They say time changes everything.  Sadly, I lost a friend this past week.  Her name was Nell Simmers.  She was 81.  For many years, she lived in a small house behind mine – just across the alleyway.  Nell was the kind of grand lady whose personality instantly made whoever she was with feel at ease, and she’d talk to you as if she had known you her entire life, even if she just met you.  A true local gem.  As my youngest daughter would describe her – “a queen”.

She was also one hell of a card player.

I got invited to the local poker game at her house soon after I moved back to Maryland from Florida (some thirteen years ago).  It was quite a group of seniors.  There was Betty Blair, Jim Keefer, Hartzell Rohrer, and Tom Firey (among others).  I think I brought the average age of the room down to about 75.  Even though the tone of the room during every meeting was jovial and polite, don’t let that fool you.  This was a room full of sharks.  A table full of people who had “card sense”.

There’s a saying in poker that if you can’t spot the sucker in the room, you’re probably it.  In all my years of playing at Nell’s, I never saw him.

Now I’ve played poker for many, many years – in casinos and on cruise ships, online and live games – and in all of those years, I’ve never taken a beating like I routinely took night after night at Nell’s.  We’d play for hours, often starting around 6:00 PM and stopping eight or ten hours later.  Real marathon sessions.  Nell would always pause the game about four hours in and bring out some food for everyone.  It could be “sloppy joes”, hot dogs, potato salad, cheese and crackers, and maybe some cookies.  “Get what you want”, she’d say with a smile, “I’m not waiting on you”.  We’d pause for a few moments, eat our fill, and then dive back into the second half.

We played all sorts of variations – and you can keep your silly wild cards for some other house game.  Wild cards are for amateurs.  There was 5-card stud.  7-card stud.  5-card draw (jacks or better to open – trips to win), the “L”, and the infamous “Jim’s game” (named after Jim Keefer).  A variant on “Texas Hold-Em”, this we often played as a “high-low” game, meaning you could play for the best hand or the worst hand (the lowest hand being A-2-3-4-6, non-suited).  Sometimes you’d win one side, sometimes the other.  On some occasions you’d have to split the high or low with another player.  On even rarer occasions you could win both the high and low on the same hand.  This was also a friendly game, meaning if there were only two left in the pot, there was no more raising (Nell’s house rule).  While we only played $0.25 – $0.50 – $1.00 bets, with raises and more than two players in the hand, some of these pots could get deep into double figures.  Not life changing money, but damn if it didn’t sting if you hung around and got beat by Nell – who’d casually lay down her hand and state “I’ve got the perfect low” (A-2-3-4-6) while raking the pot towards her on the kitchen table.

Ouch.

To further complicate things, none of the crew sitting at this table had any noticeable “tells”.  You never knew what they had or if they were bluffing you.  They quietly watched the cards, knowing who discarded what (and when) while keeping track of what was left in the deck, so they sure as hell knew if I was bluffing (“I knew you didn’t have that third “6”, Tom folded that on 2^nd street”, etc.).  If you heard Nell say, “I’ll stick around for another card” while calling your bet, you were probably in trouble.  It was a master class in poker, given with life stories and local gossip of the town as we played hand after hand through the evening and into the wee hours of the following morning.  I’d often get made fun of as I’d slide my chair back and proclaim “this is my last hand” at 3:30 AM and Nell would remark, “are you leaving already?”

My wife got so used to my ill-fortune at Nell’s that she would simply ask the next morning “how much did they fleece you for last night?”  Most everything I took along, dear.  To simply break even at Nell’s was a victory.  Still, I’d play every time she would ask me to.  I loved the camaraderie, the atmosphere of the room, and overseeing it all – was Nell.  I loved playing cards with her.

She’d see me in the alley mowing my grass a few days later and shout “when are we playing again?” 

“Just tell me when”, I’d reply.  I’d soon get a call.

I once took her to a game in the North End of Hagerstown (to play with some retired banking executives that I somehow got invited to) and she cleaned them all out – I mean close to four figures in winnings.  They never saw her coming.  We should have taken that show on the road – I could possibly have retired early.  She grinned the whole way home, her purse bulging with cash.  We were never invited back.

Everyone has passed on now (except for Tom), so those legendary late-night games will never be repeated.  I’d like to think that somewhere right now in heaven, St. Peter is losing his harp, his wings, and probably the keys to the Pearly Gates themselves, all because he mistakenly sat down to play cards at a table with Hartzell, Betty, Jim, and a smiling Nell.

Rest in peace, dear lady.  I will miss you.