Cards are played by everyone, regardless of age or gender: for money and just for fun. One of the ranks of card players—the professional players called “catala” (dealers)—is already familiar to the reader from the book “Odessa-Mama,” by Anatoly Barbakaru. His book is not a textbook. It’s a confession about how people become “catala,” what the world of players is like, and the unwritten wolfish laws of that world. People tend to idealize their past. Friedrich Nietzsche…