Mark Cole, Mike Gracz and PokerTek
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Mark Cole, Mike Gracz and PokerTek
What do they all have in common you ask? O.K. you could probably care less, but humor me and ask damnit! There, that's better...
They're all poker related and from North Carolina.
Mark Cole
I first came across Cole, a Greensboro resident, while searching for N.C. based poker players in the 2005 WSoP Main Event. Of course I was reading the best damn WSOP coverage online. I was intrigued as it seemed like he had played some recent tournaments, but I couldn't find a lot of info on him. Not being able to find any pics of him online, I started the guessing game on what he was like. Was he a 25 year old phenom, a 40 year old rock hard player who was making a name for himself, or maybe even a retiree finally living the dream? In my mind I settled on the 40 year old rock and envisioned a Phil Gordon type. I left it at that.
That is until I watched the WSoP Circuit Event at Harrah's in New Orleans a few weeks ago where he placed a very impressive 5th and earned $147,630. Then I got to see all about him. Damn was I wrong, but in a very good way. Here's an extremely humble guy who did not begin playing poker for selfish reasons, but rather began playing the larger tougnaments so his daughter, who was very ill, could get one of her small wishes to come true - to see her Dad playing poker on T.V.
In fact his daughter died of - if I recall correctly - a brain tumor before she was ever able to see him reach THEIR goal. He, however, continued his journey to a televised final event in her honor. I don't know about you, but that one sort of struck home for me. What an incredible story and I only wish it could have ended in a more positive way with his daughter recovering or, at the least, getting to see their wishes come true together. When there's nothing you can do about a severe disease, sometimes the little things become that much more important. It might seem petty, but I can tell that meant a lot to both of them and I was really touched. Kudos to you Mr. Cole.
Oh, and did I mention he followed up that Circuit Event by placing 106th out of 5,619 entrants in the 2005 WSoP Main Event for a cash of $65,360. Kudos to you Mr. Cole. You've got a fan in Greensboro and I hope to someday meet you and shake your hand.
Mike Gracz
Mike, a Raleigh man, is fresh off some of the most impressive poker playing I've ever seen. Though he has gotten lucky on some hands along the way (who doesn't when they win a tournament?), he's also made some incredible calls and played some phenomenal poker as well. You may remember Gracz as the winner of the 2005 PartyPoker Million IV World Poker Tour Event. Add to that a Trump Classic title in 2004 and the 2005 WSoP Re-Buy Event #7 and you can color me highly impressed. Gracz, you've got a Triad fan and I also hope to someday meet you and shake your hand. And for a much better write up than this, read Pauly's write up of that Event #7.
PokerTek, Inc.
If you're like me and often read one of the newer bloggers on the scene then you've probably already heard of this North Carolina company and the article causing some hype. Imagine:
...a new poker table that could revolutionize the casino game. Their technology is called PokerPro and is designed to remove the possibility of human error from the game. The tables would have monitors on them for each player that accept the deal of the cards, rather than a human dealer who would be responsible for the shuffle and deal. The purpose of the technology is to speed up the casino game. With the computer systems, there could be more hands dealt per hour (as is the case online) as there would not be a wait for a mechanical shuffler or the dealer themselves to shuffle the deck. There wouldn't be the problems of a misdeal or of the dealer accidentally "flashing" cards during play because it would be done through the monitors. There wouldn't be a disagreement over the rake being taken by the house, as the computer would be programmed to remove the proper amount (never too much and never too little). There would also be no argument over who won the hand, as the determination of the computer would dictate which hand was the best...
Your thoughts? For me, I see the positives and the negatives. On the negative side, I hate to see anything that will eliminate jobs for people (technology has a habit of doing that). In addition, just because there will supposedly be no human error, who among us can say they've never had computer problems? Do you think those tables will always work accordingly? What happens when a table short circuits or just simply goes down? They better have back-up servers in order to know who had what. I'm sure they've worked all that jazz out though.
On the positive side, well, just re-read the excerpt from the article above. I mean that could be pretty damn cool. Especially for states like North Carolina, where there is no poker, but the chances might be better at Indian Reservation Casinos with this new technology in place.
Last year I remember telling a couple of my buddies that it would be cool to have a computerized home game table in order to eliminate the need for lugging chips around and to speed the games up. I'm not talking about the hand held crap that you play on the T.V., but a real table that players sit around, just like a regular game. Think about it...have you ever had this scenario happen at your home game?
JokerManFriend (Drunk): "Hey how often did we say we would raise the blinds man?"
JokerManFriend2 (Drunk & Possibly High): "I think it was every 15 minutes dude."
JokerManFriend: "Damn man we've been on Round 1 for 55 minutes."
JokerManFriend3: "Hey man we gonna play another one after this?"
Me: "Not at this rate you shitsticks."
If PokerTek does well, I hope they take a direction to cover the home games as well with a smaller, more portable version of the PokerPro. If anyone from the company reads this, I've got some ideas if you wanna talk. Giddy Up.
Well, that's it for me. I just remembered I was supposed to play a Heads-Up match with DNasty tonight and got caught up with this post. I'm gonna go now to see if I can catch up with him.
North Carolina Come On And Raise Up!
posted by TripJax @ 1:42 AM,
2 Comments:
-
At 10:16 PM,
said...
-
I've played these tables and there pretty amazing. You do not actually type what you bet, but you have options that come up on your screen and you simply touch your choice, "bet, muck". This concept gives the game a different perspective and i found the tables fun to play.
-
At 3:33 AM,
said...
-
Hey, you have a great blog here! I'm definitely going to bookmark you!
I have a check computer speedcheck computer speed site/blog. It pretty much covers check computer speed Problems with your Windows Xp Computing !
Come and check it out if you get time :-)
Post a Comment