Card players have certain expectations.  After all, if they’re wagering high money at your tables they’re going to want a quality playing environment.  They’re going to expect cocktails and snacks, nice card tables complete with cushioned rails and nice felt.  The chips better be casino quality, and the playing cards have to be better than that, because smart players know better to play with shabby cards worn after several dozen or hundred hands because other smart players will note which cards look a certain way and which don’t.  Which means that shabby cards are as good as marked cards, and that’s cheating.  At that point you’re not playing poker, you’re playing something else.  You need quality cards that can handle hundreds, even thousands of hands of poker in your poker supplies, and KEM cards are just want you need.  The Arrow Black and Gold KEM Cards Narrow Standard 2-Pack are stylish, classy cards that will add that professional feel to the poker table.  Made of durable plastic that can withstand a lot of wear and tear, these cards offer a unique color and sophistication to your game that your players will not fail to notice once they get their fingers on them.  They may not seem like a big deal, but you can’t play poker without good cards and it’s not any different than a theater owner’s film screen.  If it’s shabby, the audience is going to notice.  Make sure you run a quality joint and accept nothing less than the best for your players. 

There are plenty of poker players out there, but not many get a chance to play for the big money.  Most are content with going to their local poker rooms and play for a month’s rent or a car payment, figuring they probably won’t do much better.  Some believe that if they go too far into it they might lose big.  But in order to lose big, you have to be able to win big, and if you want to win big you have to learn.  You know the basics, which might do well here and there at some tables, and you might know enough of the territory to know when to bluff, how to spot another player’s tells, and perhaps how to control some of your own, but when you get tired of the chump change you’re going to have to learn some new tricks.  Johnny Chan, one of the world’s greatest poker players, can teach you some with his book Million Dollar Holdem – Limit Cash Games.  With this poker book you’ll learn about all the options that go into playing a hand in various situations and analyzes each option thoroughly so that you gain an insight into what a professional is thinking as he plays.  Because at that level of play, you have to know just why you’re bluffing where the odds and the flop are concerned by going over those options.  Poker books like Mr. Chan’s will be an integral part of your poker supplies as you develop your game where you’re winning even more than a car payment, but whole cars and much more.  When you’re ready for higher stakes, let Johnny Chan help you out. 

When you develop your own poker parlor, you may not be aware of how much freedom and options you have.  It’s your room, your money, and you get to set the way things are going to operate.  You get to set the style, the motif, from the lighting to the décor, to the kinds of cards that are going to be played with right down to the furniture and the stools on which players and the dealers will sit.  Some might find all these options daunting, but not for those who have vision, and those will find this prospect exciting.  With a wide array of poker supplies in various styles to choose from, you can come up with almost anything that tickles your fancy.  Including, but not the least of which, will be your poker chips.  At this stage, you can establish your poker chips to be of any color to represent any denomination you like.  But material does count.  Players are expecting a casino-style feel to their chips, and if you present flimsy plastic chips it’s just not the same.  They’re wagering good money at your table, so if some expectations aren’t met they’ll find another room to play in.  Start your poker room off right, and get yourself some Classic Clay Composite Chips.  These come in any color in the rainbow and you can paint them as you like to differentiate them, even have them custom engraved with the denominations of your choice.  This helps you establish your own standards, making the game at your room truly yours.  How you decide it’ll look and feel is entirely up to you.  Have fun!

Every sport has fans, and every fan has a way of showing off their love for their game, and their teams.  Football, basketball, baseball, hockey, rugby, and even golf has shirts, shoes, jerseys, posters, jewelry, hats, gloves, and anything else you can think of that allows the fan to get into their heroes as much as they can.  Why not poker?  Poker is fast becoming a highly popular game in America and around the world, with the cash prizes at the World Series of Poker getting larger and larger every year.  Poker rooms are opening up around the country, and people are setting them up in their own homes, purchasing furniture, poker supplies and artwork to make their own rooms feel more like the casino environment.  And now poker has its own apparel.  Poker t-shirts offer the player some distinctive and classy ways of brandishing what they like to do that make someone wearing a football jersey seem common and pedestrian by comparison.  The Black Camouflaged Spade T-Shirt is succinctly all-business, and only would be mistaken by those who’ve never played a card game in their lives.  Just a cotton t-shirt, probably not alike a full-blown suit and tie like James Bond would wear, but all the same it is something that is a symbol that you present that is indelibly linked to poker, and that’s what matters.  Wear the suit when you’re at a high stakes game.  Wear this when you’re casual.  In your own way you will be promoting your game as symbols leave their mark, making other people interested in playing, and that’s good.  Because the more people play, the more there is to win.

So you may be pretty handy and fancy with shuffling the cards.  That’s great.  Unfortunately not everyone is as good as you, so that means they sift the cards willy-nilly hoping for some semblance of randomness when all they’ve done is move the previous pattern around, so that you and the others see the same cards show up in the next hand of Texas Holdem.  That is not good.  In fact, it’s a wasted hand, and a wasted ante.  Because when people generally have a better idea of what the patterns are based on the cards revealed during play, they may either bet on that or just fold rather than be a sucker to someone else’s knowledge.  That’s real money being lost.  What’s more, there’s time.  Folks that can’t shuffle cards too well might take a lot of time doing it.  Even if you’ve got a full-time dealer you want to go from hand to hand quickly whether he’s good at shuffling or not.  Mechanical card shufflers will handle the job for you quickly and easily, throwing in enough randomization to throw off the patterns made from the previous hand.  There are lots of card shufflers for various kinds of games, but a standard Texas Holdem Card Shuffler is perfect for any poker game, doing the job quick and easy.  Just give the deck a sift, cut it, and put both cuts in either slot and let her rip.  A good card shuffler should be standard equipment in anyone’s poker supplies and you’ll be glad to have one.  The downside is that you won’t get to show off your card tricks. 

