Israeli Poker Rules
2021年2月25日Register here: http://gg.gg/ofp9j
While there is no explicit Jewish prohibition on gambling, the rabbis of the Talmud did not have a positive view of the practice. The clearest statement on the matter is in the Mishnah in Sanhedrin, which rules that someone who “plays with dice” is barred from serving as a witness. There is a dispute, however, about the particulars of this prohibition.
*Israeli Poker Rules 2019
*Israeli Poker Rules Against
*Israeli Poker Rules Meaning
*Israeli Poker Rules Poker
*Israeli Poker Rules Game
*Israeli Poker Rules Games
May 09, 2019 Innovation Rules. Japan BrandVoice Paid Program. And Michael Phan, 34, from Israel, were indicted on Wednesday. And Phan said he was the owner of the Israeli Poker Academy. With few rules and strategies to consider, slot games are perfect for new casino players. Try some free slot games now or discover online slots to play for real money. Best Israeli Poker Rules for Big Jackpots.
According to one opinion in the Mishnah, the prohibition applies only in the case where the gambler has no other occupation — i.e. a professional gambler. Based on this view, the Talmud suggests that the reason such a person is barred from testifying is because they contribute nothing useful to the world. Another opinion suggests that gambling is a form of thievery, since the losing party to a bet gives up their money against their will. This rationale would suggest that even an occasional gambler cannot serve as a witness. However, this opinion is not universally accepted, since presumably both parties to a bet engage in the wager willingly and therefore accept upon themselves the possibility of loss.
The halachic permissibility of gambling rests on which of these is the reason for invalidating a gambler as a witness. If it’s merely because gambling is a frivolous pursuit, then the occasional bet may be permitted. If gambling is thievery, then it’s prohibited at all times, which is the view of some rabbinic authorities. In either case, compulsive or professional gambling would be forbidden.
There is some question of whether the latter approach would apply to all forms of gaming, or merely to bets or wagers, in which one party wins and the other loses. Some forms of casino gambling, in which one plays against the house rather than other players, may not run afoul of the concern regarding theft. It’s also questionable whether lotteries run into this problem. Some authorities, like the late Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, have ruled that buying lottery tickets is form of stealing, since the person who purchases a ticket may have assumed he would win and therefore surrenders his money unwillingly. The late Israeli Rabbi Ovadia Hedaya has ruled that lotteries are permitted, since one is not taking money directly from another person but rather from a pool of money. Lotteries, raffles and the like, when undertaken for charitable purposes, are not considered forbidden and there are many examples, both historic and current, of Jewish communities running lotteries for fundraising purposes.
None of these considerations address the moral perils of gambling, which has commanded the attention of Jewish authorities throughout history and even in the present day. Excommunication, flagellation, fines and the denial of synagogue honors were common penalties for those who transgressed gambling regulations. Compulsive gamblers were described as sinners, charged with harming family life and forgetting God. The habit has been described as abominable, ugly, frivolous and morally impure. According to the Tul HaAroch, a commentary on the Torah by the medieval authority Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, Moses warned the Jewish people before his death not to become corrupted by gambling.
Indeed, some understand the sheer volume of these efforts to suppress gambling, and the large number of exceptions to those rulings, as evidence of its popularity among Jews. Historically, the prohibition on gambling was relaxed on minor Jewish holidays like Hanukkah, Purim and the monthly sanctification of the new moon (Rosh Chodesh). Authorities in Bologna in the 15th century specifically permitted playing cards on fast days “in order to forget the pain, provided one wagers no more than one quattrino at a game per person.” Similar exceptions were made in medieval Europe on the occasions of weddings and births and on Christmas Eve, known in some Orthodox communities as “Nittel-Nacht.”
In contemporary times, concerns about the corrosive effects of gambling, particularly gambling as an addiction, have persisted. In the 1980s, the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies (today UJA-Federation of New York) ran a task force on compulsive gambling to address what one official called “a problem of some magnitude in the Jewish community.” Shmuly Yanklowitz, an Orthodox rabbi and social justice activist, has penned several articles in recent years that invoked longstanding Jewish concerns about the dangers of gambling, noting also studies that link gambling addiction to bankruptcy, domestic abuse, criminality and even suicide risk.
