Poker

This is one of my retired obsessions, thank G-d. If you want to make money gambling, own or help run the casino. Poker is a fool's game, and one of its allures is the idea, somewhat statistically based, that it's less foolish than the other games, like Blackjack, or, save yourself, slots.

This is a screenshot of my first royal flush. I won 2,975 play chips, bewildering the dogs, though the cowboys remained unimpressed. Like many Cools, I love to play poker, but so far, I've only played in casinos a few times. I used to play on-line at Full Tilt Poker, which is where I was dealt this Royal Flush. My usual avatar was Coalminer00. Now I only play in home games for fun.

I wrote a program that calculates the winning characteristics of all of the hands in Texas Hold 'Em, when all 10 players play their hands to the end, an unlikely but illuminating scenario known as NoFoldEm.