Hoodoo Poker

Depending on your own personal belief system (or lack of one), there’s various “higher authorities” you can call on to help you win at poker…

• You can pray to God (like big winner Jerry Yang did in 2007).
• You can pray to Allah.
• You can petition the Celtic god Cernunos or the Norse god Odin.
• You can even call upon the dubious favours of the Green Goblins of Gibraltar.

Or you could put your faith in Voodoo to bring you luck with the cards.

This is no joke. My first book was written under the pen-name “Doktor Snake”. It was a voodoo spellbook with lots of anecdotes about the time I played guitar in a world music band with a Trinidadian voodoo shaman called Earl Marlowe. He advised that I carry a Buckeye nut, filled with quicksilver, whenever I played poker.

“It’s a sure-fire way to attract the fickle forces of luck,” he said.

Could’a been coincidence. But the fact is, I had some notable runs of luck when I carried the Buckeye Charm.

My old pal Elias Crazywolf, the North American shaman featured in two of my books, has many gamblers consult him for good luck charms and “lucky roots”. These are used to entice the winning cards from the ancestral spirits (honored in Voodoo and Santeria).

In the right hands, such charms are said to bring uncanny strokes of luck.

“These roots are the secret weapon of many immigrant gamblers in North America and urban Britain who pay the spirit doctors to entice the ancestors to bring or coax the lucky hands in poker,” says Crazywolf, whose website is at www.wolfshaman.com. “This is an element of gambling a player will never admit to because the hoodoo doctors they consult tell them the ancestors will hex them if they ever reveal the source of their gambling prowess.”

Now, I’m not saying I go along with the idea of spirits and ancestors - at least not in the sense that they have existence beyond the human psyche. But I do think the human mind is far more powerful than we give it credit for. The key is tapping into its power which lies in the mysterious realms of the subconscious.

At some stage, I’ll write up an article looking at how you can use self-hypnotic trance states to access your subconscious and improve your poker game.

Hoodoos use charms and self-hypnosis - and whatever else that works - to give themselves the winning edge at poker. But turning to the Creator has also proved to be a viable option. Jerry Yang, who won the World Series Of Poker (WSOP) tournament in July 2007, earning himself a cool $8.25 million and the coveted WSOP gold bracelet, makes no bones about it: his luck is down to prayers and faith in God.

Amazingly, the California-based psychiatrist only started playing poker two years before his big win. When play began on 6 July there were 6,358 players in the No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em main event, the biggest poker tournament of the year.

The 39-year-old immigrant from Laos, and father of six, was an intimidating force from the beginning. “I study my opponents very carefully, and when I sensed some weakness, I took a chance,” he told ESPN. “Even if I had nothing, I decided to raise, re-raise, push all-in or make a call.”

Whenever Yang found himself in an all-in scenario, he would kiss the picture of his children and would often say a prayer. In one instance he had a pair of fours against an over-pair. He says, “I kept saying ‘Lord, give me a set.’ And there was a four on the flop.”

In another instance, he said, “Lord if you want me to win this, put the ace or the four on the river.” He got the four.

Yang’s prayers were answered on the final hand too. He raised on the button (meaning he was dealer) and his opponent, Tuan Lam, went all in. Yang thought for a few seconds before calling with his pocket eights.

Lam had an ace and queen. The flop was queen, nine, five.

Yang needed some help if he was going to beat Lam’s pair of queens. So he called on the Lord again. The turn was a seven giving Yang some chance of making a straight. The river was a six and Jerry won the tournament with a nine-high straight.

It was enough to make even an inveterate sinner like me turn to God (but it didn’t last long).

If you were dealt a pair of aces and a pair of eights, you’d probably think your luck was in - until someone informed you that you’ve got the “dead man’s hand”. It was the hand famed Western shootist and professional gambler, Wild Bill Hickok (pictured), was holding when he bought a one-way ticket to the boneyard.

It happened this way: On the afternoon of 2 August 1876, Wild Bill strolled into the Number Ten Saloon in Deadwood, South Dakota. Against his better judgment he sat down in the only available chair with his back to the door - something he would never normally do as it left him vulnerable to assassination.

Twice he asked Charlie Rush, another poker player and also a gunman, to change places. Charlie refused, saying he felt lucky where he was. Wild Bill’s luck began to wane, forcing him to borrow money from the bar tender to carry on. But at 4:10pm he had the best cards of the afternoon, only he never lived to play them out.

Twenty-five-year-old Jack McCall, an ex-buffalo hunter from Kentucky, marched in, pulled a pistol and said, “Take that!”, and fired.

