I'll See Ya' And Raise Ya' The Deficit...

[RayThom]

LJ, this framed masterpiece has been sitting in the local "Habitat For Humanity" store for weeks. Priced to go for $3.00. It still hasn't gone. Maybe the stakes are too high.

[MajGenl.Meade]

LJ, this framed masterpiece has been sitting in the local "Habitat For Humanity" store for weeks. Priced to go for $3.00. It still hasn't gone. Maybe the stakes are too high.

Poor old Lincoln - the JWB POV

[Burning Petard]

My first reaction was what, No Ike? And then a better look has what I thought was Gerald Ford is probably Ike.

snailgate.

[Joe Guy]

I'm sure that's Ike standing next to Dubya. Ford is smoking a pipe.

[Lord Jim]

Nixon was an accomplished poker player; in fact he raised the money for his first congressional run playing during the war:

This was April, 1944, before Nixon became a loopy caricature for arrogance and power. He was a 30-year-old, brilliant, studious and charming man — a lawyer who graduated from Duke University before the war – and a solid poker player while serving as a Navy officer.

As a pencil-pushing passenger and cargo clerk, playing stud was the only combat Nixon would ever see.

Nixon learned how to play five-card stud poker from fellow naval officer James Stewart. He asked Stewart to teach him poker after watching the game for a few weeks. Nixon thought the game could be beaten, so he went to who he thought was the best player and asked him for advice.

Stewart gave him some solid tips. Tight is right. Only bluff when you are quite sure. Bet when you got it. Fold when you’re beat.

Much has been made that Nixon was a Quaker, which expressively forbids gambling. Like many politicians, Nixon was as religious as necessary, and there was no way he was going to let a little thing like believing in an almighty deity get in the way of what he saw as way to kill time and make a few bucks.

“The pressure of wartime, and even the more oppressive monotony, made it an irresistible diversion. I found playing poker instructive as well as entertaining and profitable,” Nixon said.

The game they played was five-card stud. Nixon called it a five-ten game, with opening raises of $5 and $5 and a third bet capped at $10.

By all accounts, Nixon was good. He was a disciplined player with a fantastic memory, a tight player who wasn’t afraid to try to push people around if he saw the opportunity. The game came as easily to him as everything else.

“He was one of those rare individuals. He never had to work for knowledge at all. He was told something and he never forgot,” said Nixon’s former high school teacher, Mary George.

Nixon and his fellow officers had nothing but time and money, and so like thousands of other soldiers at war, they played poker, day in and day out.

“Nixon was as good a poker player as, if not better than, anyone we had ever seen,” said James Udall, a lieutenant who served with him. “He played a quiet game, but was not afraid of taking chances. He wasn’t afraid of running a bluff. Sometimes the stakes were pretty big, but Dick had daring and flair for knowing what to do. I once saw him bluff a lieutenant commander out of fifteen hundred dollars with a pair of deuces.”

As an Ensign, Nixon made around $150 a month. He definitely made more money in the Navy playing stud.

“He won more frequently than he lost and sent home to California a fair amount of money. I have no idea how much, but my estimate was between $6,000 and $7,000,” Stewart said.

The money was so much that Nixon worried what his wife Pat would think of the winnings. A former Navy buddy wrote Nixon in 1950, kidding him about his concerns.

“Dick never lost, but he was never a big winner. He seemed always to end up a game somewhere between $30 and $60 ahead. That didn’t look like showy winnings, but when you multiplied it day after day, I’d say he did all right,” said old friend Lester Wroble.

Nixon said he took what he learned playing profitable poker home with him and his new set of skills helped him with his political career. Here’s what historian Stephen Ambrose wrote about Nixon and poker in Nixon, Vol: The Education of a Politician 1913-1962:

“Poker gave Nixon the financial stake he needed to launch his political career. It also gave him invaluable lessons that were crucial to his political career. He learned how to take the measure of his opponents, to recognize the exact moment to strike, to realize when he could bluff the man with the strongest hand into an ignominious retreat, to know when to fold his own hand and quietly withdraw from the game.”

Nixon used $5,000 of the winnings on his first congressional run in 1946, which he was victorious. He also wrote about dealing with stressful situations in his 1962 book Six Crises and it sure sounds like he knows how it feels bluffing the big stack at the table with nada.

“When a man has been through even a minor crisis, he learns not to worry when his muscles tense up, his breathing comes faster, his nerves tingle, his stomach churns. He recognizes such symptoms as natural and healthy signs that his system is keyed-up for battle.”

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/14 ... ffer-nixon

[Burning Petard]

I wonder what the criteria were for this grouping. I note Lincoln is the only president from the 19th century, and between Teddy Roosevelt and Ike, four GOP presidents are skipped.

snailgate

[Lord Jim]

I think the criteria was a combination of "recent" and "well known"...

[Gob]

"I can't stay guys, the wife has tickets for some show..."