A number of Jewish groups offer gambling treatment programs. Beit T’Shuvah, a Jewish residential treatment program in Los Angeles, offers help with gambling addiction, as do a number of local Jewish Family Services organizations.Join Our Newsletter
(For reasons that will become obvious, I chose to keep this entry separate and not to link to it from my regular blog about my year in Israel.)
I love playing poker, especially Texas Hold ’em. Back in the States, I play quite often. There’s the Friday night cash game at PJ’s, the Monday night tourney at Gochnauer’s followed by the lucrative cash game, and Gottlieb’s on Thursdays when I don’t have soccer. There are monthly tournaments in Pennsylvania, and occasional games at my house. Also, Delaware Park Casino has live poker games and is 90 minutes from my home, and I went to Atlantic City twice and Las Vegas once the last year. I get to play plenty, and as all poker players will typically claim, I’m slightly ahead for the year (and paradoxically most players are well above average).
I arrived in Israel almost two months ago, and I tried very hard to find a live poker game, but to no avail. I asked virtually everyone I came in contact with professionally and personally if they played poker or knew anyone who did, and in the few instances where someone knew someone, my attempts to follow up and get invited to the game failed. In desperation, I played a little online, but it’s not the same experience, and I don’t really like it. Having exhausted my entire network in Israel and the States and still finding myself unable to satisfy my urge to play live poker, I decided to take a step that in hindsight seems pretty stupid and yet something that I’m surprised took me that long to think of. Searching the Internet for ’home poker games Tel Aviv’ and ’live poker Israel’, I came across a site that lists home games in cities around the world. As an expert specializing in Internet security, I have some training in identifying sites that are less than wholesome, and this one definitely rubbed me the wrong way. There were invitations to log in with Facebook, clearly a phishing tactic, flashing lights near the top of the page resembling the less than savory establishments that used to inhabit Times Square before it was cleaned up, and several other telling signs that this was not the most reputable site on the Internet.
But, this was the closest I had come to finding a live poker game, so I started following links, telling myself all the while that I would never enter any personal information on this site, nor trust anything that I read there. There were listings of poker games in and around Tel Aviv, but no phone numbers or email addresses. To get further information, you had to register a username and password with the site, or just enter your gmail or Facebook credentials. I had seen enough. Still, I noticed that one of the listings mentioned a regular game several times a week, tournaments, free food, drinks, and yes, there was a phone number there. Interestingly, the exchange part of the phone number, the three digits before the last four digits, was 555, just like phone numbers in the movies designed to fool the audience into thinking that in make believe land, all numbers contain that exchange. Was this some kind of joke? I decided not to waste my time with it.
But, I couldn’t get it out of my mind, and a couple of days later, I searched for and found that site again. This time, I summoned up some nerve and called the number. A rough male voice answered, and I said, in the most authentic sounding Hebrew that I could muster, that I was calling to get details about the poker game. There was a pause on the other end of the line for what seemed like an awkward interval. I said, ’Hello?’ And he said, yes, well, uh, so, let me give you a number to call. This guy will take care of you. And he gives me the name Yaniv and a phone number. I asked him if he could give me his name so that I could tell Yaniv he sent me. I was a bit concerned that I had just made contact with the Israeli mob and that Yaniv was going to set me up to rob me, kidnap me and sell me into slavery, or perhaps a worse fate. My first test was that if he won’t give me his name, I will just drop the whole thing. But the guy give me his name, Ronen.
Okay, so I have a new lead for a live poker game in Tel Aviv. This is good, but also nerve racking. Am I really going to show up with money in my pocket to presumably play poker based on a connection that I made through a random unhealthy looking Internet site? Probably not. But what harm is there in calling Yaniv? So, I dialed the number, and someone who sounded very busy, like he was in the middle of something, answered, ’Halo’. I said that Ronen suggested that I call you about getting into a poker game. He said, we play tomorrow. Call me in the morning, and I’ll give you details, and he hung up, just like that. I imagined that he needed a day to arrange the trap, hire some thugs, get the body bag, etc.
The next day, Tuesday I had a conference call scheduled in the evening, so I couldn’t play poker, but I called Yaniv anyway, and I got his voicemail. I left a message saying I was the one who called yesterday, and I can’t play tonight, but let me know when there is another game. Yaniv didn’t call back which wasn’t that surprising. So, I sent a text message to his number, and he texted back (in Hebrew) that there was a game Thursday at 9:30 pm. On Thursday, understanding Yaniv’s favorite mode of communication, I texted him asking for the address. He texted back an address right away and repeated that the game is at 9:30 pm, and that the buy-in was 400 shekels (approx. $114) with rebuys for the first two rounds.
