I was thinking recently about how poker becoming televised has affected the game. I don’t mean the community at large. Obviously that has changed a great deal. I never even knew of a professional poker circuit before ESPN started making a big deal out of the world series. The number of players and spectators is astronomical compared to when there used to be only 100 players.

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 Macau is hosting it’s first poker tournament ever, so the local dealers had to be trained from scratch.  The following online report is about one of these poker dealers.  

“During the $300 mega-satellite on the first day, we had a dealer at our table who was new and pretty nervous as it was his first time dealing. He collects the cards from the previous hand. He riffles them, strips them, cuts them. He says, “blinds please” and the small blind posts.

He pitches a card to the small blind, and then to the big blind. Then, with mounting horror, he sees that the big blind has not put out his blind yet! He has an expression of sheer panic on his now weathered visage. After being frozen in his deer-in-headlights look for two seconds, he composes himself.

He sticks his right arm up, ramrod straight, and yells out, “FLOOR!” Big blind has now posted his blind. One of the tournament directors runs over, expertly avoiding people along the way. The director asks the dealer what the problem is. Dealer says, very seriously, “I dealt a card to him before he posted his blind.”

The director keeps a perfectly straight face and says, “No problem, keep on dealing.” The dealer’s relief is evident to all. He keeps dealing.”

In a previous post about Jews and Poker I wondered whether there was a link between Judaism and the disproportionate number of Jews who are quite good professional poker players. I just read that the Torah prohibits gambling if it’s done as a profession or out of greed. This would count against the fact that there are so many good Jewish poker players.

However, gambling has been part of Jewish tradition for centuries. Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel. According to the newsletter “Beyond the Odds”, “early Jews” (I’m not sure what period ‘early’ refers to) would use dice to try figure out God’s will when serious decisions could not be made.  I’d love to know the thinking behind this.  I also wonder if one could use this as evidence to convince the religious anti-poker crowd in Congress that even  traditional games of luck, such as craps, may not be entirely games of luck.  That is, perhaps, pace Einstein, God does play dice.

Anyway, some conservative rabbi has embraced this Jewish poker tradition by having a Hold’em tournament in his synagogue (no it’s not called Temple Bet Hold’em), and he thinks he gets around the Torah and its strictures because the poker tournament is for fun and fellowship, even though it is being used to raise money and rewards winners with non-cash prizes.  Is this kosher? I think so. But what do I know? I’m no expert on Jewish law. So WWSD? What Would Schneerson Do?