Gin At The Famous Friars Club

The opposite point of view is that the dealer is in a good spot because he receives valuable information before he makes his first play. If the receiver picks up the up card, that furnishes the first clue to what he is holding the discard that follows is clue No. 2. If the receiver refused the up card, that in itself is informative; and should both players refuse the up card, the receiver still is obliged to break his hand first. As previously mentioned, a good case can be constructed for either point of view, but I would rather have first crack at the knock card. Many persons regard it as a moot question. Glassman wouldn’t mind kibitzers if they were well mannered kibitzers, resigning himself to the fact that it’s a more or less acceptable practice to form in a knot behind the chair. They laugh you laugh with them. He feels they’re almost part of the game.

He remembered the time he was playing in a game with a kibitzer behind his chair and another behind his opponent’s. One kibitzer claimed the count was twenty-three points. The other said twenty-two. The players thought it was twenty- one. An argument started. Everyone became embroiled. There was more action behind the chairs than on the table. In some instances a player has been known to turn to a kibitzer and say harshly, “Who needs you! Why don’t you mind your own business! This can cause a kibitzer to sulk—some are barely able to hold back tears—for fear his behind- the-chair privileges will be taken away, causing him to lose a way of life. There is no sight more depressing than a sad kibitzer. Kibitzers are attracted to gin rummy games like flies to sugar. To me, gin rummy is a contest of skill and judgment between myself and the player on the other side of the table, and I prefer to keep it that way, without benefit of an audience. If the Friars Club were a bridge club, the players would be segregated into definite classifications:
good, poor, excellent. The excellent players wouldn’t want to sit down and play with poor players. The disproportion could spoil the game. No such issues arise in gin. In gin everyone imagines he’s a champ. In gin no one has a defeatist complex. In gin no player admits another player is superior.

Gin is widely played in resorts and in clubs, but the home players are in the majority. Many times the remark is overheard in hotels, I’ll play you one hand before dinner. A friend of mine from New York who was vacationing in Miami Beach played the customary one hand before dinner.” He not only lost the one hand, but in the course of trying to get even after dinner, he parted with $5,000. Some people in a similar situation in order to ease their troubled minds might have taken a long stroll across the beach on this moonlit night, or even committed suicide. My friend tried another cure. He went to a late movie in the City of Miami. It was an entertaining comedy, and just as the pains inflicted during the evening were wearing off and he was becoming his old self again, a gin rummy sequence flashed across the screen. Sometimes you just can’t win.

Johnny Olson, a top radio and television announcer for many years, tells of two lifeguards stationed at a spacious swimming pool playing gin, when a woman bather began yelling for help. One of the lifeguards cried, Come on, let’s jump in and save her! The other protested, You can’t quit! I’ve got you on a blitz. Gin flourishes at nearly every athletic, golf, and private club. Each club believes its members, as a team, could defeat any other club. Some of the finest players are found at the Fort Worth Club in Texas, the Commonwealth Club of Richmond, Virginia, and Cavendish West, Los Angeles. Major domo of the Beverly Bridge Club was Jack Caillie, an expert in his own right. Cailhie received long distance telephone calls from all over the United States from players who wished him to act as arbitrator to settle disputes. Common sense should decide all rulings,” he contended.

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