What Are They Selling?

Some advertising agencies don't quite seem to understand poker. You can tell by a few of the ads that appear in these very pages.

Several ads show one or more players with huge stacks of chips, and they're holding poker hands – five-card poker hands. Oftentimes, one of the hands is a royal flush. But what game are these people playing? Five-card draw? Don't the agencies understand that the people who read this magazine play mostly hold'em? Draw is almost nonexistent in the United States and not all that common outside the country.

One staged photo shows players in the middle of a round of betting. They're all holding their cards up in the air such that half the table can see what they have (and the players around them seem to be looking right at their opponents' cards). But they're obviously having fun, because they've all got big grins on their faces. Actually, several ads for land casinos have photos with players apparently blissfully unaware that they're exposing their cards. Have you ever been in a game in which every player is holding his cards at arm's length two feet above the table?

One ad shot has a guy about to make a bet and he has no cards! And in the same picture, three players are betting on the river (five community cards are out) in increments of three chips. What are they playing, $1.50-$3? One player has just raised a six-chip bet to eight chips: Where can you raise by less than a full bet when you still have chips left? Specifically, they all have plenty of chips, the first player bet three chips, the next raised to six, and the next has just put in eight. I wonder if it ever occurred to the agency to show the picture to someone who actually plays poker.

Another shows three guys in a pot. The first is starting to make a bet, the second already has the call in his hand, poised to drop it in the pot, and the third has his two chips ready right behind him. The ad copy talks about "coldblooded bluffing." But these guys are having a good time. There will be no bluffing at this table. And what image do they want to project? Come to Casino X's cardroom, where no one acts in turn?

One picture shows a man's hand, dripping with jewelry, rising out of the darkness, two diamond-encrusted rings on each finger and a gaudy bracelet and a gold watch on the wrist, holding four cards, amid ad copy about becoming a pro by playing at the online site. Four cards? Is he playing Omaha? That ad ran for several issues in a row, and then, suddenly, the picture had the identical man's hand but with no jewelry, only a tan line on one finger. It's not clear what message was supposed to be conveyed. Play on this site and you'll lose your bling-bling?

Poker ads are not the only offenders on this next one. One ad is dense with copy. A line in the middle gives information about a guaranteed-prize tournament, and an asterisk appears at the end of the sentence. Presumably, that asterisk was meant to be associated with a footnote that lists the conditions of the promised prize pool. But nowhere in the ad could I find a footnote or any other asterisk, and I searched thoroughly. I think they just forgot it.

One picture has red and black lettering on a yellow background. There are smudgy yellow fingerprints all over the letters, making it look like the yellow ink has bled on the page. I keep looking at the opposite page to see if it has yellow smudges, too. The same layout appears every issue, although sometimes with different smudged text. I don't know what it's supposed to mean. It's not eye-catching, just messy.

This is not to say that all poker ads are misinformed. Some provide very good information, often in entertaining fashion. Those ads look like the poker people had a sayso in the ad. In the others, though, the casino or online poker site seems to have turned the whole thing over to an agency and then never reviewed the results.

Michael Wiesenberg's The Official Dictionary of Poker is the ultimate authority on the language of cardrooms. Order from the Card Player Bookstore online at CardPlayer. com. Also, the forthcoming 1,000 Best Casinos is currently prelisted at Amazon.com.