Cheat

I'm listening to the most recent This American Life, which is about blackjack and it takes me back to cards played as a kid. This was with the people I normally played roleplaying games with, normally we were Jedi or Wizards, but sometime we were just high schoolers eating Cheetos and trying not to leave orange smudges on our Bicycle cards.

Jason was pretty much always my partner, perhaps because we shared a first name, perhaps because we had history of being partners, maybe it was because we had siblings who wanted to beat us. He would sit across from me and Eric and Justin, our siblings, would set on either side. It was a strange pairing. Normally, Justin and Jason would be together, as they were in a singing group at church together and seemed to be closer friends, while Eric and I were more closely linked, through art and game mastering. It was only here the roles shifted.

Jason seemed to always have a toothy smile and laid back nature, when he dealt, he looked like he didn't care. He would talk smack, feign passing signals, sometimes actually pass signals. As he shuffled the small Euchre deck and distributed the cards. Three, two, three... With only four left, he flips up the top card. A queen of hearts looked up into the dining room lamp. I grumbled. Wrong suit, wrong cards. I wanted to win.

We won that round, three tricks. We lost the next round, and that brought the deal to me. I decide, as I would with increasing frequency, to cheat. I hate that part of me, but even now I have to not look at the my shuffling or I will impulsively push cards. I chastise my kids for using cheat codes on the Sims and I will outright to refuse to play games with people I catch cheating, but in those games I had no such moral baggage.

I hold the mere 24 cards which make up a Euchre deck in my hands. I have shuffled cards, lots of cards for a long time. I was playing Pinochle in elementary school. This means I don't need to look at my hands when I randomize the cards, but I do, I stare intently. I'm looking at the bottom cards as I split. The deck, looking for a Jack, a future bower. Sometimes I have to start conversations while I am shuffling, so it doesn't seem odd I'm riffling the cards a sixth or seventh time. When I see the bower, I shuffle three from the non-bower side and then place the bower as the forth card. This means it will be the card I flip up.

I deal around the table to my friends and bother. None of them seem to know what I have done. Sure, there are jokes about cheating when the bower is turned up, but it happens one out of six deals anyway, so they don't protest with any seriousness. Seeing our good fortune, Jason is even more jovial, while our brothers are resigned. We know this means almost certainly, we will win.

"Turn down a bower, you'll lose for an hour."

Acting like I don't care, I get something to drink, while the other decide to call it up, or pass. I know only Jason will likely pick it up, but he passes at it to. When it gets back to me, it is my choice. I pick it up, of course, not only do I pick it up, but because of the off color ace and the other trump I have, I go it alone. My little manipulation of the cards, was becoming four points of a ten point game. Huge.

We won, as we did more than not. It mattered only five minutes, at which point we started the next game. I got away with it, but I could tell no one.