Chicago Tribune du lieu suivant : Chicago, Illinois • 49

NW (f hicatto (Tribune Thursday, September 29, 1983 Section 5 i Scene By Larry Townsend Chicago Kid aces the table at Tahoe i HERE I WAS in lovelv Lake Tahoe Ignoring the scenery outside Harrah's Club and settled into an afternoon game of seven-card -stud. Six of us at the table were thrilling to the availability of a game we play illegally in our home states. Poker is against the law in most states, and yet it inspires millions of fine Americans to violate statutes, lie, steal and test their skill. In all its forms and at every level of play from penny ante to pot limit and no limit reserved for pros or fools, poker probably is the most popular participant sport in this country. The seventh player joined our limit game to kill time before the big evening sessions began.

He took a seat at the end of the table opposite me, and I recognized him quickly as the one to beat. He was what is referred to as a "rock," a careful, tight player who really knew "when to hold 'em ana when Tribune photo by Sally Good Michener probes the solidarity, diversity of Poland's past Wl 1U1U em. Ail poker relies heavily on skill, of course, but the element of luck is there and that's what makes it gambling in the eyes of government meddlers. The fact that skill is omnipresent is demonstrated by the fact that good players always win over a period of time against lesser players. THE STAKES in the Lake Tahoe game' were -modest: $1 to $3 with $6 on the end after the last card.

No more than four raises were allowed until the hand was down to two players; then there was no limit to the number of times they could raise each other until one ran out of money. As play progressed, the rock folded most of his hands, as a winner should. When he was there at the end he usually took the pot. Now, where does all that lying and stealing referred to above come in? Well, to be absolutely frank, poker encourages deception, and players have been known to he bluff and steal la pot with a timely bet. There are other unhealthy things that go on at a poker table, too, like smoking, cussing and drinking, although most serious players do not dull their senses with anything stronger than fruit juice or coffee.

Through the years, I have paid my poker tuition in games ranging from Cub Scout penny ante to table stakes, pot limit in Alaska fishing camps. So, too, was playing with care punishing players with maximum bets and raises when I had a good hand and my nonfiction books, the book on sports in America, the book on Japanese prints. They re thinking, 'Why didn't he go back and do another big Once again, at age 76, he has done just that. "I think society gives certain people like me a license of toleration and says to us, 'Go to it, and we'll be very patient with what you come up with because we've invested a lot in the author mused. JAMES ALBERT Michener does not muse often.

His personality seems pinched between Quaker stiffness and hard reality. His tenacity led him to wade through every English-language book and document on Poland that he could find. He will write and rewrite an entire chapter until he can inject some life into ancient battles and political intrigues. Then he might set that chapter aside for a year while he makes further inquiries. His imagination rarely soars; it is anchored in meticulous scholarship.

A cafe loudspeaker blasted him with loud bistro music, while the serving people did a fair imitation of nouvelle uaoue Parisian chic. Michener was showing remarkable forbearance, considering he once confessed to Playboy magazine that he detests the French. "In no country in the world have my wife and I been treated as poorly andas savagely," he said in a 1981 interview. "We've been insulted for being American, for i Continued on page 3 official tour of Poland. Even then, while serving on one of the many governmental advisory posts that have come his way, Michener was considering Poland as the setting for another of his sweeping historical novels.

But 1972, he thought, was not the time to do it. "I kicked the idea around for four or five years," he said, giving his voice lecture-hall resonance to compete with a piped-in chanteuse. "Sometimes I was terribly excited, and other times I would feel I really didn't know enough. Not knowing Polish, I thought the research was going to be too tough. But then a time comes when you say, 'Okay.

