Oh, look--a royal fizzbin!

I was just kind of aimlessly wandering through these interweb thingies when I came upon this page of excellent "inspirational" posters based on Star Trek scenes and characters. What--I've never done a Star Trek post before? That seems hard to believe. (I just did a search for "trek," and found that I have mentioned the series at least three times before, so now I've tagged those with a "star trek" label. Don't know why I didn't do it earlier.)

Two of the posters were ones I thought I could make some sort of stretch to poker in order to justify reposting them here. The first one, above, is the great scene in which Kirk makes up a card game called "Fizzbin" that sort of vaguely starts out seeming like stud poker, though it's much, much more complicated. See the rules here.

It reminds me that one of my favorite occasional amusements when I'm bored at the poker table is making up rules. My preferred target is a tourist playing in a casino for the first time. It has to be somebody that obviously has a good sense of humor. It helps if he has been drinking. I wait for some opportune moment, then catch him off-guard with the announcement of some make-believe rule. "Oh no, sir, you don't get the high-hand bonus for that straight flush--the cards have to come out in consecutive order for you to qualify." "No, I win the pot. It's a special promotion on Tuesday afternoons: straights beat flushes." "Um, sir, if you're tipping the cocktail waitress a dollar, you have to give one to everybody at the table. House rule. It's right up there on the wall." "You can't raise. When the board is double-paired like that, one bet is the cap."

I can usually get the sucker to bite at first, because most of the time I'm very quiet and serious, so nobody is expecting me to try to be funny. It helps if the dealer is quick-witted and fun-loving enough to go along with it, though that's not common. (I usually just get dirty looks from them.)

It's all in good fun, and I never leave the victim hanging for more than a few seconds before giving them a smile or a wink to let them know they've been had, and let the game go on.






I guess that writing so much about UltimateBet recently is what made this one stand out for me. 'Nuff said.