Lucky Lady Card Room, Restaurant and Bar
5526 El Cajon Blvd., San Diego 619.287.3091
Open daily, 9am to 2am.
Games offered: Hold 'em, Lowball, Omaha, Pai Gow

Poker Notes

• In poker, unlike other gambling card games, such as Blackjack, players are competing against each other, not against the House.

• Most people play "limit" games, where betting is on a tiered structure, e.g., $3.00-$6.00, or $10.00-$20.00. But when the game is "no limit", wagering becomes more of an art–specifically, the art of war. Players scan their opponents for "tells", i.e., facial tics, dilating pupils (many players wear sunglasses to cover their involuntary eye reactions) or unconscious gestures a player makes that may tell about the cards he is holding.

• 50 million Americans play poker. The fastest growing part of the poker industry is online playing, e.g., at pokerstars.com. Most novices learn by watching others play, reading about the game, and nowadays, building their skills by playing online in no-money games.

A Quick Primer on Hold 'em Poker

The objective: use the 2-cards you are dealt and the 5 community cards to make the best hand possible. The game: Each player is dealt 2 hole cards. One player then makes a bet, called the small blind. The next player has to double that bet, making the big blind. This creates the initial pot. All the other players now raise, fold or call (i.e., match the previous bet) based on the quality of their 2 hole cards. The dealer then puts out 3 community cards, face up, called the flop, for all the players to use. Another round of betting ensues, increasing the pot. Then a fourth community card called the turn is dealt face up. More betting increases the pot. Finally, a fifth and final community card, called either the fifth street or the river, is dealt face up. There's a final round of betting which ends with the players showing their cards to determine the winner.

The Stage

When I walk into the Lucky Lady Card Room it's as if I've stumbled onto a big stage crowded with manic characters noisily performing in the chaos of an improvised play.

"Hello!" A pretty waitress carrying a huge tray of food is moving toward me. I begin to say hello–but she looks past me–and speaks to a man who entered behind me. "I haven't seen you in ages!" she sings. "When was the last time? Yesterday?"The waitress and the man behind me laugh.

I retreat, downstage right, and sit on a battered tan sofa rammed into a corner. I look out over the two large rooms, over the seven long, green felt-topped tables, each crowded with people seated around it, playing poker or pai gow. Attempting to blend in, I pick up a magazine left on the sofa: Card Player, For Those Who Play To Win!On the other end of the sofa is a middle-aged white guy sporting a bowling-ball belly under a tight madras shirt. He absently adjusts his black frame glasses and pats his well-oiled black hair as he intently frowns into the sports pages of the Union-Tribune. He looks like he should have a stubby cigar clamped in his teeth, but this is California: there's no smoking allowed inside the card room.

"You waiting for a game?" I look up, and standing over me is a lean, handsome woman of 40-something with pale red hair flowing over the shoulders of her green, chalk-striped suit. She is looking down at me and she isn't smiling. "Well?"

I manage to say, "L-looking for a game? No. Not me."

But the belly in the madras shirt throws down his newspaper, jumps to his feet and almost yells at the woman, "Texas Hold 'em!"

She snaps her gaze at him, and nods over her shoulder. He scampers to the nearest table and dives onto an open chair. The red-haired woman walks toward the tables and announces, "All right! We're going to convert this to a Omaha table." She raises her voice a few decibels and is heard throughout the club. "All you Omahalics–here's your table."

She waits a beat, then says, "Texas Hold 'em players–you're over there. Next table."

I see the guy in the madras shirt get up and run to that table and throw himself into another chair. Everyone in this part of the two rooms is suddenly in motion, taking seats at the two tables, talking loudly, positioning stacks of chips, fidgeting in anticipation.

Then I see the woman with the pale red hair turn back and look straight at me–and frown. In a barely perceptible movement, she tosses her long, pale red hair from the shoulders of her green suit. The message is unmistakable: I've been dismissed.

This is my rocky introduction to Jan Beverly, the poised, commanding, zero-tolerance for bullshit manager of The Lucky Lady Card Room

The Producer and The Director

A "navy brat" born in Virginia, Jan Beverly's family moved to San Diego when she was five-years old. Single and in her early-20s, she found herself on unemployment–just another castaway stranded by an ebb-tide in Southern California's economic ocean.

"It was around Christmas, and I was just sitting around, watching television. This friend of mine told me about this class she was going to one night. It was free. She invited me to go along with her. So I figured what the hell."

The free class Beverly wandered into was for people who wanted to become card dealers in casinos. "I had played cards when a kid. My aunts, uncles, parents all played cards. But I never set out to be a card dealer.""Maybe 20 people began the class but my girlfriend and I were the only two who graduated. Maybe a week later I've got my license and I've got a job in a card room. I was off unemployment. I was making good money. I just sort of fell into this business."

