Holiday Poker Gift Ideas

Following the previous list of do-nots, we naturally have this list of poker products that you actually should consider for a poker player this holiday season.

Rounders. This is consistently #1 when you ask a poker player for their favorite poker movie. Keep in mind there's the older DVD version and a newer Collector's Edition. The release date for the blu-ray "10th anniversary edition" version has been pushed back a couple times. The (supposedly) final release date is May of 2010, so you may want to bank this idea till next Christmas.

Quality Playing Cards. By quality, I specifically mean Kem or Copag brand playing cards. They're going to cost more than you expect. They're as much as $18 per deck and they usually come in a set of two, for a potential total of $36 for basic playing cards.

So why get the expensive cards? They are really hard to accidentally crease. They last way longer. They're machine-washable. They pitch better. And in my experience, they outlast their equivalent cash value of generic heavy paper cards like Bee or Bicycle cards.

* Oh, and avoid a rookie mistake. There's two major sizes of playing cards. Make sure to get the standard-sized deck, not the bridge-sized deck.

Approved Poker Books. Get any of the books by Harrington/Robertie, namely the Harrington on Hold 'em series. There's three of those, plus two more titled, Harrington on Cash Games. These are all wonderful and are always my first choice when recommending poker literature. I also suggest any book by David Sklansky, though I mostly endorse his seminal work, The Theory of Poker. For a beginner or novice poker player though, I highly advocate Super System: A Course in Power Poker by Doyle Brunson as it is undeniably the quintessential poker manual.

Poker also reaches into some related topics where some intriguing new writing is sprouting up. The body language book, What Every Body is Saying by Joe Navarro is miles and miles ahead of other works on nonverbal communication, not just by being innovative and respected but by actually being readable and downright fascintating. Navarro wrote a similar work with poker pro Phil Hellmuth, Read 'Em and Reap, which is more poker-specific, but I like the former more. On the nerdier side of poker, The Mathematics of Poker by Chen/Ankenmann is groundbreaking and provocative, although it's kind of an intense brain ride into the realm of game theory as it applies to poker. It's not light reading by any means.

Decent Poker Chips. If you are dead set on buying chips, be really careful. There are many different kinds. Clay or ceramic? 8.5 gram, 11.5 gram or 14 gram? 35mm or 40mm diameter? There are a lot of options. The only consistent advice I can give is to get standard casino denominations, i.e, a $5 chip is red, a $25 chip is green, and a $100 chip is black. Past that, good luck. Maybe a custom chip store gift certificate?

Dealer Button Timer. If your potential poker gift beneficiary plays in home tournaments or home sit-and-go's then this is a nice little addition. Most of us end up using a cell phone or oven timer for the blind/ante levels. By putting the timer into a dealer's button (which is also often some ad hoc object) we combine functions and that home game comes out looking a little technologically advanced. On a side tech note, I know for a fact that one of these can withstand a direct 12 ounce beer shower at least once.

The Shuffler Exception Those automatic shufflers that you see in a casino, sometimes built right into a poker table, are not available to the general public. The patent owners and casinos are worried that if we got our dirty meddling hands on one, we would reverse engineer it and gain some insight into its workings that could potentially tilt the odds in our favor. So those quality shufflers that actually work just haven't been an option until recently. Within the last year, Shuffletech released a professional, sweet-ass, auto shuffler for the people, the ST1000, which (despite sounding like a killer robot in a '70s film) looks boss and works wonderfully. It's a little pricy at $499, but compared to the $2K a casino spends to lease their shufflers, it's an amazing bargain. Keep in mind, this is only for the serious home game. If the game is played on a kitchen table, you probably want to start with a fold-out poker top this December.

---

---