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Poker Tournaments for You This Week
There is never a dull moment in a poker player’s life. Obviously, the main reason for that is the constant existence of poker tournaments and poker events that one can participate in. These events are not just for making money, but also to have some fun and get better at the game in the process. Several live poker tourneys are lined up for this week and the coming weeks. Here is a note on some of the tournaments you can … Read the rest
2012 PokerStars Macau Poker Championships Announced
PokerStars is one online poker room that never takes a break from hosting tournaments. The poker room recently released details about its upcoming event, the PokerStars Macau Live Tournaments. The Macau tournaments hosted by PokerStars is one of the biggest and richest poker events held in Asia. It includes 4 major poker series – Macau Poker Cup (MPC) Red Dragon, Asia Championship of Poker, Macau Poker Cup Championship or MPCC and the yearly Asia Pacific Poker Tour event at Macau. … Read the rest
The $30,000 Winner Wednesday Dozen Unveiled
Winner Poker has partnered with pokernews.com to bring a new promotion to its new members. The online poker room announced its new promotion called Winner’s Wednesday Dozen Freerolls, which literally lets you win free money. The new promotion is open to all the new players who register with Winner Poker and make a deposit. The promo will run for three months, and all you need to do is play poker and earn as many Winner Points as you can. Here … Read the rest
The McCreedy Poker Swindle
Saturday, December 6th, 2008 by Phil
I’m sure this has been done numerous times, but this ploy was new to me.
This morning I was watching this old show from the 1970′s called Alias Smith and Jones (I think). I’m not sure how it got onto my TV, but I had just woken up and didn’t really feel like changing the channel…so I didn’t have many options.
First, the 2 main characters got swindled by this guy named McCreedy in a game of 5 Card Stud. They got all of their money in holding a straight against McCreedy’s pair of jacks. However, in this game of stud they were playing with the Hoyle rules, which state that a player can only play a straight or flush if this was declared before the game. Alias and Jones thought that McCreedy was shooting a bit of an angle by envoking this rule, so they decided to come up with their own little scheme.
They got themselves a loan for $20K and headed back to the poker game where they laid out the following proposition; McCreedy could shuffle the deck himself and remove 25 cards. Alias would have to make 5 pat hands out of those 25 cards on the first try in order to win a $40K pot.
This seems like a pretty difficult thing to do, but apparently it’s almost a statistical sure thing. I suppose I don’t really need to come out and say that Alias was able to make the 5 hands.
I guess this really isn’t all that interesting. I think that I just get excited anytime that I see a poker movie or show on TV that I haven’t seen before. If there are any old timers reading this, maybe this will bring back some memories. Most of this stuff wouldn’t fly in today’s poker games…and this certainly wouldn’t fly on today’s television networks. I have a feeling that the Retro Network is one of the only TV stations that will air this sort of stuff.
There was another cliche scam towards the end of this show. In the last game McCreedy offers a bet that he can cut the ace of spades out of the deck on the first try. As they say in the poker world, if someone approaches you with a seemingly unlosable bet, you are probably going to lose.
Alias shuffles the deck and places it on the table. McCreedy then takes out a knife and stabs it through the deck of cards and says “There you are sir, I cut the ace of spades on the first try”. The room erupts in laughter as it looks like the out-of-towners have been swindled again, only to hear Alias say “No you didn’t” as he reveals that he had already palmed the ace of spades in anticipation.
For the record, I think it’s pretty easy to set up 5 pat hands out of 25 cards. I tried this a few times and was able to do it in about 1-2 minutes. It just takes a little bit of creative rearranging. However, on the third try I dealt myself a spread of cards that I’m certain could not be arranged into 5 pat hands. I’m a little embarrassed to say how long it took me before I could be sure that I wasn’t missing something. It must have been somewhere just shy of an hour. Around here, we would refer to this length of time as; “Three beers time”.
