You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em. — Kenny Rogers, The Gambler

Floyd Landis has decided to play one last hand, taking his case to the International Court of Arbitration for Sport. Is it time for some close friend to delicately mention Gambler’s Anonymous?

When Big Tex finally cashed in his chips and left the game a winner, the Mennonite kid from Farmersville, Pennsylvania, finally took what seemed to be a well-deserved seat at the high rollers’ table. The deal went his way for a while, but the cards have not been his friends for quite some time now.

In fact, Landis has managed to commit a figure of speech, actually losing his shirt, along with a couple million bucks. And there he sits, all nipply in the casino air conditioning, with the onlookers starting to wander off and the dealer giving him the old Spock eyebrow raise, and what the hell?

Deal.

There are a couple different ways to look at this decision, depending upon whether you see the glass as half full, half empty or as a scattering of beery shards on the kitchen floor, up against the wall I bounced it off of at the thought of trying to write yet another dopey rant.

No. 1: Landis really is innocent. If so, and if you were him, wouldn’t you spend your last nickel trying to prove it? Fight like a junkyard dog until they finally drag you, kicking and screaming, into the history books as the first Tour winner to lose his title for doping?

No. 2: He’s guilty. If so, the smart thing would have been to admit it straight off and get busy serving time. But Landis didn’t get smart until he lawyered up, and by then he and his camp had pitched enough preposterous concepts to land him a top-10 list on Letterman, if not an actual writing job on the show itself.

Fourteen months later, the smart thing may be to stay dummied up, the way Tyler Hamilton and Roberto Heras did. As Joe Lindsey of Bicycling has noted, half of the $2 million Landis has lost in this interminable game of stud poker came from the Floyd Fairness Fund. Someone was betting on him, for whatever reason, and he’ll need all the backers he can find if he’s to get back in the game, regardless of how the cards turn up in this final hand.

But his fan base may already be crumbling. Our mailbag doesn’t exactly constitute a scientific poll, but we’re not getting the usual impassioned defenses this time around. The general tone is more like, “Don’t go away mad, Floyd — just go away.”

Don’t hold your breath. It will be the spring of 2008 before we find out who won the Tour of 2006, and until then, Landis will be very much with us, a shirtless gambler slouched at the table for one last round of play, staring at a hand that looks more like a foot, still hoping to beat the odds and draw to that inside straight.

Did he rake in all the chips, or fold with a hand full of nothing? Show us your hole card at webletters@insideinc.com. Please include your full name, hometown, and state or nation. — Editor