Living Through Another Cuba

Lot of focus on Cuba this week, what with President Barack Obama’s visit, the exhibition baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team, the Rolling Stones concert tonight, and other associated activities. While certainly historic, it’s hard to gauge in the moment whether these events are positive or not both for the Cuban people and for the United States’ relationship with the country going forward.

There’s much ambiguity on both sides here -- like watching a poker game play out without knowing either player’s hole cards nor getting to see any showdowns.

All of it is nonetheless very intriguing to follow, especially for someone who is already often reading and thinking about U.S. politics of the 1960s and so spends perhaps more time than most learning about the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro’s takeover, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the continued complicated responses by the U.S. to Cuba over subsequent years and decades.

The ouster of Fulgencio Batista’s regime -- officially occurring on January 1, 1959 -- also meant the end of the “Havana high life” culture marked by casinos, gambling, numerous nightclubs, and the significant influence of organized crime. It’s a scene memorably depicted in Sydney Pollack’s 1990 film Havana whose protagonist is an American poker player played by Robert Redford (which I wrote about here before).

Perhaps influenced by these recent posts about “poker’s precursors,” I found myself wondering a little bit today about the history of poker in Cuba. I’ve read that following Castro’s takeover playing cards were banned altogether by the communist regime, which would considerably mute the development of poker and other card games post-1959 (even if games were no doubt still played). But looking back to the 1950s and before, I wondered a bit about how poker was played on the islands, including what variants were popular.

The games appearing in Havana resemble games played in the U.S. during that time (e.g., we see Redford’s character playing five-card draw in the film). One would assume both draw and stud were the favored games during the first half of the century and before, with other games like the Spanish game of mus -- a game that turns up in several Central American countries -- undoubtedly also making an appearance during Cuba’s earlier history.

There’s another popular Cuban game called “cubilete” that is actually a dice-based game though involves poker-related elements. The dice are in fact marked “ace,” “king,” “queen,” “jack,” “gallegos,” and “negros” -- that’s the order they are ranked (i.e., A-K-Q-J-G-N). Players take turns rolling and trying to make high hands. I believe aces are wild, but I’m not up on other details of scoring and game play. (Some irresponsible, unresearched speculation perhaps suggests “cubilete” represented a way to play poker without cards.)

In any event, I will continue to follow this seemingly new chapter in Cuba’s story and U.S. relations with its neighbor to the south.

The Cuban Missile Crisis is often discussed as having been a kind of heads-up poker game between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev -- with the highest-stakes imaginable. I suppose the events of this past week might also be regarded as small-pot hands being played by a couple of wary opponents, with neither side appearing to go for much value just yet.

(That post title, of course, comes from the similarly-titled XTC tune, written at a time much closer to the crisis to which alludes -- in 1980 amid the ongoing Cold War -- than to today.)

Photo: “Sunset over Hotel Nacional, 2014,” LukaszKatlewa. CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Spanish Game of “Mus”

The Spanish game of mus (pronounced like “moose”) is thought to have originated in the Basque Country near the border of Spain and France. References to the vying game first begin to appear during the mid-18th century, although the game itself was undoubtedly played earlier. It’s also still played today in Spain and France and turns up elsewhere in Europe as well as in Central and South America.

The game of mus strikes me as being more like bridge or spades than poker, mainly because it is played by a couple of two-player teams with partners sitting opposite one another. I’ve been reading through a few different explanations of how to play mus, and there are so many interesting and complicated rules and variants it’s almost overwhelming to try to summarize them all. In fact, I’m not going to, although I’ll see if I can at least give an idea here of how the game is played while highlighting a few of its more interesting details.

The game uses a 40-card Baraja Española or Spanish deck. The four suits are pretty cool in the Spanish deck -- swords, batons, cups, and coins -- although in mus the suits have no significance. The ranks (going from highest-to-lowest) are the rey (king), the caballo (knight or horse), the sota (knave or jack), then seven down to ace (always low). (You could play mus with a regular deck of cards, then, just by discarding the eights, nines, and tens.) As the first of many complications, the three is sometimes considered equal in rank to the rey -- i.e., tied for the highest.

The game is a race to 40 points, with matches usually involving teams playing best two games out of three. I’ll explain below how teams get their points. Play starts with each player being dealt four cards, dealt counterclockwise which is also the direction of all subsequent action. The player sitting to the dealer’s right who gets to act first is called the mano.

As in draw poker, players then have a chance to discard and draw to improve their hands, but only if all four agree to do so by saying “mus” in turn. A single “no hay mus” from anyone operates as a veto, meaning no one gets to discard and draw. Players can draw again if all four agree, and again and again with the discards reshuffled if they run out of cards. But the drawing stops as soon as one player puts a halt to it. Got it?

Okay, so now each player has his or her four-card hand. Now it’s time to start the “vying.” Here’s where things get really complicated.

You know how split-pot games work in which players compete for both the “high” and the “low” halves of the pot, right? In mus hands get compared against each not just one or two ways, but four different ways. There’s the Grande (the high) and the Chica (the low), but also the Pares (meaning “pairs”) and the Juego (which means “game”).

But it isn’t like you just draw your hands, bet on them, then see who wins each of the four categories and split the pot accordingly. Rather you bet separately on each of the four different categories, then at showdown figure out who has won what. In other words you go through the betting for the Grande, then when that is done you bet on the Chica, and so on. Then everyone shows their cards.

The procedure for betting is mostly similar to the way it goes in poker. The first player to act (the mano) either bets or passes, if the mano bets, the next player can either fold, call, or raise, and so on until the last bet is called. Remember, though, that you’re playing with a partner, so you’re betting with that other person and in the end whoever has the best hand wins the pot for the whole team. A team can win, say, the Grande right away if both players on the other team fold to bets. If there’s a call, though, the showdown will settle who wins for that category.

