I raise you 5 cents and one sneeze

A college professor in Wisconsin is paying people to play poker, according to a news story the other day. You can earn $200 for playing one 12-hour game. I called up right away, to see if there were any seats open.

“We’d love to have you, said the professor, whose name is Elliot Dick. “You have to be willing to catch a cold, though.”

There figured to be some catch. Dick, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin, said his poker games are a little different from most.

Five people sit at the table. Two of the five players have bad colds; the other three players are healthy. The idea is to see if the two sick people can give their colds to the three healthy people during the game.

Dick said he admired his 40 brave young poker players. He said they had placed themselves on the line for science. But you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, Dick said, and you can’t learn about catching colds unless someone is willing to catch them.

Dick did not expose himself to the viruses. Someone, he said, had to run the experiment.

The poker games began at 8 a.m. This may be considered a scientific breakthrough. Many poker games, especially those involving newspapermen, have a way of breaking up at that hour, but I have never heard of one that started then.

The strangest thing, though, was the way nickels worked. At the beginning of the game, Dick gave each player $3.50 in nickels to play with. Players were allowed to keep any nickels they won. Whenever a player lost his nickels, however, Dick handed him another 20 nickels to keep the game going.

It wasn’t long before the good professor realized that this arrangement needed close watching.

“Obviously, the players had nothing to lose by losing,” said Dick. “They started changing the game from stud poker to progressive poker, to raise the pots.”

Dick realized he was in danger of spending his entire $1 million grant on nickels.

“I had to go around, from table to table, pleading with the players not to play progressive poker,” Dick said. “I told them it was not in the best interests of science or the University of Wisconsin.”

With the nickel crisis averted, Dick said the players were free to concentrate on catching each other’s colds. This turned out to be easier than concentrating on the poker, because of all the noise.

“At any one time, you usually have somebody blowing his nose,” Dick said. “If they weren’t doing that, they were sneezing or coughing.”

One of the players, Peter Lang, 22, recalled what it was like to play poker for science.

“They were always moving the sick guys around,” he said. “I guess they wanted to make sure that if you didn’t catch a cold from one guy, you’d get it from the next guy.”

“I was sitting next to one very sick guy for a long time. Oh boy. You could feel the sneezes, you know what I mean? It was gross.”

Lang said he won $6.50 in the poker game. He also caught the worst cold he ever had.

“Oh boy. Did I ever get it. I was miserable. My throat was sore. I was blowing my nose for two weeks. All from one poker game.”

Dick said he was sorry about Lang’s sore throat and stuffy nose, but that $200 was a fair price to pay for them. Lang could also take comfort in the knowledge that he had helped science.

“It was only a cold,” Dick said, “and $200 is the going rate on campus for this sort of thing.”

With the nickel crisis averted, Dick said the players were free to concentrate on catching each other’s colds. This turned out to be easier than concentrating on the poker, because of all the noise.