Poker Blotter

The Carolinas have some sort of poker complex, or PHD’s (poker-hater-degrees).  Regardless, we here at Wicked Chops Poker have to admit, if you’re gonna bust up any type of poker game, go full steam ahead against video poker. No offense if you’re a Wicked Chops Poker reader and dig the vp, but we have a feeling most of your ardent video poker player’s don’t have Internet access, and if they do, they likely can’t read anyway.

Unfortunately, North Carolina is holding firm to their archaic 19th century (that’s the 1800’s, by the way) law that prohibits even the possession of a poker table or roulette wheel. Apparently that law qualifies a game like poker as a “lottery” (which if you’re playing low-limit online games, that classification is pretty much true, but let’s not focus on these details. What details? Exactly.). But if North Carolina ends up instituting a state lottery, the legality of these free bar games, one would think, would quickly become moot.

New Poker Terminology Alert: “Taking the belt out.” Wicked Chops Poker is coining this phrase. Here’s how to use it in a sentence(s), “Man, I’m down $2,500 at the $10-20 game at my favorite casino/home game/underground mafia-run card room. Time to focus, play great poker, and recoup these losses. That’s right, I’m taking the belt out and winning my money back.” “But where, Wicked Chops Poker, did this phrase get it’s genesis from?” you ask. Well, it was from some poor sap in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who got the belt taken out on him in the literal sense. We guess this is a more direct and quicker way of recouping your losses, just a little less ethical and professional in our book.

Politically, Wicked Chops Poker is 75% thoroughly red state, and 25% percent totally independent (although that 25% is 100% a Reaganite). So we’re disturbed that busting up poker games is a largely red state phenomenon. And shutting down Texas hold’em games where the money is directed towards charity, in Texas (???), well that chaps our hides. This preemptive poker shut down in Texas is part of Phil Hellmuth's poker challenge tour. So it's probably bitter-sweet for Phil...sad that there's this legal wrangling yet ecstatic to get more free pub. Fortunately, there’s a petition going around to put an end to it. You know what to do.