That actually describes how the betting goes for the Grande and the Chica. For the Pares and the Juego, players first have to make a declaration about their hands -- namely to say if they have a pair or not (in the first case) and if they have a Juego or not (in the second), the latter referring to the number of points their four cards total (explained below).

There’s also a special bet called the Órdago which is essentially a kind of “all-in” in which a player stakes the outcome of the entire game on a single category. If called, the team with a winning hand wins the entire game right then and there, but if no one calls, the team with a player who said “órdago” wins that category only.

This is getting ridiculous, right? But really we’re only getting started.

The best Grande hand is the one with the highest card or cards in it. Thus any hand with a rey (king) or three beats any hand without either of those two cards. If two players have a rey, the next-highest card determines the winner. And so on.

The best Chica hand is the lowest hand, determined kind of like you do in lowball or split-pot games. Somebody holding 4-5-7-R would beat someone else holding 5-7-S-R. And 2-6-7-7 would beat 2-6-7-S.

When it comes to the Pares, having two pairs or duples is best, and if you have quads that’s considered the same as having two pairs. Next best is to have three of a kind or medias (that’s right -- two pair beats trips here). Then comes one pair or par simple. If there’s a tie, the player acting first wins (i.e., kickers don’t matter). Thus being the mano is advantageous.

Finally, the winner of the Juego is the player with the highest-ranked hand as determined by the number points the four cards are worth, with the point values being as follows:

rey (R), caballo (C), sota (J), and three = each worth 10 points

seven = 7 points

six = 6 points

five = 5 points

four = 4 points

two and ace = each worth 1 point

To have a “Juego” you have to have at least 31 points in your hand (thus the need for the declaration described above). But 31 is also the highest-ranked Juego hand to have, followed by 32, then 40, 37, 36, 35, 34, and 33. Got all that? (Ha!) Again, if there’s a tie, the player acting first wins.

Also, if no one has at least 31 points and a “Juego,” you play for what is called the Punto which is simply the highest point total with 30 being the highest (and best), 29 the next-best, and so on. (Four would be the lowest you could possibly have.)

Now I referred to the betting above. You can bet and raise and call and fold like in poker, and the team winning each category wins whatever is bet. There are lots more specifics here -- including covering what is won if no one wants to bet in a given category -- but I’m going to skip over them and just refer you to this lengthy description of the rules if you want to sort it all out. Betting is done with stones, actually, with the first team to accumulate 40 stones winning the game.

There are lots of other variations allowed and even versions of the game for three or five players, but I’m going to skip all that, too. Let me mention one last fun element of the game -- the non-verbal signaling allowed between partners.

There are certain facial gestures that are permitted by which players can let their partners know more about their hands. Closing your eyes means you have a bad hand. Sticking your tongue out a little bit means you have two aces. Raising your eyebrows means you have two pairs (or duples). And there are many more of these gestures -- I’m not making this up -- with special names for all of them.

Again, you can search around online for more details about how to play mus. You can even play mus online at a few sites, although I’ve never tried it. In any event, hopefully it’s clear enough how the game could be called a precursor to poker, involving as it does a similar deck, as well as betting and the possibility of bluffing.

Just think, though, how easy it was to learn hold’em, and how long it would take you to learn mus.

Image: Spanish deck printed in Valencia in 1778, public domain.

Perusing Poker’s Precursors

Recently I’ve been spending time learning more about several games often referred to as “precursors” to poker. I’m talking about various card games -- most European -- that appeared just before poker emerged in the early 19th century and that have a lot of the same elements including using a similar deck, incorporating betting and (in some cases) bluffing, and having other common characteristics.

A couple of prompts caused me to go down this road. One has to do with a larger project I’ve begun -- one dovetailing on my “Poker in American Film and Culture” course -- that’s requiring me to do such research. The other came during a conversation from last month while at European Poker Tour Dublin with Howard Swains and Stephen Bartley regarding an idea they once had for the EPT.

Those who follow the EPT know they’ve been pretty open to adding all sorts of out-of-the-ordinary events to the festival schedules, especially since they began expanding those schedules in recent years. You know, events like those “Deuces Wild” or “Win the Button” tourneys and the like. At EPT Dublin they had both of those, plus a “Chess and NL” event, a “Quadruple Stud” (involving four different stud variants), a 5-Card PLO tourney, and other non-NLHE offerings.

Anyhow, the idea involved each EPT stop also featuring an event in which players would play one of these “precursor” games that had originated in the host country.

For example, at EPT Barcelona they could have a mus event, the 18th-century vying game that first turns up in the Basque country up in the northern part of Spain. At EPT Deauville (when the tour still went there) they could have a poque event, the French game often regarded as a direct antecedent to poker. At EPT Berlin they could play poch, at EPT Sanremo there could be a primiera event, EPT London could feature a brag tournament, and so on.

I thought it was a very cool idea, although the more I think about it the more I start to realize some the challenges that would cause it to be difficult to pull off. In some cases I assume local regulations might make it hard to introduce a game that otherwise wasn’t already played (and allowed). It also might be difficult simply to get players to play such events, or to find the appropriate buy-in level that would attract more than just a small handful of curiosity seekers.

Looking more closely at the rules for some of these games makes me realize another significant obstacle to such an idea. At least a couple of the games are so friggin’ complicated it would probably be too arduous for most to figure out how to play them, let alone for the EPT staff to figure out how to deal them and build tournaments around them.

Just for fun (and since I’ve involved myself in this stuff already), I’m going to use the next several posts to discuss some of these games one at a time. I’ll start tomorrow with the Spanish game of mus, for no other reason than that’s the one that seems the most complicated to me at first glance.

Image: “The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds” (1635), Georges de la Tour, public domain.