Awww, c'mon Ace. . . cheer up.

You know what always cheers me up?

Rolled up aces over kings. Check-raising stupid tourists and taking huge pots off of them. Playing all-night high-limit Hold'em at the Taj, "where the sand turns to gold." Stacks and towers of checks I can't even see over.

Yeah, that cheers me up.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Funny enough, you can still smoke in bars in Russia and Cuba. Thank God for freedom.

If I'm not mistaken, do I catch a whiff of libertarian tendencies?

I lived in NYC in the pre-Giuliani days when it was a complete hellhole. It's good that the streets are safer--I got mugged on a pretty regular annual basis in the early 90's--but the city's a much less colorful place than it used to be. And that smoking ban is just wrong.

Ed Koch was my mayor. In Ed Koch's New York the cops didn't scold you for jaywalking, the health department didn't care if you smoked and if you saw Tinkerbell in Times Square you could be sure it was a transvestite and not the real Tinkerbell promoting some damn Disney movie.

Sure, it was dangerous, dirty, and if you weren't noticing the smell of urine it meant either you had a cold or you had accidentally gotten on a train to Westchester and fallen asleep.

Trying to civilize New York is like trying to prohibit gambling in Las Vegas or ban drinking at a Kennedy family reunion. It's just wrong.

Two clubs? That's like throwing a deck chair off the Queen Mary. I used to play in various clubs in NYC, none of which were mentioned in the story.

The key graph in the article seems to be "It's not illegal to play at the clubs. But it is illegal for the clubs to take a percentage of every table's pot, authorities said." Many clubs get around this by having a fee structure instead of raking the pot.

Private gambling is about as likely to disappear from NYC as the hookers on 8th Ave.

My mayor was Dinkins.

Years later, after I moved back to civilization, I saw an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where, in an alternate reality, Buffy had never come to Sunnydale, and so vampires ran rampant. As nightfall approached, everyone would run for shelter and triple-locked their doors and pray feverishly until the relative safety of blessed daylight.

Living in NYC during the Dinkins years was a lot like that.

start spreadin the news, I'm leavin today

Oh Acey, if you want to check out a club, there are plenty that are still open and probably always will be. That's the thing about NY, NYers will always know where to go to get exactly what they need. Let the cops have their public victories, we know the things don't actually change.

But, I find the clubs (in theory, of course, since I would never break the law and actually go to one) impersonal and not as fun as home games.

I will never understand this big deal about poker. I've played it, and was seriously underwhelmed. Of course, it was a family game and we weren't playing for big money, and there were no cigars and beer because this particular family (my ex-almost-inlaws) were teetotalers from the Midwest. Still, except for the addition of tobacco smoke, real money, and, I guess, copious swearing, what's the attraction? Then again, I just don't get gambling.

Karol: Why don't you take "Acey" out for a wild night on the town? But, be a friend and make sure he doesn't go home with any drunk women. He'll thank you in the morning.

Funny enough, you can still smoke in bars in Russia and Cuba. Thank God for freedom.

You left out China. Hell, you can even smoke in hospitals and elevators here.

Karol: Why don't you take "Acey" out for a wild night on the town? But, be a friend and make sure he doesn't go home with any drunk women. He'll thank you in the morning.

That's what all our nights out are like.