An elderly man approaches Jan and she introduces me to Stan Penn, the owner of the Lucky Lady. A gentle, soft-spoken man, Stan sits with us but is reluctant to join the conversation. Yet, when I press him, he shares some stories. Like the one about the first time he was arrested.

"It was just three months after I opened the Lucky Lady. This is twenty years ago. Things were different. There were over 100 card rooms in San Diego back then. The cops were different then, too."I have to encourage Penn to continue, and finally, reluctantly, he tells the full story.

"The cops sent in some guy. I knew the guy, and he had a little bit of a grudge against me. He owed me some money. Anyhow, he was wired–you know, they had put a hidden recorder thing on him. But I knew the guy a little, and so he asked me to take two ten-dollar bets on a basketball game. 'Cause I knew him, just as a favor, I did it."

And Penn was arrested.

"But you know it was kind of funny that when I get arrested there's already 3 cop cars and a TV station camera truck parked out on the street. But I took the case all the way to a jury trial. And I beat it. On entrapment."

When I ask why so many card rooms have gone out of business, both Beverly and Penn look at me as if I'm a not very bright child. "Indian gaming," Penn says.

Beverly adds, "The Indians and the city don't want small, neighborhood card rooms. They decided that a long time ago. They passed laws so no one could open up a new card room. We were a going concern, so they couldn't shut us down. So they 'grand-fathered' us in. But after 20 years of work, Stan isn't even allowed to sell his business. He can't even give it to his kids if he wanted to retire."

Stan smiles. "So I'm not going to retire."

Beverly continues, "Now there are two, just two card rooms in the city. The Lucky Lady, and the Palomar Club in North Park. That's it."

A few years ago, the Lucky Lady's health was failing. "Everybody was going to the Indian casinos because the city wouldn't allow us to offer any of the popular games. All we had was Low Ball. No one was playing Low Ball anymore."

Low Ball, a style of poker, is still offered at the Lucky Lady. "But only a handful of the old timers will play it," Penn explains.

What saved the Lucky Lady?

"She did," Penn says, nodding at Beverly.

"All I did was lobby the people at the city council. But it wasn't easy. They just didn't want to listen. People have these crazy images of prostitution and drug dealing going on in card rooms. They should come here and see for themselves. First, we don't allow anyone to play if we think they've had too much to drink. And second, these guys are here to play cards. A prostitute would go broke!"

Penn adds, "They didn't care if we went out of business. At one point, the city is telling us we have to close down every Sunday, too. I mean, when these guys have that kind of power, the least they should do is be open-minded and listen to people."

By a persistence and persuasion that is easy to imagine from the woman who commands every aspect of this busy card room, restaurant and bar, Beverly kept knocking on doors until she found a politician willing to listen.

"Chris Kehoe was just great," she says. "If it wasn't for her, the Lucky Lady wouldn't be here today. We talked to her and explained what was happening. All we were asking for was to be allowed to offer some more popular games so we wouldn't be put out of business. She helped us get Texas Hold 'em and Omaha."

Along with these two popular versions of poker, a year ago the Lucky Lady was allowed to offer its customers Pai Gow, a game intensely popular with San Diego's diverse Asian population.

"The Pai Gow tables are always busy," Beverly says. "Morning, noon and night." She directs my attention to one of the seven tables where people are crowded around, two-deep, talking animatedly in Vietnamese, Mandarin, Filipino and English. "It's incredibly social. The women come more in the mornings and the men are here in the evening, but women come then, too. Everyone just yaps, yaps, yaps!"

But make no mistake: The Lucky Lady Card Room is a business. It's about gambling, serious gambling. There is a constant flow of money–in the form of chips–from the cashier's window out onto the 7 busy tables. While most of the multi-colored chips may be worth one-dollar each, other chips are worth as much 100-dollars each. In a quick glance around the two large rooms, I realize there may be thousands of chips in play–and it's only 11 in the morning.

But spend a few hours here, and you will begin to see something else going on around you. In the increasingly bland, corporate-owned identity of San Diego's neighborhoods and businesses, the Lucky Lady is an old-fashioned, rough and tumble melting pot where real people find everything they need: food, drink, cards, and community–a place to belong, to call their own.

"I know all the customers–all of them. And by first name." Beverly explains. "And everyone calls me by my first name. I mean, we probably get one new face a week in here. We take care of our customers. This is a 99-percent return customer business!"

The Stage Hands

The Lucky Lady employs dozens of people, from security guards to floor managers to bar tenders. Anyone reminiscing about the Rainbow Coalition days would beam with glee to see the Mexican kitchen workers who prepare more Chinese and Vietnamese dishes than burritos and enchiladas, or even hamburgers and fries, or the Asian and European and African and Latino waitresses and bar tenders and dealers,

But the real diversity of people is best measured in their stories–their unique history. From third generation Japanese-American college students, to Vietnamese boat people, to San Diego born and raised single-moms.

