Tonk and skin

The juke joint shipped two days ago. Act 1's card node became a room you walk around in with regulars, drifting enemies and three tables, all dealing hold'em.

This week's direction changed that. The joint's mainline games are the period ones, twenty-one, tonk and Georgia skin, and hold'em moves aside. Twenty-one went in first this morning, at the low table of Ora Lee Tatum, who runs the house. Tonk followed at midday and skin this afternoon.

Research into what was played where set the rule. A game can be made the joint's own in who brought it and how it is told, and nothing in it may claim more history than the sources give.

Tonk at Junior's table

The research is plain that tonk is attested among traveling Black musicians in the 1930s, and not in the Delta. So it reaches the joint through Junior Pettway, who learned it from a band he sold whiskey to.

The rules are faithful, with house rules kept only where each makes a real decision. You hold five cards and want your count low. On a turn you may drop, then you draw, lay down spreads (three or four of a rank, or a run in one suit), hit spreads already on the table, and discard. A drop wins one stake if your count is strictly lowest. If yours is higher or tied, you are caught and pay double. Emptying your hand with nothing left to discard is a tonk, which also pays double. If your opponent hits one of your spreads, you cannot drop on your next turn. Wild deuces stayed out, because they are attested only from 1974.

Junior is predictable on purpose. He takes the discard only when it builds or extends a spread, throws his highest loose card, and drops when his count is 10 or less. The buy-in is 300 gold, the stake a tenth of that. I played the tonk scenario today and passed it, from the deal through a caught drop with his hand shown.

Skin at the high table

Georgia skin is the best attested of the three, recorded by Zora Neale Hurston and Jelly Roll Morton in the 1930s and named on blues records from 1929. Its documented home is the turpentine and sawmill camps of Florida, Georgia and the Gulf Coast. It is a dead even gamble, and the only documented cut is the dealer's fee for a scoop.

Each player holds one card, and only rank matters. The dealer turns cards one at a time, and the first to match a held rank makes its holder fall and pay the bet. The deck persists between rounds, so a tally on the table shows how many of each rank are left, and a rank with one card left rarely falls. When you need a card you can take the next one free, or pay a fee to scoop, naming a rank and taking a card of it from the deck. The dealer scoops free.

Who deals depends on who is in the room. An act 1 enemy who sits at tables and has drifted in takes the seat, The Split Tongue among them. With none there, the house regular, Pleasant Hawkins, deals. Either way the opponent scoops a rank with exactly one card left. My pass on skin found no obvious issues, with the caveat that I do not know the game well yet.

Where hold'em went

Hold'em moved to a fourth table in the corner, dealt by Amos Greer, who lost his low table seat to twenty-one. The room does not have that table at the start. In my first look its prompt ran off the left edge of the screen, and that was fixed before merge.

Every table saves your gold and locks the moment you sit down, so quitting cannot replay a deck you have seen.