Now what?
If I told Ann exactly what happened and how I got into this game, she might not endorse the idea whole heartedly. I was thinking that if a friend came to me with this proposition, I would tell him he was crazy. But, if I just told Ann that I was playing poker and left out the other details, it wouldn’t feel right. So, I printed out directions to the game that night and made a copy for Ann. I told her the story and wrote down Ronen’s and Yaniv’s names and numbers, and told Ann that if something happened to me, she should give these to the police to help locate me. Looking back, this was not the best approach. But, I promised Ann I would be careful, and that I would go early and stake out the house and not go in if the people resembled those at the Thursday night game at Gottlieb’s in any way.
About an hour before I was going to leave home, we got a call from the States telling us that our dog Mendl, who was with us for 14 years, had died. Ann took it very hard and was in tears as soon as she got off the phone. He was terminally sick when we left for Israel, and we knew he didn’t have a lot of time left, but all the same, it was very sad. It may seem heartless and insensitive, but one thought that jumped into my mind was that I probably wasn’t going to get to play poker that night. But, about 20 minutes later, Ann was much more composed, and I offered to stay home if she wanted some support, but she said that she was okay and that I could play. This reinforce my opinion that I have the absolute best wife in the world (Although I couldn’t help but think that if she really loved me, she would never let me go to play a game that attracts degenerates, and that I found on the Internet in a foreign country.)
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous driving downtown Thursday night with fifteen hundred shekels ($429) in my pocket. I brought extra money to allow for a rebuy and to play in a cash game after I was eliminated from the tournament. The GPS guided me to a part of town that I had never seen before, and my heart sank. It looked abandoned and seedy. Run down warehouses, not that well lit, and the kind of place where in the US, I would stay away from after dark and even during the day. I made up my mind that I would drive by the address and then just turn around and drive home. This was too scary and not worth the risk just to play some poker.
After several twists and turns that saw the neighborhood deteriorate every few hundred meters, I found myself at the specified address, and I pulled over and took a parking spot across the street. There were no people around. It was very quiet. I was not happy.
It was 9:10 pm, and the game was called for 9:30. I decided to keep a lookout and see if people started showing up to play. I would see what they looked like and make a decision. I turned off my headlights, locked the door, and turned the mirrors so that I could see the front door to the alleged poker room. I happened to glance at the odometer and noticed that the last three digits were 666. Seriously, you can’t make this kind of thing up. I’m not at all superstitious, but I couldn’t help but feel that this should have been enough of a sign for me to get out of there. Occasionally, a car would come by and pass me, and I put my cell phone to my ear to make it look like I was on the phone, in case someone wondered why I was sitting there in the car.
At 9:25, a taxi pulled up to the building and stopped. Two relatively normal looking men got out, looked around and went into the building. In a moment of temporary brain paralysis, and for reasons that I still do not understand, I turned off the motor, got out of the car and followed the men inside. The building looked like it should be condemned, and it smelled. I knew I was not in a good place, and yet I followed them up the stairs. Two flights and we arrived at a landing. There was a room with what appeared to be a large black and white marble dance floor, and a guy who looked like a gangster with large tattoos all over him and a cigarette in his hand standing at a bar in the back of the room. He yelled over at us asking who we were. One of the guys answered, ’we are with the DJ’. ’All of you?’ No, this guy isn’t with us. So who are you, he yelled at me. I walked up to him and asked him, is this so and so address? He said yes. I said that I’m here to see Yaniv. He said there is no Yaniv here, and that this is private property, and that I need to leave. A further invitation, I did not need, and I got out quickly.
As I left the building, I couldn’t help but feel that I had been had. Some trickster sent me to a rough part of town to play a joke on me. Why anyone would do such a thing, I have no idea, but I had no other conclusion that made any sense. Before returning to my car, I pulled out my phone and called Yaniv. I said that I was at that address and there is no poker game. He said to hold on a minute and put another guy on the phone. The other guy asked me where I was. I told him. He asked if I saw a blue door, and I said no. He told me that the street I was on had two #6 entrances, and that the poker room was on the other block. I didn’t see what he was talking about, but I walked around the block with my heart literally pounding, feeling like I was making the biggest mistake of my life and wondering what was wrong with me. I’m usually the most cautious person, typically mocked by those who know me for being overly protective of myself and everyone close to me.
