Devil Tickets



I always wondered why i felt so uncomfortable(sometimes clinically nauseous) whenever i encountered anything to do with card games.
I recall a few years ago, having to catch a train (as my car was in repair) and having a group of card players plonk themsleves down opposite me.
I experienced extremely high levels of anxiety,and could barely look.
Because the train was very crowded, i was trapped, it was absolute hell.
Anyway to cut an ugly story short, i ended up vomiting over the foursome.
I dont want to give an account of what happened immediately after this, as it is irrelevant to the story at hand. I had simply assumed that i had suffered a bout of train travel sickness.

However after reading Rincewind's latest card games thread (yes,i should have known better), i was triggered into a another flashback.......of which i retell here....


The coach of the Siberian Chess Tigers was, as we all know, the great Bresislan (Zev) Gorkiananov or Gorky as he was affectionately known to us.
He had an almost pathological hatred of cards (or "devil tickets" as he called them).

One of his many visions was to eradicate cards from the face of the earth, but he acted locally by waging war on the card players of Krasnoyarsk.
During each summer holidays, he co-opted the SCT into fighting this war.
We used to intercept the containers carrying imported card packs at the wharf, and raided card playing halls, culminating in a huge bonfire of burning devil tickets ! Gorky used to warm himself by the fire with a self statisfied look on his face, saying "This is our offering to the great god Caissa !,burn devil burn !"
I was young at the time, and the true significance of our struggle was not immediately apparant to me. All i knew was that it was very important to Gorky.
Card playing in Krasno was reduced to secretive meetings in peoples homes, but they were still terrified of an SCT raid.
The best the card playing community could do was taunt us by deviously importing packs of cards with insulting illustrations on the back of each card.
Some of these illustrations i recall were , a siberian tiger being put through a ham slicer morphing into playing cards, a siberian tiger cut up as snack food on a table surrounded by a group of card players, and a card player doing something to a siberian tiger that i cant mention here.
They used to scatter these cards at chess tournament playing halls so as to insult the SCT.
But Gorky had a plan ! He would recruit the Krasno street kids to collect these cards and in return supply a chess board and pieces and a free chess tutor.(who were paid by the SCT Fund:-a fund set up by the estate of Gorky's uncle ,a very wealthy man who left his millions to promote chess. and with respect to him ,i cannot tell you his name, he always wanted to remain anonymous)
It was something like, for every 52 cards, 5 hours of tuition. For the street kids this was an incredible opportunity, and a win win situation for Gorky!
A few masters were created in this way, and the demonic card players were kept at bay.

This flashback has at least shed light on my cardophobia.


**********UPDATE ! ********

I am sad to report that a son of one of the card playing cartel has become a serial killer. Aleksandr Pichushkin. I recall the name and some of the history with help from my russian correspondant. It appears (and this is a chesschat exclusive !) that Aleksandr's behaviour arose from the persecution his father suffered at the hands of the SCT , and he wanted to exact revenge against chess, by propagating the crazy chess killer mythos. It is a disgrace that the media falls for it everytime, and certainly underscores the desperate measures these people go to ,to undermine Caissa.
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