for placing the tele- 

 gi-aphs under the control of the Government. He affirmed 

 that Government telegraphs must always be ineflicient, 

 unstable, and subject to political influence." 



Anthracene and Light. — The substance known as 

 anthracene has been found by Dr. Tommasi to possess a 

 new property, namely, a sensitiveness to light, which will 

 doubtless prove of value. Anthracene on exposure to 

 light acquires different physical and chemical properties 

 without any change in its composition. If a cold clear 

 saturated solution of anthracene in benzol is exposed to 

 the direct rays of the sun, it becomes turbid and deposits 

 crystals, which have received the name of paranthracene. — 

 E)igineei-ing. 



A NEW mountain railway — Territet Montreux-Glion — 

 has been constructed on the shores of the Lake of Geneva. 

 No locomotive is used, but the weight of the descending 

 carriage is used to bring the ascending vehicle up the 

 incline. The necessary increase of weight required is pro- 

 vided for by water ballast. The line is only about 750 

 yards long, and the height attained is 327 yards above the 

 spot where the railway connnences. The lower portion of 

 the line has a gradient of 300 in 1,000, and the upper por- 

 tion 570 in 1,000. An automatic brake has been provided, 

 which acts in case a breakage of the rope takes place. The 

 carriages are specially built in consideration of the gradients 

 referred to, and are constructed to hold twenty persons 

 each. — Enghieer. 



