I recently went to a friend’s house on a Friday night for a traditional card game, a time of smoking cigars and telling big lies to your friends.

Since I have a family and have leveled out my life, I hadn’t had the opportunity to play cards as much as I used to. Not that I really minded, but I did miss having a night out once in awhile ‘with the boys.’ It’s always good to have friends to share fish tales and war stories with, even if they don’t really believe you to start with.

It’s even more fun to lie across the table, telling your friends-turned-adversaries how you plan to obliterate them if they stay in a hand and then showing them later with a smirk. Yes, true joy is found in showing your fellow players what lousy cards you’re holding after they fold while the hand is still in progress. Sometimes it is about winning, but only for one of the players. The rest sit and muse about what could have been.

Another friend has mistaken the word ‘winning’ for ‘whining.’ He has perfected it to an art — once his chip count gets down to about one-fourth of what he started with, he starts complaining about his bad luck and refuses to stop until he wins. It would almost be worth letting him win just so he would be quiet. I think that’s the plan, subliminal warfare.

Each player has a personality to their game, just like they would in anything they do. Some are aggressive, some passive, some are hard to read and others are like a children’s storybook.

After each hand, especially good competitive ones, we always talk about what happened, what we were drawing for or what we thought the others had. We don’t really talk about anything in the real world, our private lives or our thoughts and feelings. Those are the things men go to card games to escape. We can all talk with our wives about that stuff. But no woman could appreciate the heart-felt communication that goes on when a fellow drops four aces on the table soon after a good friend proudly reveals a king-high flush.

Men need gatherings like that, since we don’t have the same social abilities shared by many women. We don’t go to the bathroom together, we don’t hug and kiss each other and pretty much go an extra mile to keep from touching at all, unless you count a handshake now and then. Perhaps as a social outlet it is somewhat pathetic — a feeling of camaraderie shared around a card table — but it suits me just fine as a once-in-awhile kind of thing.

You see, without competition, men will hardly gather at all. We play sports so we can beat the other team (or each other), we watch games so we can cheer for our favorite team, we golf to outshoot our fellow golfers (or in my case, embarass myself), we even compete to see who can shoot the biggest deer or catch the biggest or most fish.

But poker is the ultimate playing field for the mental abilities and competitive nature of man. It’s a forum for confidence, guile, craftiness and skill. Where else can aging men with beer bellies have an advantage over most younger, stronger men? Well, maybe at the bowling alley. Of course, if there’s anyone at the card game younger than 35, he’s probably there to visit his step-dad.

It’s also handy for the self esteem to have friends who would be better suited at handling cow chips than poker chips, but thus far I haven’t found many of those. Even though competition is a big part of the game, it isn’t the only part. Our game is primarily an excuse to consume large amounts of unhealthy foods like hot chicken wings, sausage and bean soup, scorching chili, pizza, or nearly any red meat. It also is a forum for bad card playing and the showplace for occasional, albeit improbable, streaks of remarkable luck — both good and bad.

I’ve always enjoyed playing cards since my father taught me as a young boy. It would seem that he was the poker champion of his U.S. Army unit in Japan before he was moved to Korea, at least to hear him tell it. He has told me many times about someone winning some poor recruit’s entire paycheck and then loaning back the money with interest. He said they’d even play for cigarettes, just to take their mind off their problems and stresses. Isn’t that why everyone does it? Win, lose or draw, it’s hard to think of little else while the game is going on.

I still recall how very interesting it was to me as a boy of fewer than 10 years and how I longed to be as good a player as he was. He also shared with me stories of the war, hard times and travels and even living in the mountains as a poor boy wrapped up in the Great Depression, which seemed like it was always here and lingered like a shadow after much of the nation had gone back about its business. But the stories I loved most were the ones about big poker games. Like the one where he cleaned out everyone and sold them their cigarettes back at payday from his footlocker. However, it seems that those who play seldom relate the times they lost everything they had betting on a straight that was flushed by a flush, or the time they tried to bluff a hand with little more than a pair of hearts and ended up getting beaten by a couple threes owned by another player who read them like a book.

No, the stories we hear about are the successful bluffs, the one where a player with absolutely nothing talked three other players into folding winning hands and handing over a big pot. Or the time so-and-so beat the professional gambler or caught someone cheating. Those are better stories than going home broke with your tail between your legs. In our game, it isn’t about money; it’s all about chips. They are a status symbol, sign of prestige and marker of ability. Those with many are looked upon with envy, those with few with pity (unless of course you are working hard to take away even the few, then it would still be envy).

At the end of the night, whoever has taken possession of the bounty is declared winner by the others, many of whom have sour stomachs by then from over-indulgence in chicken wings, chili and lies. The winner also gets to gloat mercilessly, but just until the next game. Sadly, Lady Luck is a fickle old hag, and you never know whom she might join at the table. Of course, with stakes like we play for, pride and bragging rights, it doesn’t matter, just as long as I can get back to the box of wings or the pot of chili before it gets emptied out.

So long as we remember what’s really important.

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