This is AFTER MAKING eight extended visits to the country and poring over thousands of books and documents, Michener produced "Poland" Random House, $17.95, a classically Michenerian examination of a land and its people. Millions of readers pick up his hefty tomes "Poland," at 556 pages, is relatively light, and they rightly expect to receive a thorough grounding in a subject they might not study otherwise. The works appear so effortless, one I could suppose Michener merely has to touch the "best-' seller" key on his typewriter after deciding on a "hot" topic; but, in fact, he often strays from formula. "I think I have disappointed the publishers in certain instances," he said. "I believe that holds true for any of By Robert Cross 3IM MICHENER never had visited the place before, but he greeted the waiter with his typical warmth do you and ordered as if he had been there many timet "I'll have the tarte citron and a glass of The restaurant, a dreadfully noisy and slick establish- ment, was of a style that had proliferated in Chicago during the early 1980s.

Supplanting the traditional lunch counters and drug stores of an earlier era, the croissant cafes were a phenomenon that seemed to please the typical Chicagoan's sense of world community. Not to say that Chicago ever had lacked for Old World roots. The wrinkled itinerary in the pocket ofMichener's blue worsted jacket attested to the ethnic nature of the-'metropolis. At 5 p.m., said the much-consulted piece of paper, Michener was to appear at a news conference conducted by members of Chicago's Polish media. "IF YOU'RE going to publish a book on Poland, now's the time to do it, not 10 years ago," Michener said.

Slightly more than 10 years ago, Michener, who had won the Pulitzer Prize with his'Tales of the South Pacific" and then had produced a long string of best- selling novels and nonfiction books "The Bridges at Toko-Ri," "Sayonara," "Caravans," "The Source" and many more was tagging along on President Nixon's folding my cards when I didn t. IN RECENT YEARS there's been a place to play legaiiy in Illinois, ine American roner nayers Association APPA meets the last Saturday of each month at the Hvatt Hntpl in Oak Brook for 10-hmir dealer choice tournaments. There is a $10 seat fee. But "betting" is with scrip, so play is legal because no money can be won or lost in the action. Some money players sniff at "pretend" poker, but APPA players know that such tournaments improve their money games.

More than scrip was at stake, however, at Tahoe. As much as $15 could be committed by each player per betting round with four raises of maximum bets. And the final card could cost $30 per player if three Welby is out Cutting apart the surgeon myth T-' I v. or more stayed to the end. Coming in second in a seven-card hand could cost a player up to $90.

In the unlikely event that all seven players stayed to the end of a hand, a pot could top $600. We'd played two hours or so, and I was ahead some when a dream hand started for me. I was dealt aces rolled up three aces, two face down. The rock had a 4 up and had to lead the betting because in Tahoe the low card showing starts the action. He bet a token $1.

All six of us called. THE FOURTH CARD gave the rock a pair of 4s I 1 i I 1 Robert Young's television portrayal of "Marcus Welby, M.D." Kindly, compassionate Dr. Welby was the very model of selfless dedication to the physical and mental health of his frightened patients, nearly all of whom, though knocking at death door, recovered under Welby's gentle ministrations. A holistic physician and then some, Welby treated the whole patient and his whole family as well. Not only that, but he made house calls.

Real doctors approved; Welby was thought to be good for their image. In the long run, he may nave been too good. Such a distorted imaee a aim lie uuw iiou iu uei ui ai ucuousc wc was iiign.nc pushed in $3 and five of us called. I didn't want anyone to leave; I now held three aces and a king. The next round gave me a pair of kings showing and added a queen to his 4s.

As high hand, I bet the $3, and a straight working called my aces full. So did the rock. And a possible flush went along. The last up card gave the rock queens and 4s, and I read him for at least fours full, and hoped that was all he held. He again had to lead the betting and did so with $3.

The four hearts showing raised $3. What the hell! I raised the same. The straight possible folded her hand. The queens and 4s answered the two raises by backraising us both, making it $12 total to see the last, down card. Flush got the message and just By Clarence Petersen XfCrra HERE'S NO REASON why you i ll should expect impeccable or II godly behavior from your doc- tor any more than you do from your mechanic or the ballerina you pay to see onstage," says Mark Kramer, author of a new book about surgery.

