Gift Ideas for Your Poker Pal
By Matthew Sagehouse
Trying to decide on a gift for loved ones or friends can
sometimes be a challenge. Assuming the person you need a
gift for is a poker player, we intend to help with some
ideas. Now it does not matter whether you player is a
novice, enthusiast, semi -pro, or actually makes a living at
this fun and frustrating game. You can still find a gift
that he or she will appreciate.
Do you know the person well or is it just a family friend or
relative that you don't see very often. These factors will
obviously affect how much you want to spend, so we will
cover several different types of poker related gifts. Many
of these will be economical and some categories will range
from economical to ridiculously expensive. Hopefully you
will be armed with some great ideas at the end.
With a plethora of gifts available at the low end of the
spectrum, you will want to at least try to get a good value
for your money. An excellent and unique gift is a card
guard. If you know the person at all you can attempt to
somewhat personalized this item, due to the variety of card
guards on the market. They range from 3 dimensional
characters with goofy faces to very well designed brass
coins with typical poker hands and jargon included. Price
range for these items is $15 to $35 with most falling in the
$15 range.
Don't forget one of the basics of any live card game.
Playing cards have come in many varieties over the years,
but the latest trend is the 100% PVC route of plastic
playing cards. Initially it sounds a little weird, but once
you handle a quality deck of these cards and see how long
they last, you will be a believer. Oddly enough, plastic
playing cards have been around at least 50 years, however
their notoriety has increased in recent years along with the
rise in popularity of Texas Hold'em. Two brands that you
can't go wrong with are Kem and Copag.
Moving up the scale of gifts, we must dive into the poker
chip set. The different poker chip designs along with the
variety of chip case and chip weight varieties make for a
list of poker chip set options as varied as the many poker
players at a large tournament. If you want to keep it basic
and simple, you can't go wrong with the industry standard
11.5 gram chips, the most popular being the striped dice
style (500 pc set around $40). In stark contrast, you can
go completely to zealot status with a set of 10 gram clay
casino style poker chips by Paulson (500 pc set around
$600).
Say your poker guy already has a great setup and you are
looking for something to enhance his home games or
tournaments. You may want to consider some poker software
or a tournament clock to help mange and organize the games.
One of the best products on the market for this is the Poker
Genie. The Genie handles everything from chip distribution
to tournament length.
If the event caught you off guard, you may need to express
ship. For this dilemma, try a
unique card guard or a
Poker Genie tournament manager.
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20081202