Robert Arabella

Fanatics are totally indifferent to the sanctity of human life. -Mohandas Gandhi

[This is a work of poker fiction set ten thousand hands in the future. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.]

It's the honky, honky-tonk woman
Gimme, gimme, gimme the honky tonk blues.
-The Rolling Stones, 1969

[This is a work of poker fiction set ten thousand hands in the future. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.]

Long ago the people native to the Southwest's high desert carved out a tortuous twisted dirt path across their land. They called it "The Serpent's Trail."

Justice is incidental to law and order. -J. Edgar Hoover

[This is a work of poker fiction set ten thousand hands in the future. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.]

Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night? -Jack Kerouac, On the Road

[This is a work of poker fiction set ten thousand hands in the future. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.]

A man with a clear conscience has nothing to fear from a knock at midnight. -Chinese Proverb

[This is a work of poker fiction set ten thousand hands in the future. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.]

11:59 p.m. Winston Smith, a man with a clear conscience, was asleep.

Wham! Wham! Wham!

Smith opens his eyes.

Wham! Wham! Wham!

Looks at clock: 12:00 a.m.

Wham! Wham! Wham!

"Winston! Wake up!" yells his wife. "There's someone ..."

Wham! Wham! Wham!

"... at the door."

The Smiths at the door: "Who is it?"

The first one's always free. -"Soapy" Smith

[This is a work of poker fiction set ten thousand hands in the future. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.]

Montgomery "Soapy" Smith, the greatest of all nineteenth century con men, was the creator of what we now call three-card Monte. In the 1900's it was called Soapy's swindle. The game required a pitch man to talk up the game, an inside man to run the game, one or more outside men to pretend to play the game, and a foolish man, the victim of the game.

Wise men speak because they have something to say. Fools speak because they have to say something. -Plato

Of the 149 funerals held for the victims of the suicide bombing of Las Vegas' Crystal Poker Room, Delia Harris attended a total of 39. Putting aside her own grief over the death of her fiancé, the poker champion Jonathan Gray, Harris crisscrossed the country attending the funerals of murdered poker players.

Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither. -Benjamin Franklin

The Pentagon's "Doctrine of Achieving Rapid Dominance" postulates that the use of overwhelming decisive force and spectacular displays of firepower will paralyze an adversary's perception of the battlefield and destroy its will to fight. "The Doctrine of Achieving Rapid Dominance" is commonly known as "Shock and Awe."

It's the end of the world as we know it-and I feel fine. -REM

One day people are just named Charlie Brown or Homer Simpson, the next day-"Good Grief" and "D'oh!"-their names are suddenly famous. Or infamous. Take, for example, the poker player Edward Theodore Gein, who shares this name with the real life killer who was the basis for the Norman Bates character in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

This strange naming coincidence is stranger still. Both were real life psycho killers.

Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.
-Benjamin Franklin

The Pentagon's "Doctrine of Achieving Rapid Dominance" postulates that the use of overwhelming decisive force and spectacular displays of firepower will paralyze an adversary's perception of the battlefield and destroy its will to fight. "The Doctrine of Achieving Rapid Dominance" is commonly known as "Shock and Awe."