OK Johnny Goes Online

Well, I see that Oklahoma Johnny Hale has started his very own online poker site for seniors. It is called SeniorPoker.com, and I wish him luck. Now, it's true that I have poked fun at him from time to time in the past, but this time I'd like to make up for my childishness by publicizing his site and offering a few suggestions.

OK, Johnny is, after all, providing a much-needed service to the poker world. At last count there were still fewer than 10,000 online poker sites, so we need all the new ones we can get. But this one, of course, is different. It's the first one, to my knowledge, designed for a specific segment of the market, old people … I mean, seniors.

I heard that Hale tried to promote his new venture by touring rest homes in the Las Vegas area, but got off to a bad start. He got thrown out of the first facility he visited when he started choking a resident who refused to buy his book. "Ah don't care if you're blind," he stormed. "Someone can read it to you, can't they?"

Anyway, the first question that comes to mind about an online seniors site is, when does someone reach seniority and thus become eligible to play there? Well, 65 has long been the traditional age. It's when people usually retire, when they start collecting social security, when they get a special price at movies, and when Boy Scouts start carrying them across the street. Hale lowered the bar when he ruled that 50 was old enough to play in his brick-and-mortar casino seniors tournaments. (Oh, yeah, 50 is really ancient.) Then, he dropped it a notch more when the age for a Seniors tournament in Paris was set at 45. That really had me puzzled until I figured it out all by myself. It had to do with the currency, you see. The euro, as I understand it, is worth something like 1.4 times as much as the dollar. So, if you multiply age 45 by 1.4, you get close to 65.

Elementary, my dear Watson.

OK, here's another problem. You can set the age requirement for playing on a senior site at 65, 55, 45, or anything you want. But how do you enforce it? How do you keep kids who are only 40 or so from illegally playing at a place reserved for seniors? Simple. Hale has repeatedly called for the establishment of poker police, or "stewards," to go to casinos and render decisions in tournaments because the casinos' own staffs can't be trusted. Very well, then why not use these same stewards to police online players as well? Whenever someone registers at the seniors site, send down an armed steward to check his ID. If the sneak is underage, shoot him. However, if someone does not meet the age requirement but wants to play badly enough, just charge him a nominal monthly fee or make him buy OK Johnny's book.

Another problem comes to mind. Just how many seniors actually own computers and know how to use them? According to the most recent surveys, a few hundred, perhaps. So, my suggestion to you, Johnny, is that you keep your online site simple, real simple. First, hold it down to two games at most: five-card stud and lowball, most likely. Throw in something like Omaha high-low and you'll have seniors jumping out of windows. Also, all those buttons and dials and knobs and bars and selections found on typical online poker layouts must be weeded down to a bare minimum to avoid confusing all your elderly patrons. How about just three buttons: "Bet," "Fold," and "Take Your Meds."

As an additional service, you might throw in a recording that periodically blasts out a bugle call and a cry of: "Wake up, grandpa!"

Now, timing would be everything on a seniors online site. For example, existing online sites typically allow players 10 or 20 seconds to act before their hands are folded. Old folks, whose thought processes have slowed down a touch, might need a bit more time. Two hours seems reasonable.

Also, seniors generally go to bed at about 10 p.m. or so and get up at around 5 a.m. Therefore, I suggest that you start your tournaments at around dawn instead of in the evening. And to make sure they don't run past the bedtimes of seniors, I recommend rounds of five minutes, tops.

Now, I see from the spamming (I mean, public service announcements) on RGP that there was to have been a tournament on your SeniorPoker site on April 25, with the winner getting a seat in the Jr./Sr. World Championship of Poker to be held in a land casino in late May. "Junior/Senior"? Wow! How exclusive can you get? Would that be like a "Men/Women" tournament? How about one limited to only U.S. citizens and foreign nationals?

From all these limitations, Johnny, I imagine that your income from play on the online seniors site might be rather slim. However, where you could really make a fortune would be from selling advertising links to manufacturers of senior-friendly products such as Ben Gay, industrial-strength laxatives, and denture-breath chewing gum.

Now, it might appear that I am writing negatively about my friend Johnny's SeniorPoker site, but I assure you that is not the case at all. You see, his site has one feature that I have never before encountered: a senior citizen discount. For every $100 deposited, Oklahoma Johnny Hale will discount 5 percent for himself.