POKER FACES
DANGERS OF GAMBLING FEVER.
That inscrutable masculine characteristic known as “poker face” may soon be stamping itself on the features of our women, writes Louise Richards, in the “Sunday Chronicle.” Of course, you may say that everybody in the tennis world used to call Miss Helen Wills “Little Poker Face.” But that was only a pretty pet name and a pleasantry. It didn’t mean that Miss Wills had schooled herself to suppress emotions which might, at a card-table, disclose the value of her “hand.”
The “poker face” I speak of is the one that has always belonged to the type of male gambler who is oblivious to everything else when anyone suggests his favourite game. Of all the passionately absorbing card games perhaps none can approach for intensity of interest this one that is now coming into vogue at certain clubs of wohnen, as it has long been the vogue ‘in men’s clubs.
If statistics could be published showing the thousands of men who have lost their health, their homes, their money, their lives, by the game of poker, it would beat any of the shilling shockers we are likely to have in ’29.
So when one speaks of “poker faced” people one means the concentrated, expressionless, steely kind of countenance which reveals nothing, even to the most searching scrutiny. That is a kind of face 1 have no wish to see prevalent in this country. The woman with a poker face is, however, a distinct possibility. Where tho play is high, where it runs perhaps from twilight to dawn, where women contract the fever in its most excitable form —then is the poker face as inevitable as one sees it at Monte Carlo. And in certain circles that is the kind of game that is being played —the all-in game which makes it a nasty vice.
Anyone who has crossed the Atlantic in a modern fast liner knows this type. “Card sharks” are on all these boats. They have the face which tells nothing,* the deft hands which'deceive the eye, the coolness of a camp in the Antarctic, and the cheek of the very devil himself. Of course, I don’t pretend that women cheat at poker, as these travelling professionals do. But in time they acquire the gambler’s 100k —if they play high—which is not a nice, motherly look, by any means! As in everything to do with human conduct, one searches for a scientific explanation of the gambling mania. For it is not alone manifested at the. card table. Every “bookie” in Britain has his women clients, every stockbroker has the names of women plungers on his books, women who watch “the market” as sharply as the men.
Why is this fever so extraordinarily common? Is there an explanation lying deeper than the superficial one of “killing time” or of “getting a thrill,” or of making a tidy little profit?
Of course there is. Trust our writers of scientific tales for that! It is not so much natural human perversity as an overdose of adrenalin that makes the poker player sit at a table for 2-1 hours dealing out cards and yaking in his “counters,” thinking little of food, and less of sleep or rest. MISCHEVIOUS GLANDS. One does not nqed to take adrenalin i Jiko an ordinary drug. It is said to] be secreted by small adrenalin glands fust above the kidneys. It has the powbr of speeding up the heart and lungs. It produces amazing psychological results, acting on the brain as well as on the body, and when abnormally present is responsible for what we all know as “the born gambler.” Are we to infer from this that those •whose adrenalin glands are not much developed will never be addicted to poker, or other forms of gambling? Not at all. You may have it injected in your veins, and by so doing become raging, tearing patrons and addicts of casinos, card-tables, racecourses, or stock exchanges, as the fancy strikes you.
The mind becomes inflamed with combatancy and contumacy. The uppermost thought is to fight. And poker —for anything more than pennies or matches —is just a fight. It is a desire to win, not only to gain money, but to feel the thrill of victory as one rakes in the “chips.” To this end the adrenalin player ceases automatically to feel the pangs of hunger. The stomach may be empty, but the mind takes no notice of such a. trifle. How much this has to do with an ultimate fixation of the type now known as “poker face” it is hard to say, though no doubt a. good deal. For poker calls for nerve. The holder of the weakest hand often wins—simply '.by a well-managed bluff. Yet no play•er ever gets away with a bluff if the truth can be detected in his eyes. The successful bluffer must, therefore, be poker-faced, and that is the last thing a woman should want to look like. The hard, rigid sphynxJike face may sometimes be a masculine merit. Napoleon thought so. And Ulysses Grant. And the Caesars. Even Mussolini tries it on. But spare us the mysterious mask of the poker table on the faces of our English women! Bad as auto-intoxication is when arising from an over-secretion of adrenalin by the kidneys, and its too generous flow from the glands into the bloodstream, the taking of it by injection is infinitely worse, since that sort of thing may obviously be overdone.
From either cause a- gambler may be unable to stop—be it poker, trente et quarante, baccarat, or roulette — until the pockets are empty. Many a fine English estate and substantial fortune changed hands in the time of Fox and the Pitts on the turn of a dice box! But the poker fiend is probably the most infatuated of all. No wonder the face must be moulded to a. winning type! The story is told of a surgeon who sat down to while away a couple of hours, having an appointment to perform a life-or-death operation the next morning. But that hour or two lengthened out into 36. Long before the surgeon rose from the poker table his patient was dead. As the poker mania grows in England mon may need to caution their wives against too much adrenalin — self-secreted or self-administered. And the wife, too, will now be able to whisper in hubby’s ear at the garden gate, “Be careful, dear, of that dreadful adrenalin!”'
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Bibliographic details
Greymouth Evening Star, 18 April 1929, Page 7
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1,081POKER FACES Greymouth Evening Star, 18 April 1929, Page 7
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