Poker-Mac

Found at iCalShare - This Northern California Poker Calendar has a listing of local events - great if they’re near you. I’d have to spring for a hefty plane ticket.

Sandy Knoll Creek’s Home Poker Hero rocks! This is an OS X (or Windows) compatible Home Poker Tournament Timer. The demo version allows you to play set WPT blind level increases or constant doubling increases. You can choose the time per level. For more intricate, custom tournaments you need to buy the $4.95 full version. Worth it! Also even better is Sandy Knoll’s Poker Tournament Hero. Very customizable. You can do rebuy tourneys and much more on this sweet app.

After thirty years of playing poker in Paris, this is one Jewish New Yorker who has concluded that nothing – but nothing - can top a breakfast of lox, bagels, cream cheese with chives and a couple of slices of Swiss. Croissants, brioches and baguettes just don’t make it compared to NYC deli fare. Not that Parisian breakfasts aren’t magnifique. Believe me, they are far better than what I’ve been snacking on since arriving a month ago in Las Vegas. So yesterday I decided to seek out a gourmet shop selling Nova Scotia, or perhaps even smoked salmon from Scotland, Denmark or Norway. What I found instead was pure schmutz.

Come on: don’t try to tell me that a good percentage of Las Vegas tourists and residents aren’t landsmen. You hear as many nasal accents and dese-dem-n-doses on Fremont Street as you do in Brooklyn. So what gives? Why isn’t a decent slice of lox or Nova available in delicatessens and supermarkets in this desert version of The Promised Land? I swear, after making a dozen phone calls and visiting half as many food emporiums, all I came across was an inedible package of some pink-colored dreck I wouldn’t feed to my neighbor’s cat.

‘Oh, I get it,’ I said, finally catching on. ‘They must sell the good stuff at casino delis on The Strip.’

Both Caesar’s and the MGM Grand offer offshoots of the NYC Stage Deli, and the Mirage houses a Western likeness of Broadway’s famed Carnegie Delicatessen. True to the home site, Carnegie even serves a Woody Allen Sandwich, a combined corned beef- pastrami monster weighing in at about 2 1/2 lbs for which a jaw the size of a hippopotamus is required if you hope to bite into it. The meat alone makes a platter sufficient to feed a family of eight. Nor was I going to overlook a country cousin of the New Yawkers. A Los Angeles deli named Canters occupies enough space to feed a score of minions inside the Treasure Island hotel/casino. Mais oui, I was on the right track at last.

“Azzoyzick shti!” my Russian/Polish/ grandfather would remark. “So that’s what you say!” True, each of those delis does serve a lox or Nova platter, but not individual take-out slices sold by the pound. Well excuse me! I was not about to allow a goyishe employee fix me a bagel when I knew I could do a better job myself. Anyway, at $17 or $18, I might just as well have purchased a lacquered duck in the city’s burgeoning Chinatown.

A schmuck is a schmuck is a schmuck, wouldn’t you say, Gertrude Stein? What I mean is: as a professional poker player I should know better than to shoot dice or play blackjack. But that’s just what I did at the TI when the waitress at Canter’s refused to cut me off a few slices of lox. In thirty-five minutes I lost the equivalent of more smoked salmon than Katz’s Deli on the Lower East Side sells on a Sunday morning. Oy vay is mir! From now on I’m sticking to Texas Hold ‘Em.

From ParisPokerNut

My recent come from behind victory at the Wynn brought to mind a game in Paris when, playing lowball draw from nine in the evening until two in the morning, I was unable to win a single hand. Man, if ever I felt like a beat up fighter, that was the night. My head ached, my back was sore and my morale was lower than Chaliapin’s voice as Ivan the Terrible. All I wanted was to go home and sleep around the clock. Having seen my last chip disappear in the final hand, I stood up and reached into my pocket for the 8,000 francs ($1,600) I had lost. While our host began marking accounts, my friend Pedro da Silva leaned back and said:

“Hey, guys, what say we play two more rounds?”

“No way,” I said. “You bastards have beaten me bad enough as it is. Anyway, didn’t we agree not to accept any more prolongations?”

“C’mon, man, that’s only sixteen more hands.”

Since the other players were all in accord, who was I to dampen their parade? I asked our host for the minimum buy-in allowed, 500 francs or $100 worth of chips.

“Get real,” said the photographer, Herve Simeon. “Do you expect to make a comeback with that?”

“I don’t,” I said.

All night I had held face cards, trips, two pairs and pat flushes. Had we been playing regular draw, I might have been ahead several times what I was losing. Equally behind, Pedro asked for 5,000 francs worth of chips. The marble broker had drawn out on me on three separate occasions when I was dealt pat eight hands.

“Don’t you ever fold?” I asked him.

“Are you crazy? Do you know how many small cards are left in the deck?”

I did know. Sixteen cards would help his hand while twice as many would bust him. Pedro thought nothing of drawing head-to-head at a two-to-one disadvantage.

Roland-the-Corsican was kind enough to put up my 50 francs ante. On the very first hand, I was dealt A-2-3-7-K. Second in line, I opened for 400 francs. Making a raise to 800, Pedro was called by three other players, and of course by me, all-in at 500. ‘Please give me a four, please give me a four,’ I implored the poker gods. I’m telling you, the damn game can drive you up the wall. But what do you know? Dealt the most beautiful four of hearts that ever existed, I won the hand and raked in 2,900 francs. My morale mounted the scale from bass to tenor.

From half asleep I was suddenly alert. For the first time in hours, I was looking forward to the next hand. One by one I picked up my cards: 4, 2, A, 6, 3. Holy Bazooka, I was holding the perfect low. Not about to play it cool, I opened for 400 francs. Jean-Paul Alphand raised me to 3,000 and Pedro went all-in at 4,100. Poor Alphand had been dealt a pat 7-5-4-2-A. Both he and I stood pat while Pedro broke his 10-9 and caught a pair of queens. Raking in 9,100 francs ($1,820), I gave Roland back the chip he had anted for me the previous hand. Fourteen hands later we called it quits. I had given back 700 francs in antes and ended up losing 150 francs on the evening, but I’m telling you, I felt as though I were the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.

Read More Stories from a Poker Veteran of both Paris and Las Vegas at ParisPokerNut.