As I turned the corner, I saw a tough looking guy on a cell phone leaning out of a building with his back to me. He was clearly looking for someone. As I approached, I could hear that the person on my cell phone was saying the same words as this guy, with a slight time delay, and I realized that I had arrived. I put my phone away. I approached the guy and said that I was the one he was talking to. He acted like he didn’t know what I meant. I said that I was here for the poker game. The guys told me that he doesn’t know of any poker game, and that I need to get out of here. I felt he was right on that second point, but I said that I was invited by Yaniv. Oh, he said, why didn’t you say so, and he moved aside and let me in. I walked through the looking glass into another world that you would never imagined existed on the other side of that blue door.
As I walked in, to the left there were modern, clean and well equipped restrooms. Around the corner to the right was a table with dozens of stacks of poker chips, a cashier, and several men hanging around. I asked for Yaniv, and they pointed to a guy across the room. In that room I observed about 12 nice poker tables with 10 chairs each and many men milling around. Most of them were smoking, few of them were clean shaven, and some looked like they had not seen the inside of a shower stall or a dentist in quite a while. Yaniv was all business. He shook my hand when I introduced myself and moved on to the next order of business. He was running the whole show. One thing that really surprised me was the number of men that were wearing Yarmulkas. They were smoking like the rest of them and fit in in every respect. I estimate that there were about 75 people there, including several women. There were also waitresses that were coming around and giving people sandwiches and drinks. There was no alcohol. Some of the men sat around a high definition television watching a basketball game. Others sat at the poker tables and played a two man card game that I had never seen before and could not understand. I sat down next to some of the guys at one of the poker tables and took in the scene.
Who would ever imagine that I’d find myself in the Tel Aviv underworld in a secret poker club about to play against a collection of apparent hoodlums, which included some orthodox Jews who were chain smoking? I felt one of those unique moments in life where you know you are having an extraordinary experience that will be memorable for a long time. As arranged in advance, I sent Ann a short text message saying that I arrive and was okay, and that I was about to start playing poker.
At 9:4
https://diarynote.indered.space
While there is no explicit Jewish prohibition on gambling, the rabbis of the Talmud did not have a positive view of the practice. The clearest statement on the matter is in the Mishnah in Sanhedrin, which rules that someone who “plays with dice” is barred from serving as a witness. There is a dispute, however, about the particulars of this prohibition.
*Israeli Poker Rules 2019
*Israeli Poker Rules Against
*Israeli Poker Rules Meaning
*Israeli Poker Rules Poker
*Israeli Poker Rules Game
*Israeli Poker Rules Games
May 09, 2019 Innovation Rules. Japan BrandVoice Paid Program. And Michael Phan, 34, from Israel, were indicted on Wednesday. And Phan said he was the owner of the Israeli Poker Academy. With few rules and strategies to consider, slot games are perfect for new casino players. Try some free slot games now or discover online slots to play for real money. Best Israeli Poker Rules for Big Jackpots.
According to one opinion in the Mishnah, the prohibition applies only in the case where the gambler has no other occupation — i.e. a professional gambler. Based on this view, the Talmud suggests that the reason such a person is barred from testifying is because they contribute nothing useful to the world. Another opinion suggests that gambling is a form of thievery, since the losing party to a bet gives up their money against their will. This rationale would suggest that even an occasional gambler cannot serve as a witness. However, this opinion is not universally accepted, since presumably both parties to a bet engage in the wager willingly and therefore accept upon themselves the possibility of loss.
The halachic permissibility of gambling rests on which of these is the reason for invalidating a gambler as a witness. If it’s merely because gambling is a frivolous pursuit, then the occasional bet may be permitted. If gambling is thievery, then it’s prohibited at all times, which is the view of some rabbinic authorities. In either case, compulsive or professional gambling would be forbidden.
