Poker Perambulation

My blog a couple of days ago mentioned Greg Raymer considering a run for Vice President. I thought it’d be interesting to see if we could find some ghosts for him get a game with over at the White House.

Warren G. Harding played poker. Based on his scandal ridden term in office, he may also have been the first poker cheat. He played twice a week and is supposed to have lost a complete set of White House china in a game. He played so often his cabinet was nicknamed ‘The Poker Cabinet’.

General Sherman reported that Grant played poker throughout the war and in the White House.

Another noted player was Harry S. ‘The buck stops here.’ Truman. Harry loved the wild card games. He wasn’t one to bluff — a thing General McArthur found out to his chagrin.

Harry is either all in or going for a smoke.

F.D.R. and Eisenhower played. So did L.B.J. But the most interesting of the recent crop was Nixon. He was brought up in an anti-gambling Quaker household. He played in the service to be one of the guys and on discharge had $8,000 in winning – big money then – that was used to finance his run for congress. Maybe the born-again gang has a point; his drift from the straight and narrow didn’t serve him well.

Other presidents had some interesting pastimes away from the poker table. Portly John Adams was reputed to swim naked each morning in the Potomac – a whist type event more than poker there. Teddy Roosevelt was a practitioner of Jujitsu. He demonstrated it one day by throwing the Swiss Minister, Fernand Matheray, to the floor at a White House luncheon. Had he played poker you wouldn’t want to have him playing behind you.I don’t think Jimmy Carter would have been a profitable player. With the big stack in front of him, he kept rooting for the short stacks and it proved most -EV.

But, just maybe, the best player would have been Ronald Reagan. His chip stack was big and he pushed the Star Wars chip in with the hammer and bankrupted the Hammer and Sickle in the process. No word about Grubby being his mentor. But, they do have similar spending habits.

ADDENDUM:

Not a president but Bill Gates pulled a lot of all night sessions at Harvard. His winnings provided the seed money to start Microsoft. I let you decide if this is similar to the misfortune Nixon’s winning gave the world.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 5:11 am and is filed under Poker Other. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.