(The Associated Press circulated the following story on November 10.)
TRENTON, N.J. — They now play gin instead of poker, but little else has changed in the years since a boisterous group of commuters played their first game of cards aboard a New Jersey Transit train.
The games, played by regular riders on the North Jersey Coast Line, have become an institution, drawing cheers _ and some jeers _ from fellow passengers. Playing on makeshift tables made from file folders and pieces cardboard that they prop on their laps, the players usually start their first game long before their train has left the station.
“This is the best part of my day,” says Jeff Zinn, who has been part of the game since the group started playing together in 1990. Ranging in age from 38 to 50, most of them work in the garment district and make the 52-minute commute from Monmouth County, near the Aberdeen-Matawan station, to New York’s Penn Station.
The first six players aboard the trains get seats in the game, with the others keeping a close eye on the games from nearby seats. The game is a friendly one _ no one loses or wins more than $10 _ and the group’s unwritten rules say that the game ends when the train comes to a stop.
Sandy Miller, one of the group’s original members, said they first met while playing poker in the 1980s.
“That was a cutthroat game. You could lose $200 in one trip,” Miller said, recalling how he often would stay aboard if the game grew interesting.
“Sometimes I would stay on the train down to Hazlet (a stop past) and take a taxi back,” he told The Star-Ledger of Newark. “There was too much money at stake to leave.”
The poker game ended when some guys who worked on Wall Street left their jobs in 1990. The four players who still rode the train at the time switched to gin, and the fun has continued ever since as new players joined the game.
And while some riders say the group is too boisterous, others say they enjoy watching them play.
“I live for this,” said Stuart Apploff, one of several passengers who gravitate to the game. “If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have any entertainment.”