There is some question of whether the latter approach would apply to all forms of gaming, or merely to bets or wagers, in which one party wins and the other loses. Some forms of casino gambling, in which one plays against the house rather than other players, may not run afoul of the concern regarding theft. It’s also questionable whether lotteries run into this problem. Some authorities, like the late Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, have ruled that buying lottery tickets is form of stealing, since the person who purchases a ticket may have assumed he would win and therefore surrenders his money unwillingly. The late Israeli Rabbi Ovadia Hedaya has ruled that lotteries are permitted, since one is not taking money directly from another person but rather from a pool of money. Lotteries, raffles and the like, when undertaken for charitable purposes, are not considered forbidden and there are many examples, both historic and current, of Jewish communities running lotteries for fundraising purposes.
None of these considerations address the moral perils of gambling, which has commanded the attention of Jewish authorities throughout history and even in the present day. Excommunication, flagellation, fines and the denial of synagogue honors were common penalties for those who transgressed gambling regulations. Compulsive gamblers were described as sinners, charged with harming family life and forgetting God. The habit has been described as abominable, ugly, frivolous and morally impure. According to the Tul HaAroch, a commentary on the Torah by the medieval authority Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, Moses warned the Jewish people before his death not to become corrupted by gambling.
Indeed, some understand the sheer volume of these efforts to suppress gambling, and the large number of exceptions to those rulings, as evidence of its popularity among Jews. Historically, the prohibition on gambling was relaxed on minor Jewish holidays like Hanukkah, Purim and the monthly sanctification of the new moon (Rosh Chodesh). Authorities in Bologna in the 15th century specifically permitted playing cards on fast days “in order to forget the pain, provided one wagers no more than one quattrino at a game per person.” Similar exceptions were made in medieval Europe on the occasions of weddings and births and on Christmas Eve, known in some Orthodox communities as “Nittel-Nacht.”
In contemporary times, concerns about the corrosive effects of gambling, particularly gambling as an addiction, have persisted. In the 1980s, the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies (today UJA-Federation of New York) ran a task force on compulsive gambling to address what one official called “a problem of some magnitude in the Jewish community.” Shmuly Yanklowitz, an Orthodox rabbi and social justice activist, has penned several articles in recent years that invoked longstanding Jewish concerns about the dangers of gambling, noting also studies that link gambling addiction to bankruptcy, domestic abuse, criminality and even suicide risk.
A number of Jewish groups offer gambling treatment programs. Beit T’Shuvah, a Jewish residential treatment program in Los Angeles, offers help with gambling addiction, as do a number of local Jewish Family Services organizations.Join Our Newsletter
(For reasons that will become obvious, I chose to keep this entry separate and not to link to it from my regular blog about my year in Israel.)
I love playing poker, especially Texas Hold ’em. Back in the States, I play quite often. There’s the Friday night cash game at PJ’s, the Monday night tourney at Gochnauer’s followed by the lucrative cash game, and Gottlieb’s on Thursdays when I don’t have soccer. There are monthly tournaments in Pennsylvania, and occasional games at my house. Also, Delaware Park Casino has live poker games and is 90 minutes from my home, and I went to Atlantic City twice and Las Vegas once the last year. I get to play plenty, and as all poker players will typically claim, I’m slightly ahead for the year (and paradoxically most players are well above average).
I arrived in Israel almost two months ago, and I tried very hard to find a live poker game, but to no avail. I asked virtually everyone I came in contact with professionally and personally if they played poker or knew anyone who did, and in the few instances where someone knew someone, my attempts to follow up and get invited to the game failed. In desperation, I played a little online, but it’s not the same experience, and I don’t really like it. Having exhausted my entire network in Israel and the States and still finding myself unable to satisfy my urge to play live poker, I decided to take a step that in hindsight seems pretty stupid and yet something that I’m surprised took me that long to think of. Searching the Internet for ’home poker games Tel Aviv’ and ’live poker Israel’, I came across a site that lists home games in cities around the world. As an expert specializing in Internet security, I have some training in identifying sites that are less than wholesome, and this one definitely rubbed me the wrong way. There were invitations to log in with Facebook, clearly a phishing tactic, flashing lights near the top of the page resembling the less than savory establishments that used to inhabit Times Square before it was cleaned up, and several other telling signs that this was not the most reputable site on the Internet.
But, this was the closest I had come to finding a live poker game, so I started following links, telling myself all the while that I would never enter any personal information on this site, nor trust anything that I read there. There were listings of poker games in and around Tel Aviv, but no phone numbers or email addresses. To get further information, you had to register a username and password with the site, or just enter your gmail or Facebook credentials. I had seen enough. Still, I noticed that one of the listings mentioned a regular game several times a week, tournaments, free food, drinks, and yes, there was a phone number there. Interestingly, the exchange part of the phone number, the three digits before the last four digits, was 555, just like phone numbers in the movies designed to fool the audience into thinking that in make believe land, all numbers contain that exchange. Was this some kind of joke? I decided not to waste my time with it.