"They're experts at what they do, and they're normal, flawed Americans." But we do expect doctors to be saints; we at least tend to see them as practitioners of a "noble profession." And the illusion is comforting. We are frightened and angry when we read of a malpractice action or even hear stories of doctors who are boors, let alone find ourselves in the office of a specialist who looks at us, we imagine, not as ill or injured humans but as broken machines from an assembly i Although the illusion is centuries old, perhaps nothing in recent times has done so much to foster the doctor's saintly image as the seven-year period in which millions of Americans each week watched, believed and came to revere of doctors no doubt feeds the controversy over 7 Haws in medical practice today. Com- Dined with a climate Continued on page 3 Tribune photo by BUI Hogan and called. The last card was dealt. Queens and 4s bet $6 without even looking at his down card.

Flush finally understood that he was caught between a rock and a hard place, grimaced and folded, leaving just me, the hard place. I LOOKED AT my final down card. It was the case fourth ace! "Well, if I can call, I can raise," I said as I Tuned to City Colleges' Ch. 20, the tube is not for boobs preienueu io compare nis visioie iwo pairs wun my pair of kings, an ace, and a 7 showing. Pause.

I made it $12 and he, of course, backraised. We went back and forth until I called the tossed-in-the-pot $6 remnant of his chip stack. The pot totaled $128 after the $3 house drag. 41V ,1 I I I 1 1 THOSE WHO believe that TV really does influence behavior, fall always brings grim thoughts, especially this season when the i uun i kiiuw wnere you re irom or wnat you re betting," said the rock, "but I've got four 4s!" My response was: "I'm from Chicago, sir and have four aces." There was considerable excitement around the table. But he just smiled, reached into his pocket for a C-note to begin his work day again, ana said: "You've given me somethin' to talk about this evening.

"And you have given me play that I'll talk about a Jon Anderson TV writer. certainly, diverse. Courses brim with animations, simulations, computer graphics and practical wisdom. Nora Ephron, for example, in a segment of "Writers Working," tells a group of fledgling wordsmiths: "My usual advice is to get a job on a newspaper. You learn to write every single day on a deadline.

One glorious thing is you almost never get writer's block. On a newspaper, it's not tolerated. Nobody thinks it's charming or terrific and you get fired." With no studios of its own, Channel 20 does not produce programming. But as a Continued on page 10 not yet sure what we do." Whatever-it-is started last February. With a slim budget $275,000 a year and a skeleton staff 120 people, WYCC-Ch.

20, backed by the City Colleges of Chi- cago, went on the air. Unlike the old "TV College" style of a pointer-wielding professor standing beside a blackboard splattered with geometric symbols says Chaplik, this was to be a new approach: flashier ways to present information, strong teachers and guest stars. THE RESULT: a 52-hour programming week that is frequently inventive and, network offerings include "Mr. Smith," starring a chimpanzee that wears baggy suits, and "Manimal," a detective who' turns into an eagle. Those who want, well, safer role models might consider what some television viewers call "Chicago's best-kept secret" WYCC-Ch.

20. This is not a station of mighty trumpets. For one thing, it can't afford them. Nor, to herald its programming, is it the kind of place that packs a mob of guests into the Park West nightclub as juiik nine, i tuiu iuiii, as my luur acca aiiu nuig kicker were posted on the casino wall as the third best hand of the day, having been topped by two earlier straight flushes. Yes, there is an element of luck in the wonderful game of poker.

WLS-Ch. 7 recently did or into a ballroom at the Ritz Carlton Hotel as WMAQ-Ch. 5 and, later, WGN-Ch. 9 did. Indeed, as Channel 20's general manager Elynne Chaplik admits: "The public is 71 II I I WONPERHOWICOULP HAVE BEEN WRONG ABOUT A THING LIKE Smile Then there's the busy pediatrician who Keeps THERE I WAS, SLEEPING OF A 5UPPEN, I THOUGHT I HEARP A MUNPREP-VOICE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE CHOIR CALLING (Si Friday in Tempo To Chicago restaurateurs fall means game, and dining critic Paul Camp rounds up the most interesting of their seasonal game menus.

Also, Larry Kart reviews "The Big Chill," with Tom Berenger right. before his eyes. Humor on Parad 1 If.