Wild Bill died instantly from a bullet wound to the back of his head. He was thirty-nine-years-old. He sat rigid for a few seconds, then fell backwards to the floor. From his hand fell four cards - two aces and two eights, a hand that to this day is referred to as the “dead man’s hand”.

Of course, you’d have to be pathologically superstitious to fold on two aces and two eights; it could easily be a winning hand. But it’s not a bad idea to follow Wild Bill’s rule of never sitting with your back to the door - you just never know who might walk in.

Although most of us would agree that aces in the hole are a good thing to have, too many of them - metaphorically-speaking, at least - can literally land you in a hole. One time, when I was playing poker regularly in Bristol, in the west of England, I ran into what was as near to a Wild West shoot out as you’re ever going to get in the U.K. (short of getting involved in armed robbery).

It involved me, Frank Coburn and Sam Johnson. Both were singer/guitar players, who I used to back up with lead guitar in the pubs and clubs in the region. This was during the mid-1980s.

We’d been playing poker with some rasta guys in St. Pauls, which is the Bristol equivalent of the London district of Brixton. As usual, we’d been playing in the Gaol, the historic cellar owned by Frank.

The rastas became disgruntled, saying that we’d had too many “aces in the hole” for it to be a fair game. We weren’t cheating (being honourable, none of us would). The Lucky Hoodoo spirits had simply been on our side. The game ended, and the rastas left, muttering vengeance.

We thought nothing of it. But the following evening we were on our way for a drink at the Beaufort pub in the arty Montpelier area of Bristol. I was wearing a long coat and Western hat (which I still wear), and was completely unaware that the rastas were waiting for us up ahead, standing like gunfighters in the shadows.and wielding knives.

Frank and Sam saw them. Before they could warn me, I said, “I’ll race you to the Beaufort.”

So I ran like the wind - coat-tails flying, clinging to my western hat - straight into the rastas, who were forced to leap out of the way.

Their startled faces were a sight to see. To them, it must have looked like the Grim Reaper had jumped off his horse and was charging at them with his scythe.

Once I realised what I’d done, I immediately dived into the Beaufort, closely followed by Frank and Sam. We were all preparing ourselves to meet our doom.

Half-an-hour later the rastas walked in. I said my prayers. They walked over to the table. Winston, the unspoken leader of the group, stared at me for a moment (which seemed like an eternity), then said: “Jimmy, my man, you are a crazy dog. But I like you. Want another game of poker?”

I was taught to play poker as a boy by my dad, Ted Shreeve, who died in 2007 at the age of ninety-seven. He in turn had learned to play the game from U.S. airmen and members of the Mafia during stints in Italy and North Africa in World War II.

I later used the gambling skills I picked up from my dad to supplement my income when I played guitar full-time in rock, blues and country bands, and continue to do so today as a writer. During the 1980s, my dad picked up a 1972 Jack Daniel’s poker deck (pictured above) from a garage sale and gave it to me. I still have it, only it’s now worn from use.

But that doesn’t stop me taking it to poker games as a good luck talisman. Skeptics like Oxford scientist Richard Dawkins (he of “The God Delusion” fame) would scoff…but so far as I’m concerned there’s nothing mystical going on. Talismans are essentially the same as affirmations, where you say over and over again in your mind things like “Wealth is pouring into my life” or “I am calm and relaxed in every situation”.

A talisman does the same thing, but without words. If you decide an object is lucky, then it serves as a subconscious focus. Carrying a rabbit’s foot in your pocket, for example, is traditionally considered lucky. Every time you put your hand in your pocket it’s there, continually reminding you that fortune will be smiling on you.

Your subconscious mind (the powerhouse within) laps up this kind of stuff. If it believes you’re lucky, then you will get more lucky breaks. Equally important, you’ll look at runs of misfortune in a more positive light. You won’t go around saying “I was born unlucky”, and go into a blind funk every time a black cat crosses your path. Instead you’ll be expecting the tide to turn in your favor, given time, which is an attitude of mind far more likely to lead to lucky breaks.

You could argue that all this is simply down to having a positive mental attitude. It probably is. But personally I think the key is to use whatever works, whether it’s a talisman (like my Jack Daniels deck) or repeating affirmations.

I’ve got nothing against rationalists like Dawkins…who hate anything that smacks of the supernatural…but I can’t see skepticism is of any use whatsoever unless it pays you. It pays him because he writes books about it and he holds a chair at Oxford University. But it doesn’t pay the poker player who needs all the hoodoo he or she can get…