Dogs Playing Poker is Not Good Art

So here is the thing about Dogs Playing Poker: Every dog I’ve ever met has a terrible poker face, and almost every dog I’ve ever met bluffs way too much to win at poker.

Take Flo the Chihuahua, for instance. She is very even-tempered in the sense that she’s always pissed off, and she plays poker like she does everything else—she tries to substitute anger and good looks for substance. Against an inexperienced poker player—say, my wife or Ringer the Australian Shepherd—Flo’s style can intimidate somebody into folding a stronger hand, but like literally everything else in Flo’s life, the chubby Chihuahua will inevitably overplay her hand and find herself enviously looking on as Dave the Human eats all the tacos and doesn’t give her any. The key is to use Flo’s pride against her. She just can’t bear to accept the reality that she is small and so are her cards.

Ringer, on the other hand, has no pride, so the savvy dog playing poker against this hyperactive Aussie will need a different strategy, albeit one that is relatively easy to execute. She has absolutely no capacity for reading another dog’s poker face—hence, very easy to bluff—but Ringer has a clever knack for reacting to every single hand, no matter how good or bad, with the exact same facial expression of intense excitement and happiness. Of course, this one asset isn’t enough, as Flo has long since figured out her way around Ringer’s one-trick-pony strategy.

Now, you might expect Rexi the Border Collie to be the best of the dogs playing poker in my house simply because she is clearly the smartest and most ruthless. I know I expected her to be the one to walk away from the table with a smile on her face, but it turns out that her alpha-dog ego makes her overconfident. Rexi’s not vulnerable to Flo’s scorched-earth tactics, and Ringer will basically fold her cards whenever Rexi commands it—a real flaw in Ringer’s tactics—but like a lot of bullies, Rexi freezes up when a new tough guy takes a seat at the table. Hedo the Turkey, no grand strategist herself, only had to play one beak-shaped ace to chase Rexi out of a hand, and now the border collie refuses to play poker again until after Thanksgiving.

I think it’s important that people don’t get the wrong idea about dogs playing poker. The paintings always make it look like some kind of friendly game, where the worst thing you see is maybe a bulldog trying to sneak an ace under the table while his buddy ruins his lungs with a cheap cigar. But underneath the glamor of it all is a dark truth: dogs playing poker is a messy business.

Dogs are bad at poker, and they are sore losers. They bring their preexisting beefs to the table with them, and none of them have any kind of financial plan for how to manage their losses. Dogs playing poker never ends like in the paintings. It’s all just barking, stress, hurt feelings, and financial hardships.