‘Heads You Lose, Tails I Win’

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 840, 7 December 1929, Page 22

‘Heads You Lose, Tails I Win’

Playing Poker With Balkan Monarch . . . Pistol On the Table . . . ■ 'I AVE you ever sat down fcwjfjFm, to a game of chance Hl&alV with a stark lethal j BPjjfjSH I weapon lying on the TBfcyfwdßA table beside you? Have *l''r)lw , l you ever played pokerr with a reigning monarch? “If you have not,” remarks Colonel Lionel James, the war correspondent, in “Times of Stress,’ his second book of reminiscences, “take heed by my experience and do not cultivate the opportunity.” The reigning monarch with whom he was “commanded” to play was the late King Nicholas, of pre-war Montenegro, and the occasion an evening following a semi-State dinner. He relates:— “After dinner we all removed to a sitting-room, and the King, looking more like a stage brigand than a monarch, commanded me to join in a game of poker. Some, from among the many weapons in his waistbelt, impeded his comfort as a card player. He detached a revolver and a yataghan, and placed them on the mahogany board beside him, and,” adds the colonel, “play began.” Royal Etiquette Soon he began to realise that King Nicholas was no ordinary player. “It was whispered to me,” he continues, “that it was not ‘etiquette’ to demand the ultimate view of the King’s cards, and 1 observed that, no

doubt in a measure of c:arel e »*°f Nicholas, when he stated the com tion against which his rivals nad w-illing to bet, invariably cards face downward on the The hands he held were truly »»“ ’ ful, and it was not long befor contents of most of the pools piled alongside the yataghan. “Early in the game I held■ * , eB . bination which, with the • titled me to declare ’four an - This is a hand of considerable c I made my bets accordinglyqueens’ was Nicholas’s declare and down came the Royal a ® a Vin; downward on the table, and the . swept in the biggest pool of the “As the queen of spades was fifth card in my hand, I couto imagine that my Royal host sadly in need of a consultation an oculist, or that it w as a straw* constituted pack of cards." hor t Colonel Janies adds that n' s n , flight into the exalted citckb Royalty” cost him 15 golden ereigns.”