 |
 By Phil Gordon
E-mail this page to a friend »
A quick, efficient ruffle of the cards. An offer to cut. And with a flourish, the first hand of the night flies across the felt. You look down at your hole cards and find two red kings. A swig of Pappy Van Winkle soothes your nerves as your buddy raises from an early position. His bet is called by your boss, the sucker in this game. You take another peek at your monster hand, chuck a fistful of chips into the pot and cry, "Raise it up, boys." Everyone folds. Oh well. "Can't win 'em all unless you win the first one," you boast as you scoop up the pot. It's the best night of the week. It's poker night.
Although poker started booming a few years back, nobody thought it would continue to grow the way it has. Its popularity has been fueled by the high-stakes action on the Travel Channel's World Poker Tour, ESPN's World Series of Poker (where first place is expected to be worth more than $10 million this year) and the spectacle of Hollywood's finest bluffers sweating it out on Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown (which I happen to co-host). By current estimates, more than 80 million Americans play poker. It's amazing what passing money back and forth can do for creating new friendships and cementing old ones.
But it takes more than a deck of cards and a roomful of suckers to make a successful game. That's because social poker isn't about cash. Winning the home game has much more to do with the kind of night you create than how much money you make.
|
 |
We'd be the first to concede that you haven't truly played poker until you've spread a seven-card-stud game on a twin bed in a neon-lit motel room. For your home game, though, you'll want to raise the class bar a few notches.
Start with the landscape. Playing on a professional-quality poker table makes a world of difference. Cards slide effortlessly across the felt. Beverages sit safely in their drink holders. Wisecracks seem funnier. Pots are scooped more joyfully. A top-quality table with eight leather chairs can run upwards of $5,000 -- but amortized over 10 years of Wednesday nights, that's only about $10 a session.
Once you've got your table, you need to set it, and that means cards, chips and booze. Start with two decks of Kem cards, the gold standard for serious poker. They're made of plastic, last forever and can be cleaned in the dishwasher. With Kems you never have to worry about marked cards, and with two decks someone can shuffle the unused one while the current hand is being played, speeding up the action. Bear in mind that Kem was recently bought by another company. It will produce cards bearing the Kem name, but it's possible their composition will be different. Some places still have the originals in stock, though -- snap them up while you can.
Chips are the coin of the realm, so they should have a little heft. Use anything shy of 11.5 grams -- the standard casino weight -- and you may as well be playing with five-and-dime plastic jobbies, which have a charm of their own (save them for the motel-room games). There's no sense skimping when you're buying a home set, so I'd recommend going up to 13.5 grams apiece. For an eight-person game you'll need at least 300 chips, though 500 wouldn't hurt. Have enough colors to keep everyone in the action. Four -- white ($1), red ($5), green ($25) and black ($100) -- should be all you need, and if necessary you could probably get by with three. If you want to go the full glamour route, have your set customized. Nothing gets the gambling juices flowing like snapping open a hefty case full of heavy monogrammed chips. Plus, it's more than a little intimidating. Plenty of places on the Internet will do the job for you for around a buck a chip.
And speaking of flowing juices: Although I wouldn't recommend heavy drinking at any kind of tournament, drinking during your home game is practically mandatory. And if a game ever cried out for whiskey, it's poker. Whether you offer bourbon or scotch (or both, as I would), it should be something special, something classy. What it shouldn't be is overpowering: Offer Talisker, not Laphroaig. If your prospective fish have to brace themselves before each sip, they're not going to drink enough to get lazy and overconfident, and where's the fun in that? Also, keep some gin, vermouth and olives around should anyone want a martini, and maybe a wine cooler or two for anyone annoying enough to order something that's not on the menu.
If your friends are the kind who don't mind tipping a pretty woman when she makes a drink for them, think about booking a cocktail waitress, preferably one equipped with a miniskirt. If your friends aren't that type, think about finding new friends. You can recruit your scantily clad server at a local sorority, your favorite bar or, if you truly want to distract the bastards, a gentlemen's club. She should be tipped with chips and paid out at the end of the night. If a guy drops out and she asks to be dealt in, beware. In poker, concentration is everything -- if you did your hiring right, you won't be on your A game.
Other things you shouldn't play poker without: a dealer button to keep track of whose deal it is, a timer if you're playing tournaments, and a pen for recording buy-ins and for signing checks (or car pink slips) at the end of the night.
|
| NEXT » |
 |
 |
|
