The "Degenerate" Trifecta

Dear Cousin Sal and the “Degenerate” Trifecta, Love the show, even though my gambling days are now long ago and far away. During my well spent youth, some 40 years ago, I was one of the poker bums hanging around the legal card rooms in Northern California. I would drive any distance in any weather (even during one of Napa’s major floods) to play cards with misfits, losers, drunks, criminals, addicts, and the occasional sharp.   I’m not writing to describe the tedium of 24-hour games of lowball (poker is truly where time goes to die) in nasty roadhouses (where a few signs read, “Liquor in the front, poker in the rear”), but to challenge the notion that Brother Bri, Harry and the Parley Kid are true degenerates—although Harry might just qualify! I was a weekday regular at a Marin County card room located midway between George Lucas’s estate and San Quentin. Three of the regular players were murdered by other poker players during my dozen year tenure at Elmo’s ...