When you need chips (cheques) while playing poker, you tell the dealer. If the dealer does not trade your cash for cheques, he will call out the amount of cheques needed at the table. The person who brings these cheques is called a Chip Runner. There are two other common positions in a card room. One of these positions is the brush. The brush takes down your name and assigns you to play at a table. The third position and questionably the most important position is called the Floor. The Floor is the poker room manager or their designated stand-in. The floor makes decisions that the dealer can not or will not make about disputes over play, or other table matters.
In smaller poker rooms, or during slow times Chip Runners, the Brush, and Floor may all be the same person. This was one of those slow times. There was a player who was friends with the Floor on a player to poker room basis. The player was playing almost every hand and replacing his lost chips for the minimum amount each time. This meant that every ten to fifteen minutes the dealer was calling out for more chips and the Floor/brush/Chip runner would make the trip to the table to exchange cheques for cash.
The Floor arrived for the fourth time in an hour to deliver chips to the player. Frustrated the Floor asked the player, “Are you going to quit chumming soon? I found this question very funny as did some of the other players! Chumming is a fishing term. You throw something in the water to attract fish. While looking for the food they were attracted to fish will hopefully bite on your bait and become hooked. Generally the bait is worth a lot more than the chum being used.
What the floor was implying was the player was chumming with chips. The Floor was cautioning the player to slow down before the player ran out of money to buy chips with. Because he was going through his money so quickly, it was becoming difficult to impossible to win his money back. For players like this those words have no meaning.
Incorrect Chumming is something many of us do. We generally chum using different baits than money. Supervisor to employee relationships is a favorite chumming area for a number of people. They go through their working year showing up late, arguing over little things, and generally making life difficult for their boss. Then when it comes time for raises to be given out, these same people are angry that they either did not receive a raise, or received a very small raise.
Relationships too are where many people chum when they should not. One party or the other does not respect the other person enough to be responsible in their actions. Be it dating someone else, not arriving when they said they would, or not doing something they said they would do, such as return a phone call, it is a form of incorrect chumming. On the other side of the relationship, some people chum with promise baits they have no intention of giving fulfilling.
Incorrect chumming covers a whole area of things we do, but I think my few examples make clear what chumming is, and it is easy to decide whether we are incorrectly chumming or not. Chumming the right way can lead to a happy life full of reward and pleasure. Incorrect chumming is certainly a recipe for disaster. If you chum, chum responsibly.
