They've grown up in front of the computer with a mouse in their hand and have never actually shuffled cards or dealt a hand.
Heck, some of them can’t even hold a deck. The cards fall out of their clumsy hands to the left and right.
But give them a mouse and some hot-key commands and they can play over a thousand poker hands an hour while eating breakfast, surfing and chatting at the same time.
The Fishes Got Lactic Acid
It was always a big laugh when the first online poker stars of 2004 showed up at clubs not capable of shuffling a deck. We dealt ourselves back then, you see.
I could name a couple of big names that even dropped the deck on the felt while trying to shuffle. LOL – as they probably would have said themselves.
If you couldn’t shuffle properly and pitch fast and accurately you got no respect at the club and you were labeled a fish. Rightfully so, I might add.
The fishes got lactic acid in their hands. You could see them stretching their fingers and shaking their hands.
Sometimes they even took a break in the middle of the deal to do it. It’s probably the worst poker etiquette crime I’ve ever seen or even heard of.
The worst game to deal was five-card poker, or perhaps our version of Chinese poker. After an intense night of poker even a seasoned pro could get cramps in his thumb.
Really Sure You Wanted to Change a Game
When I was a kid we played cards all the time. We played during the breaks in the school hallway and sometimes we missed classes. Okay, it was more than “sometimes."
Today the kids probably play freerolls during classes on their iPhone 7 or 8 or whatever number they’re up to now.
We played different kinds of card games all summer long. There was nothing else to do.
We weren't allowed to bring our Commodore 64 to the countryside. It was the PlayStation of the early eighties that came with a tape recorder for our bootlegged games on cassettes.
Loading a game took five minutes so you had to be really sure if you wanted to change a game -- and in agreement with your friends to avoid a fist fight.
Loading failed a lot of times but that was only another five minutes to wait.
We Called Them "Dog Ears"
There was nothing on TV – literally. We had two channels and they started airing around 5pm. Most of the programs were complete crap anyway.
We had a VCR (the DVD of the eighties), but no films. They didn't sell them so it was either renting an expensive movie or watching some crap recorded from TV.
In the countryside there was no place to rent movies so the VCR stayed in the city over the summer anyway. Playing outside (you know with a football or something) was an option but only when it didn’t rain. That’s why I spent my childhood summers playing cards.
The decks were not made of plastic so after a while the corners of the cards got soft, then even softer, and then really soft. The corners used to split as well.
We called it “dog ear” when the corners were so soft that they actually hung down. More and more dog-ears appeared as the game moved on.
To keep track of which cards had a dog-ear and which had two was a good way of learning to pay attention to the game. Eventually they fell off.
“Okay, the joker is now the king of clubs.”
I always assumed that’s why they put jokers in the deck. After more dog-ears fell off we wrote right on the different joker cards what they represented.
We could’ve used more jokers than the three that came with the pack.
No Saying No to the Tilted Fish
After a few more hours the cards were so mushy you couldn’t shuffle the deck because the cards got stuck to each other. You had to spread them out on the table and move them around.
You had to use a gentle hand to put the deck together. Ripping off all the dogs-ears made it a lot easier to shuffle.
Paper cards do have a nicer feel than plastic ones. They were used in all other games than poker at the club Kortoxen.
A deck of cards had a life expectancy of around two hours. That was a little extreme perhaps; bridge clubs used to come by and buy our used decks.
The pack went into the bin if a player felt unlucky with the deck -- even if it was after just one deal. That was extreme, but you don’t argue with a tilted fish at a card club.
Especially if he’s one of the owners. When he did it there was no saying no to anyone else.
The Rain Had Killed All Other Options
In my childhood we had to make a deck of cards last for days. Sometimes mom forgot to buy a new pack when she went shopping and sometimes the store sold out when it rained for a week.
When we were really desperate we had to use Sellotape to keep the cards in the air until reinforcements arrived. That was perhaps a bit extreme too, but necessity is the mother of all inventions.
One time we were in real desperation mood. The rain had killed all other options and a swarm of perhaps even more desperate mothers had cleaned the store shelves of all playing cards.
Our solution was to put two decks of cards together and pick the best example for every card in the deck. It worked, but it would have worked better if the decks were in the same color.
About Ken Lennaárd:
Sweden's most controversial poker blogger Ken Lennaárd has been around the professional poker circuit for almost 20 years. Among his numerous accomplishments are Swedish Championships both live and online, three WSOP final tables and over $1.5m in live earnings. He's now bringing his singular poker voice to the English world via PokerListings.com. Look for new posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Note: Opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not represent the views of PokerListings.com.
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