It’s easy to get started in poker.  Learn the rules, read a few poker books, play a few hands, and in no time you’ll figure out the basics enough to get hooked.  Then you start playing for real stakes, and get a feel of how much the adrenaline affects and the real costs of success and failure affect the way you play.  Advanced play means learning how to control your mood and mask your emotions so as to prevent telegraphing your tells to your opponents.  It’s at this point that many amateur poker players run into a brick wall.  They’ve been playing enough to know how to break more than even but they want to make the big money, the kind where you end up living a whole year or so off the winnings without working.  Such tournaments are not easy to get into and almost always require preliminary elimination rounds to weed out the wheat from the chaff.  Fortunately, with Win Your Way Into Big Money Holdem Tournaments by Tom McElvoy, you’ll learn what it takes to get in and succeed.  Tom McElvoy shows you how to enter mini-tournaments, called satellites, and turn a small chunk of winnings into a million dollar prize with winning strategies that will get you into higher brackets and on the road to a fortune.  McElvoy turned a $39 winning hand into a $2.5 million dollar prize with his strategies and you can do.  This book is an indispensible guide to your reading library, integral to any player’s poker supplies, and should be referred to almost religiously if you’re tired of playing for small change here and there. 

This is the 21^st Century, so yes you can play poker without playing cards if you have a computer system.  But there is something about playing poker on a machine that is lost in the translation from the table, and that is the human element.  Some who play poker with others online may be able to say they can bluff their opponent, but how do you read a tell off an icon?   You might be able to figure out a pattern of play from an online persona, but it’s not quite the same as figuring out an actual person’s tells, live, right there in person.  It’s an important dimension of the game that is difficult to simulate even with the latest in computer graphics.  So do yourself a favor and play real people with real cards and with real money.  When you do you might as well buy a good set of cards such as the Modiano 100% Plastic Poker Size 4 Index Red Single Deck.  This robust deck of cards are tough and washable, able to withstand hundreds of hours of play and repeated shuffles without losing their slick, fresh out of the box feel.  With a good set of cards, chips, and other poker supplies you can play poker as it was meant to be played, with real people for real stakes, with real psychology in play that makes poker the game it is.  Keep the virtual poker around to practice when you can’t be at your poker room, but remember that it’s not close enough to the real thing.   

It’s inevitable.  With the popularity of poker in its various forms, you’ll eventually have more and more people than you can handle with your own meager table, so you’ll have to consider getting a new table.  Or at least, something nicer than the one you have.  Something with green felt like the ones at the casino that allows you to move cards and chips in a nice, smooth way that doesn’t wear out either as a typical table cloth might, or, even worse, wood.  Poker tables come in a wide range of design, so it might be a bit daunting to consider what you want.  How about this Full Size Texas Holdem Green Felt Poker Table 83 x 44?  Complete with a padded cushion with ten cup holders at each equidistant position will give you and your players something to look forward to when you hold your next session.  Best of all, the legs are foldable, which means you can store this table or take it with you anywhere you’d like.  Football season is fast approaching; imagine playing poker at a tailgating party.  You’ll surely turn heads at the parking lot when they see you all slinging chips and cards around before the big game.  Food, drinks, football and poker are an excellent combination that sounds downright civilized.  A good poker table such as this is standard among any cache of poker supplies; after all if you don’t have a good table you’ll end up playing on the floor, and that’s no fun.

When you’re considering the nature of the décor of your own poker habitat, you ought to consider the artwork.  Depending on the motif you’re trying for, whether it’s an old western approach or perhaps something a bit extravagant similar to that of a full-fledged casino, you want artwork that captures the very essence of the mood you’re going for.   Perhaps what you might be looking for is an experience of maturity when you walk into your poker room.  Naturally placing a canvas of dogs playing poker probably doesn’t give you that kind of feeling, and seeing scantily clad women adorning the walls isn’t too classy either.  After all, you’ll probably have women playing and it’s better that everyone comes to a place that’s especially comfortable but not dainty that men couldn’t enjoy themselves in either.  Poker art such as the Opal – Extra Large Artwork is just the kind of thing to set the mood you’re after.  Featuring a finely dressed man lighting up an Opal cigarette against a black backdrop with only the match illuminating his face, this exquisite reproduction of the original, right down to the brush strokes, gives your poker room a very jazz, night club feel that ought to go well with similar artwork.  It conveys a serious, mature mood, a way of enjoying an indulgence or two in moderation that is the mark of maturity and poise.  Artwork that captures the very mood and motif you’re after for your room is as essential as the poker supplies you play with, and should not be overlooked. 

It’s safe to say that soldiers all around the world play poker.  Usually, the game of choice for soldiers in the field is spades, a variant of hearts.  This is because, often, in forward areas, general orders forbid gambling, especially in nations where native religious and cultural concerns make such orders essential.  Of course, soldiers are very creative individuals, they can take what they’ve got and improvise, playing with food rations, store-bought items from the local PX, or whatever they got if they want to play.  Naturally when they come back home, they’ll want to play with something real.  Custom poker chips such as the US Army Poker Chips – Purple are terrific for officer and NCO clubs, Morale, Welfare and Recreation Units, VFW and American Legion centers, and for any soldier who needs poker supplies to give his game the level of authenticity he’s looking to bring to his own group of players.  They feature the seal of the US Army on each of them complete with the year the Army was established and come in four other colors.  Even if they can’t gamble in the area they’re in they can use the chips in lieu of rations so they don’t have to improvise, and with a good aluminum carrying case they can keep the chips safe from the elements and keep them organized.  These will make a great show of appreciation to our men and women in the field who put their own lives and freedom on the line so that we can enjoy ours.