Assumption (Poker)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Assumption is a fictional variation of Poker created and featured in the novel Last Call by Tim Powers.

The simplest explanation of the game is that it is playing Poker with a Tarot deck instead of a standard playing deck, using the four tarot suits (Cups, Wands, Swords, and Pentacles) instead of the standard suits (Diamonds, Spades, Hearts, and Clubs), and discarding the Major Arcana Cards. This increases the deck size to 56 cards instead of the standard 52 due to the addition of Knight Cards not present in a standard playing card deck. Betting and dealing are described as much the same as a regular round of poker amongst a dealer and players.

Assumption, however, according to the novel, differs in a few highly significant ways:

• Assumption is ideally (and for the characters in the novel, mandatorily) played with 13 players. The significance of this is not made entirely clear, but is well-grounded in any number of superstitions related to the number 13 (Jesus Christ and his Apostles, the general 'unluckiness' of 13 in modern society, etc.).

• Each of the 13 players is dealt a total of four cards apiece, leaving 2 extra cards which are not used. Players are dealt two cards face-down, and one card face-up. After the first round of bidding on hands, a final fourth card is also dealt to each player face up.

• After the initial deal of hands to every player, those hands go up for a round of bidding (referred to as "the mating"). The first round is only bid with the players seeing each others' single face-up card. Once the bidding has escalated around the table, the dealer distributes a fourth face-up card, and now another round of bidding can be made with all the players now aware of how strong or weak each players' potential full hand is based on being able to see half of that hand so-exposed on the table. It is here that any member of the round of players can effectively "fold" by accepting a bid for their hand, surrendering that hand to the player who bid for it, and leaving the table. The general rule to the game in bidding offers is that you are offering a slightly higher (100 dollars or more) bid than the amount that player has already offered to the table's pot of bets. This is considered an outright sale of the hand, from player to another, with the surrendering player having profited for surrendering their hand early rather than continuing play on their hand for the pot on the table.

• A hand that is sold to another player means that the original owner of that hand is now considered the "parent" of the newly combined hand (the combined hand being what the player sold to the other remaining player, added to the cards that buyer already held). A hand that is created by combining two original hands from the deal is referred to as having been "conceived." The "parent" of the conceived hand still has a vested interest in the game, even though they are no longer active players; if a remaining player wins the final pot on the table at the end of the game, the players who sold their hands to help that winner conceive their winning combination each get ten percent of the final take.

• This is where the game now once again resembles a standard Poker game. The remaining players now continue upping their antes into the pot, bidding and conceiving larger hands as each round of players surrenders and leaves or remains in, building stronger and stronger hands.

• When all players but one have conceded and there is a winner of the pot, there is still a remaining option for card play (this is called the "Assumption," and thus is the source of the name for the game itself). The parent of a winning hand can exercise the option to offer an amount of a bet equal to the total pot on the table. The bet is placed with the pot, and the parent and "child" winner can then cut the cards to see who cuts the deck to a higher-denomination card. The higher-denomination card is the winner, who then can take the entire pot, including the last bet that doubled it. This is a final "winner take all, double-or-nothing" option that is considered totally foolhardy, and only the act of a desperate, losses-chasing player.

Assumption is a game described in Last Call as "a game that promoted action." Bidding goes round rapidly, amounts for a hand between players are rapidly discussed, and betting rounds go quickly as the pot escalates in size.

However, in the novel, the concept here is that Assumption is more than just a card game. The host of the game, the person who is often the 13th player, utilizes the game as a way to actually buy the living bodies of the other players.

The idea here is based fundamentally on how the game is structured, hosted, and the significance of using the Tarot deck as the playing cards. The crucial key is that the host keeps the other players completely unaware that it is anything other than an eccentric form of poker they're all playing, and playing only for money.

The Tarot deck literally represents the fates and lives of each person who is dealt their hand from the deck at the beginning of the game. As the players negotiate and sell each others' hands to other players in the course of the game, they are selling away their bodies to the remaining player.

By the end of the game, when the remaining player has effectively won half the players' souls/lives in their conceived hand, the final "Assumption" is then called and exercised by the host, the 13th player who long since folded out of the game and sold his hand to someone else. When he cuts the cards and comes up the loser of the final Assumption double-or-nothing, the other player takes all the money...but here, it is not an issue of a winner taking what they earned.

The final Assumption bet is actually a ruse to get the 'winner' to take money in exchange for the rest of the deck they had as a hand. The host gets the full deck back, as well as a lien or hold on the bodies of all the players in the game who steadily dropped out, selling their lives away to the deck without realizing it. In essence, the host has let the game fool the players into all "charging" the deck with their souls, and then the last bet is an excuse to "buy" it back, including souls, from the last winning player remaining on the table.

In Last Call, this is the method by which some people can extend their lives to practical immortality, by hosting a game every 20 years or so on Easter, during Holy Week. As each new 20th anniversary comes around to host a new game and collect new host bodies, the original conjuror responsible gets rid of their old, failing circuit of bodies and replaces them with the last game's players. The cycle repeats, with each new harvest intended to come just as the first round of bodies wears out and the magician takes over the bodies of the last round of players so they can remaining relatively fresh, young, and ever-lasting.

There are considered certain traits of an Assumption game that a savvy player is warned to watch out for, mostly based on classic Poker-gambler superstitions. Some of these are:

• Games played on or near "tamed water" (water that is controlled in some way, such as man-made lakes or reservoirs and on riverboats, private yachts, etc.). Water is considered a disruptive psychic element and thus puts the players at the mercy of the magician hosting.

• Watch for cigarette smoke at the table, and even if you don't smoke, try to have a cigarette burning in an ashtray at your elbow. The smoke will begin to puddle all towards the center of the table, over the pot and the cards, and it will do this regardless of any drafts or winds going in other directions.

• Watch for drinks in glasses on the table. If the liquid's level starts to slip, to move at an off-angle even when the table and everything else seems level, something is changing the probabilities of the game in an unnatural way.

Any of these signs, or a combination of them, is considered a warning symptom that the game is being rigged in some mystical fashion, and that the savvy player seeing them should immediately fold and leave the game, losing the ante they've bet but protecting themselves from losing anything far more valuable than money to the dealer.

Fans of Tim Powers and specifically the novel Last Call have been known to play Assumption for fun as a tribute to the novel. They play it just as described in the novel, although of course there are no recorded cases of anything like the fantastic events in the novel happening as a result of playing the game for real. Usually it is treated as exactly what it is: a fun and eccentric variation on Poker. Members of the Clarion and Odyssey workshops have had long-running traditions of playing the game, and it has even been known to pop up at "room parties" at various writing-industry and science fiction conventions.