Poker face or why do people keep underestimating the Winchesters?

I used to play poker quite a bit. Not the high-stakes stuff that's popular now (and not strip, either!), but sit-around-the-table, playing-for-quarters dealer’s choice type poker. I've never been good at counting cards, but I'm aware of the odds and I know the basic mechanics of all the games. I've never won big, but I've never lost big, either. If I'm at a casino I play blackjack. With blackjack, if you play the odds and have a good feel for how the deck is turning, you can come out ahead. Blackjack luck tends to run in streaks -- the deck is hot or cold and if you can tailor your bets, you can make it work in your favor.

Texas Hold 'em is very popular right now, and part of the reason it's popular is because it doesn't work that way. Texas Hold 'em turns on luck more than any other game and because the last card (the river) can make a winning hand out of a complete mess. It's a game where playing foolishly is rewarded more often than other games. Because of that it also encourages people to play more foolishly than they normally would.

When you are playing for fun or for low stakes this can make the game irritating and hard to predict. When you are playing for high stakes against professionals, it can make the game all about how well you can read or manipulate the other players.

( Which brings me to last week’s SPN episode )

Just a short thought before the soon to be awesomeness of tonight’s episode.