response 1 of 37:

Jan 3 16:08 UTC 2006

 Call, unless you are >95% certain (i.e. almost positive) that someone has
 filled their flush or hit a set of trip kings.

 Dismissing the case of trip kings and assuming a flush you still have as many
 as 10 outs which will improve your hand to beat a made flush -- you should
 call from pot odds alone.  Even better, you can't be sure you're not actually
 still the best hand as things stand.  However, if you reraise you're probably
 going to drop any hands that are still drawing (like a naked ace of spades)
 and if there's going to be more money going into the pot you'd rather it come
 from them than from you.

 You have a strong hand in this situation -- very strong.  The fact that it
 might be beat means you can't bet it quite as strongly but that's poker..

response 3 of 37:

Jan 4 04:32 UTC 2006

whoa !

scholar !

this guy i work with was talking about online poker !
he said he played for about two hours this afternoon, and made only a dollar.
HOWEVER< he said that if he had won, he would've made 5 dollars or something.

response 5 of 37:

Jan 4 05:47 UTC 2006

 Actually my advice in #1 is incorrect.  The only hand that should make you
 fold on the turn is trip kings -- any other hand that could be made at that
 stage gives you pot odds to call, and your implied odds are better yet.

 Even if the player with the ace-high flush *showed you their cards* on the
 turn, considering the amount of money in the pot it would still be incorrect
 to fold.

response 7 of 37:

Jan 4 06:33 UTC 2006

of all the poker i have played, i have yet to unerstand this (seemingly)
idiotic bluff game- it ain;'t poker ... it aoin;t american.
  

response 9 of 37:

Jan 4 20:52 UTC 2006

it smells like cigarette smoke in here.

response 11 of 37:

Jan 5 01:53 UTC 2006

Tobacco, I am told.

response 13 of 37:

Jan 5 22:15 UTC 2006

 Tangentially related (at best..):  Last night I wound up stuck in Seattle
 overnight after United badly screwed up the first leg of my cross-country
 return from Christmas vacation.  Since I got in too late to shop or dine
 at one of my favorite restaurants but didn't feel like sitting around in
 the hotel room, I took a taxi to a card room about five miles from my hotel
 and played High/Low Omaha for three hours or so..  And as much as I think
 it's a matter better left unlegislated, I have to admit that I very much
 enjoyed the smokelessness of the card room, thanks to Washington's sweeping
 new anti-public-smoking law.

response 15 of 37:

Jan 5 22:50 UTC 2006

re #13
I think its a great law but some of the guys at the VFW are mortified by it.
They realize that its a lawsuit waiting to happen if the law is broken but
at the same time its completely changed the culture of the canteen which used
to be at least 50% smokey.  (After I became Adjutant and Club House Committee
member, I get a smoke eater and smokefree area designated.)

response 17 of 37:

Jan 6 01:14 UTC 2006

Um!

As far as I know, all casinos in Ontario are now allowed to run poker games.

I'm not sure what you mean by charity casinos.  There used to be temporary
casinos that would open for a few weeks and then close in Toronto.  Maybe they
had the same thing in Windsor?!  Could that POSSIBLY be what you're talking
about?!

Anyway, uh, if not, maybe the following list of casinos that have poker and
the numer of tables they have will help you:

Brantford Casino, 14
Casino Niagra, 12
Casino Rama, 11
Casino Sault Ste. Marie, 3
Casino Windsor, 10,
Fallsview Casino Resort, 8
Great Blue Heron Casino, 8
Thunder Bay Casino, 4
Point Edward Charity Casino, 8

That's a total of 78 tables!

If they were all full and being used to play hold 'em, there could be 858
legal public poker players at once!

I also here there are a bunch of 'underground' games in Toronto, but I don't
know how to find those.  :(

response 19 of 37:

Jan 6 04:25 UTC 2006

 re #17:  Ahh..  Yes, the "charity casinos" I'm talking about were
 allowed under a provincial law that permitted non-profit organizations
 (e.g. peewee hockey leagues, curling clubs, ladies' garden clubs,
 etc..) to apply for a permit to operate a casino-like operation
 temporarily for fundraising purposes.

 I think the original intent was that clubs would operate these
 fundraisers themselves but by the time I became aware of them there
 had arisen companies which made money by offering their services
 to non-profits to organize and run such games.  The one in Windsor
 was called the Brentwood/Elmwood Corp.  and though I played a
 number of times in Toronto games I can't recall the name of any
 game operators there.

 The law under which such companies operated only allowed each
 permit holder to operate for a weekend and also required that the
 games couldn't be held in the same venue more often than once per
 month so there was a phone number you'd call to listen to an
 answering machine message explaining where the game was going to
 be held on a given weekend.  In the Windsor operation, which rarely
 had more than two poker tables running (and never more than three,
 plus a couple of blackjack tables) the games usually rotated between
 a space at the Windsor Convention Center, a large banquet room
 upstairs from one of Windsor's many Chinese restaurants (which was
 the best option, as on those weekends you could order good food
 delivered right to the table), the basement of the Masonic lodge,
 and the dining area at the Windsor Curling Club, with a few other
 occasional locations I can no longer remember.

 Back in those days the action in the Windsor games was respectable
 and in the Toronto games it was unbelievable.  If my friends and
 I had a long weekend we'd occasionally make the 5-hour trip to
 Toronto and spend the days checking out the city and the evenings
 playing poker and I don't think we ever regretted making the trip,
 even subtracting the cost of gas and a hotel room from our winnings.

 It was these games that the province shut down, if I recall correctly.
 I don't think they were ever really anticipated by the law's authors
 and there were rumors of corruption and abuse in the permitting
 process, I think Ontario found it easier to just shut the games down
 than to fix the parts of the process that were broken.

response 21 of 37:

Jan 7 04:40 UTC 2006

 re #20:  Diamond Lil's, in Renton. 

 As far as the smoking ban goes, although I'm glad to be able to
 go out and play cards and not come back reeking of smoke, I'm not
 inclined to force my non-smoking through a law.