The River of Equipment
Now, onto the most overlooked part of poker play, the cards! Are you using cheap paper cards that are tearing at the end and the 2&spades has a crease down the left side? Well, STOP! If you’re willing to drop a little cash it is well worth it in the long run. Don’t waste your money on Bicycle cards or any other type of paper-based card, there are only two brands you need to know:
KEM: The mother of all cards. If you’re serious about card playing, these are the cards you need. The signature Ace of spades in a KEM deck features “KEM Playing Cards” insignia. US Playing Card company recently bought out KEM. If you can try to get ahold of original KEM cards. The US Playing Card Company still makes great KEM cards, but the original quality is even better. Try using ebay or amazon to find the originals.
The cards feel take a little getting used to as they are cellulose acetate. What the hell does that mean? It means they won’t bend or break or even crease (on a side note: I did manage to crease one, a joker, I was testing it. I had to bend it over backwards and purposely crease it under a book, no joke). The cards can be lifted up in normal Texas Holdem fashion and not remained bent upwards. You may think thats no big deal, but look the next time you do it with normal paper cards, they suck. KEM cards slide very well over tables, and without felt you’ll probably experience a lot of cards off the table, just to warn you they go hand and hand. KEM also has a guarentee where you can send back a broken card and have it replaced.
These plastic cards are slightly pricey at around $15-$20 a deck, but well worth it. I’ve purchased three of these decks and I’ve had them for over a year now. With the amount of $2 decks I would’ve gone through I am definately saving money. Oh, and by the way, if your KEM cards get dirty, throw them into the dishwasher. No lie, thats how tough these cards are.
Copag: A rip-off of KEM. Uses a slightly different manufactoring method and are not as strong as KEM, but a great replacement because they are slightly cheaper. You can expect Copags to go around $10-$15 a deck.
I personally reccommend KEM cards. You can order them jumbo, poker-sized, bridge-sized, different colors, whatever you may want. Also, I suggest buying whatever plastic cards you buy in packs of 2 decks. It will save you some money and I guarentee once you play with them you’ll want another deck. Plus having two decks in rotation at a home game greatly ups the hourly hand rate.
Enjoy!
Kem Playing Cards
Copag Playing Cards
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1 Comment to “The River of Equipment”
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Ben
September 10th, 2005 at 11:41 pm
Steve isn’t lying - we’ve been using his KEM decks in our home games for about 15 months now. We get angry when he forgets them.