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Popular Culture Review
Friend in N eed
In Bold Bluff four dogs seriously contemplate their hands as they stare
upon a Great Dane who is holding a cigar in one paw and a hand with but a pair
of twos in the other. This is the lowest possible hand with a pair or more. One of
the competing dogs has already folded, throwing a pair of tens onto the table,
another has folded with a pair of aces. The story is told by Don Schlitz and sung
by Kenny Rogers—every hand’s a winner, and every hand’s a loser.
Being “bluffed” when one has a very good hand is part and parcel of
the game of poker. At times it is the essence of “the bad beat.” The bad beat is
the poker player’s story of having victory snatched away in a wave of bad luck.
Unlike most gamblers who only relate stories of victory, conveniently forgetting
moments when fortune looked the other way, the true poker player has a litany
of tales about how the big one got away. Coolidge captures two more bad beat
stories in his paintings His Station and Four Aces and Busted with Four Aces. In
the first picture the angry dog looks upon the sympathetic faces of three other
players who will continue on with the game, as he must fold or miss his chance
to leave the train. A similar fate awaits the pug nosed bulldog whose three aces
are topped by a pile of winning chips as three policemen enter the room to break
up the game.