But, I couldn’t get it out of my mind, and a couple of days later, I searched for and found that site again. This time, I summoned up some nerve and called the number. A rough male voice answered, and I said, in the most authentic sounding Hebrew that I could muster, that I was calling to get details about the poker game. There was a pause on the other end of the line for what seemed like an awkward interval. I said, ’Hello?’ And he said, yes, well, uh, so, let me give you a number to call. This guy will take care of you. And he gives me the name Yaniv and a phone number. I asked him if he could give me his name so that I could tell Yaniv he sent me. I was a bit concerned that I had just made contact with the Israeli mob and that Yaniv was going to set me up to rob me, kidnap me and sell me into slavery, or perhaps a worse fate. My first test was that if he won’t give me his name, I will just drop the whole thing. But the guy give me his name, Ronen.
Okay, so I have a new lead for a live poker game in Tel Aviv. This is good, but also nerve racking. Am I really going to show up with money in my pocket to presumably play poker based on a connection that I made through a random unhealthy looking Internet site? Probably not. But what harm is there in calling Yaniv? So, I dialed the number, and someone who sounded very busy, like he was in the middle of something, answered, ’Halo’. I said that Ronen suggested that I call you about getting into a poker game. He said, we play tomorrow. Call me in the morning, and I’ll give you details, and he hung up, just like that. I imagined that he needed a day to arrange the trap, hire some thugs, get the body bag, etc.
The next day, Tuesday I had a conference call scheduled in the evening, so I couldn’t play poker, but I called Yaniv anyway, and I got his voicemail. I left a message saying I was the one who called yesterday, and I can’t play tonight, but let me know when there is another game. Yaniv didn’t call back which wasn’t that surprising. So, I sent a text message to his number, and he texted back (in Hebrew) that there was a game Thursday at 9:30 pm. On Thursday, understanding Yaniv’s favorite mode of communication, I texted him asking for the address. He texted back an address right away and repeated that the game is at 9:30 pm, and that the buy-in was 400 shekels (approx. $114) with rebuys for the first two rounds.
Now what?
If I told Ann exactly what happened and how I got into this game, she might not endorse the idea whole heartedly. I was thinking that if a friend came to me with this proposition, I would tell him he was crazy. But, if I just told Ann that I was playing poker and left out the other details, it wouldn’t feel right. So, I printed out directions to the game that night and made a copy for Ann. I told her the story and wrote down Ronen’s and Yaniv’s names and numbers, and told Ann that if something happened to me, she should give these to the police to help locate me. Looking back, this was not the best approach. But, I promised Ann I would be careful, and that I would go early and stake out the house and not go in if the people resembled those at the Thursday night game at Gottlieb’s in any way.
About an hour before I was going to leave home, we got a call from the States telling us that our dog Mendl, who was with us for 14 years, had died. Ann took it very hard and was in tears as soon as she got off the phone. He was terminally sick when we left for Israel, and we knew he didn’t have a lot of time left, but all the same, it was very sad. It may seem heartless and insensitive, but one thought that jumped into my mind was that I probably wasn’t going to get to play poker that night. But, about 20 minutes later, Ann was much more composed, and I offered to stay home if she wanted some support, but she said that she was okay and that I could play. This reinforce my opinion that I have the absolute best wife in the world (Although I couldn’t help but think that if she really loved me, she would never let me go to play a game that attracts degenerates, and that I found on the Internet in a foreign country.)
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous driving downtown Thursday night with fifteen hundred shekels ($429) in my pocket. I brought extra money to allow for a rebuy and to play in a cash game after I was eliminated from the tournament. The GPS guided me to a part of town that I had never seen before, and my heart sank. It looked abandoned and seedy. Run down warehouses, not that well lit, and the kind of place where in the US, I would stay away from after dark and even during the day. I made up my mind that I would drive by the address and then just turn around and drive home. This was too scary and not worth the risk just to play some poker.
After several twists and turns that saw the neighborhood deteriorate every few hundred meters, I found myself at the specified address, and I pulled over and took a parking spot across the street. There were no people around. It was very quiet. I was not happy.