Rhonda, a poker dealer, is a plump and pretty, bleached-blonde forty-something woman with a quick eye and quicker laugh.

"I'm a single-mom. I've got three daughters."

So what's a nice girl like Rhonda doing in a place like this?

"The money is good. Very good."

How good?

"I deal poker three days a week and make maybe $500 to $600. This is a great job for a single-mom. I've been working here for eight years now. I've been able to support myself and raise my kids. And Stan (the owner) offers health insurance, too."

"But, you've got to work. It takes a lot of concentration, a lot of focus. You got to run the table. You got to keep people in line. You got to make sure the money is right. The only bad part is some people take losing out on the dealer. They can get abusive. I've had chips thrown in my face. One guy said he was going out to his car to get his gun."

Making enough money in only three days a week has allowed Rhonda time for other pursuits. Like a college degree. "I'm working on a degree in business. With this job, I've even had time to do an internship with a local bank. I'm hoping, with the degree and my experience, someday I can do something more altruistic. Help people."

After talking with Rhonda, I'm sitting with Jan Beverly when her cell phone rings. I overhear her concerned questions, and it seems she is talking to a sick relative, admonishing the person to drink plenty of fluids and take it easy until they feel better.

But after ending the call Beverly explains that she was talking to her daytime floor manager. "Yesterday I came in and she was lying on the kitchen floor, almost passed out, practically delirious. I had her rushed to the doctor. Turns out she was on some kind of weird diet and she had just about fainted, was dehydrated. That's why I'm managing the floor today, while she gets better. Every day it's something different."

The Players

During the day, the Lucky Lady is like the friendly older woman who invites you in for coffee and gossip about the neighborhood. But at night, the Lucky Lady is transformed. She's more like an aging diva wearing too much perfume, too much makeup, and over-compensating for her advanced years with the manic energy of an ingenue half her age.

At night, while there are still many women at the two Pai Gow tables, the poker tables are almost exclusively male. At these tables, testosterone, money and warlike competition are the driving forces. It's not uncommon to hear a winning player say, "I killed him. I absolutely killed him."

Anthony Yoshio Endow, a 25-year old third generation Japanese-American, precisely stacks $60.00 in chips in front of him. "I play poker. Texas Hold 'Em. I'll only play Omaha if I have to,"

Endow says. I learn that he would be in his junior year as a science major at UCSD–if he were attending school. But for the past year Endow has been an almost daily customer at The Lucky Lady. Despite having just admitted that he hopes to win enough money in the next three hours of fast and furious poker to pay his rent and a credit card bill, Endow grins and tells me, "I don't gamble. I play cards."

After an extended losing streak, Endow takes a break. He goes to the backroom bar of the busy card room, gets a beer, and tries to focus on answering my novice's questions about his passion for poker. But he is restless, agitated, and keeps looking to the right, as if he could see through the wood walls, back into the card room.

"Sorry. I can't really pay attention. I'm down. I'm losing." Endow is as nervous about getting back to the action at the poker tables as a junkie is about getting his next fix.

It's no better trying to strike up a conversation with Doc, a seventy-something man I meet on the small balcony over-looking the parking lot. Doc is smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. His thick, unruly hair is bright white, as is the full, straight beard that reaches down to his chest. His gnarled hands are stained yellow from decades of smoking and he has the cynical, distanced air of a man who gets out of bed each morning reaching for a cigarette and the Racing Form even before stumbling to the bathroom.

"I don't want to talk now. I'm in a bad mood."

Like Endow, Doc's is restless to be back in the card room. It's clear that he is only taking a quick break to suck down enough cigarette smoke to satisfy his nicotine-addicted body. His mind is still engaged with the more powerful addiction that is waiting for him in the card room: competitive poker.

"I'm down. I'm losing. I gotta get back to the table. I'm losing."

Doc flicks the stub of cigarette into the dark parking lot. He turns and stomps back to the poker tables like an angry soldier ready for battle.

As Doc leaves, I have a memory of being in a classroom and the teacher lecturing on B. F. Skinner's experiments in behavior modification.

As I stand on the balcony, people passing behind me, between the bar and card room of the Lucky Lady, talking and laughing, I recall how Skinner played mind-games on pigeons and rats, and in doing so, revealed the astonishing power of intermittent positive reinforcement.

I think about the temporary insanity that seemed to drive Endow and Doc back to the poker tables, back to the promise of a chance to win.

Skinner was one very sharp guy.

I bet he would have been a hell of a good poker player.

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