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The game is also about observation — about, as poker players say, “playing the man not the hand”. Poker is a form of psychological warfare, a study in intimidation and sang-froid, a game in which, if you are to improve and succeed, you must be able to read general demeanour, body language, even an expression in an opponent’s eyes. At the least you should understand that human nature dictates that people often are and mean the opposite of what they say and do.

More than this, poker can also teach you your own nature; you and your belief systems are often brutally exposed when you are under pressure at the poker table. Poker is a game in which, as Amis once said, “everything is wobbled through the prism of personality”, with that dispersing light revealing a spectrum of internal dramas and inalienable truths about, for example, your self-belief and self-doubt, optimism and pessimism, humility and arrogance, mercilessness and masochism — as well as your attitudes to risk, control, fate and free will.

If the first thing you must do in poker, as the legendary American champion Puggy Pearson noted, is to make friends with yourself, then the second is to see clearly the gap between who you are and who you think you are. The worst and most costly bluff you can make in poker is the one against yourself. Poker is a game that invites you to study carefully your strengths and weaknesses before you sit down to play. “Many bad players will not improve because they cannot bear self-knowledge, ” wrote David Mamet in his essay Things I Have Learned Playing Poker on the Hill.

In the end, poker is a misshapen mirror, a philosophical play, an arcane gamble with and against the odds, a game in which perception, as Kant argued, is always reality.

“Poker is a perfect mixture of one’s talent and ability and of fortune — what fate deals you, and how you deal with fate,” says Stephen Fry. “And that, in such a strange way, is rather like life.”

Fish, nuts and knickers: poker's secret language

From its earliest days in saloons and on steamboats, poker has been replete with a rich armoury of slang, lingo, idiom, insult and innuendo. Here is a dozen of the best (and most printable) . . .

American Airlines a pair of aces. Also known as the bullets and pocket rockets.

Baby a small card, usually a five or less.

Bad beat a hand that is played well and strongly favoured to win, but that loses heavily against the odds.

Calling station a player who calls almost any bet.

Cowboys Kings.

Dead man’s hand a pair of aces and a pair of eights — the hand that Wild Bill Hickok is fabled to have been holding when he was killed at a poker table in 1876.

Fish a poor player, a sucker.

Kicker the card that decides a winning hand if all others are equal.

Leather ass a tight, patient player.

The nuts the best possible hand on the table. Also known as the lock, cinch, boss hand, hammer and the immortal.

On tilt playing very poorly or recklessly, usually after losing badly or winning big.

Tell an unconscious gesture or mannerism that reveals the strength or weakness of a player’s hand. Priceless if you spot one.