It was 9:10 pm, and the game was called for 9:30. I decided to keep a lookout and see if people started showing up to play. I would see what they looked like and make a decision. I turned off my headlights, locked the door, and turned the mirrors so that I could see the front door to the alleged poker room. I happened to glance at the odometer and noticed that the last three digits were 666. Seriously, you can’t make this kind of thing up. I’m not at all superstitious, but I couldn’t help but feel that this should have been enough of a sign for me to get out of there. Occasionally, a car would come by and pass me, and I put my cell phone to my ear to make it look like I was on the phone, in case someone wondered why I was sitting there in the car.
At 9:25, a taxi pulled up to the building and stopped. Two relatively normal looking men got out, looked around and went into the building. In a moment of temporary brain paralysis, and for reasons that I still do not understand, I turned off the motor, got out of the car and followed the men inside. The building looked like it should be condemned, and it smelled. I knew I was not in a good place, and yet I followed them up the stairs. Two flights and we arrived at a landing. There was a room with what appeared to be a large black and white marble dance floor, and a guy who looked like a gangster with large tattoos all over him and a cigarette in his hand standing at a bar in the back of the room. He yelled over at us asking who we were. One of the guys answered, ’we are with the DJ’. ’All of you?’ No, this guy isn’t with us. So who are you, he yelled at me. I walked up to him and asked him, is this so and so address? He said yes. I said that I’m here to see Yaniv. He said there is no Yaniv here, and that this is private property, and that I need to leave. A further invitation, I did not need, and I got out quickly.
As I left the building, I couldn’t help but feel that I had been had. Some trickster sent me to a rough part of town to play a joke on me. Why anyone would do such a thing, I have no idea, but I had no other conclusion that made any sense. Before returning to my car, I pulled out my phone and called Yaniv. I said that I was at that address and there is no poker game. He said to hold on a minute and put another guy on the phone. The other guy asked me where I was. I told him. He asked if I saw a blue door, and I said no. He told me that the street I was on had two #6 entrances, and that the poker room was on the other block. I didn’t see what he was talking about, but I walked around the block with my heart literally pounding, feeling like I was making the biggest mistake of my life and wondering what was wrong with me. I’m usually the most cautious person, typically mocked by those who know me for being overly protective of myself and everyone close to me.
As I turned the corner, I saw a tough looking guy on a cell phone leaning out of a building with his back to me. He was clearly looking for someone. As I approached, I could hear that the person on my cell phone was saying the same words as this guy, with a slight time delay, and I realized that I had arrived. I put my phone away. I approached the guy and said that I was the one he was talking to. He acted like he didn’t know what I meant. I said that I was here for the poker game. The guys told me that he doesn’t know of any poker game, and that I need to get out of here. I felt he was right on that second point, but I said that I was invited by Yaniv. Oh, he said, why didn’t you say so, and he moved aside and let me in. I walked through the looking glass into another world that you would never imagined existed on the other side of that blue door.
As I walked in, to the left there were modern, clean and well equipped restrooms. Around the corner to the right was a table with dozens of stacks of poker chips, a cashier, and several men hanging around. I asked for Yaniv, and they pointed to a guy across the room. In that room I observed about 12 nice poker tables with 10 chairs each and many men milling around. Most of them were smoking, few of them were clean shaven, and some looked like they had not seen the inside of a shower stall or a dentist in quite a while. Yaniv was all business. He shook my hand when I introduced myself and moved on to the next order of business. He was running the whole show. One thing that really surprised me was the number of men that were wearing Yarmulkas. They were smoking like the rest of them and fit in in every respect. I estimate that there were about 75 people there, including several women. There were also waitresses that were coming around and giving people sandwiches and drinks. There was no alcohol. Some of the men sat around a high definition television watching a basketball game. Others sat at the poker tables and played a two man card game that I had never seen before and could not understand. I sat down next to some of the guys at one of the poker tables and took in the scene.
Who would ever imagine that I’d find myself in the Tel Aviv underworld in a secret poker club about to play against a collection of apparent hoodlums, which included some orthodox Jews who were chain smoking? I felt one of those unique moments in life where you know you are having an extraordinary experience that will be memorable for a long time. As arranged in advance, I sent Ann a short text message saying that I arrive and was okay, and that I was about to start playing poker.
At 9:4
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