Throughout the history of music, there are entire songs that have been written about poker, and if this were a quick trivia game or pub game, most people would snap-answer, “The Gambler by Kenny Rogers.” While that answer might get you a nod among non-players, poker players with an ear for clever lines will hear poker references in countless songs.
They can be as overt as Queen of Hearts (Juice Newton) or Poker Face (Lady Gaga). For my money, it’s a lot more fun to heat the poker lines that are slightly less in-your-poker-face and more like easter eggs and clever nods to other players.
The Grateful Dead wrote entire songs about poker (Deal and Loser come to mind), but the absolute best poker reference they ever included in a song came in the 1974 song Scarlet Begonias: “In the thick of the evening, when the dealing got rough / She was too pat to open and too cool to bluff.”
