The Switcheroo

Isn't technology great? With your cell phone, you can call anybody, anywhere, anytime. With your wireless-enabled laptop, you can get on the Internet almost anywhere and anytime. You can pretty much walk down the street and get online access every time you stop at any Starbucks or your favorite gourmet coffee and tea establishment. At some resort hotels, you can sit on the beach with your laptop and stay connected to the office or play poker!



My wife, Olga, and I sporadically play poker on the Internet. Occasionally, one of us is playing an online poker tournament and something comes up: an important phone call, an unexpected business meeting, a forgotten play date for our daughter, Victoria, or a burning pot roast! That's when it's time for us to pull the old switcheroo. Olga and I will turn the tournament(s) over to each other during one of these unanticipated situations.



The first time this happened was at home when Victoria was about 6 months old. She woke up early one afternoon from a nap while Olga was experimenting with playing four single-table sit-and-go tournaments simultaneously. Olga tried feeding her while playing, but Victoria demanded her undivided attention. I was downstairs and heard Victoria crying and Olga yelling for a previously unrehearsed switcheroo. With the crisis growing with every tick of the time banks, I ran upstairs and took over the four tournaments. The good news was that Olga was the chip leader in two of them. The bad news was that they were all down to two to four players and the tables didn't fit on the laptop screen without overlapping each other. Every time it was time to act, a different table jumped up to overlay the others. I was getting dizzy from playing the juggled tables. It wasn't a pretty sight! We survived the family multitournament poker crisis and placed first, second, third, and out of the money in the four sit-and-go events. That was the end of that experiment on that inadequate computer screen.



Recently, I was visiting a friend at his office and we spontaneously decided to participate in a large multitable tournament online. He was blocked from accessing poker from his office, so he called his wife and had her sign him up from home. He also loaned me the buy-in to play by having his wife transfer some money to my account. Then, I called my wife and asked her to sign me up from my home. We went to his house and jumped on a couple of laptops and connected to his local wireless network. After we got settled into playing for about 15 minutes, we got disconnected. We rebooted all the equipment, but still no connections. We called the phone company and found out they were doing repairs on the street! It was time for the switcheroo. I called Olga at home and had her take over playing until we found a network connection. Sure enough, we ran down the street to the local Internet café and got reconnected. I called Olga back, and after she finished playing a hand, we did another switcheroo back to me. Although our tournament result was disappointing, being able to do the old switcheroo from distant locations was exciting.



Remember, when playing online, you can always do the old switcheroo in a pinch.

Robert is the 2002 World Series of Poker champion and the instructor on the WiseGuys on Texas Hold'em videos, starring some famous actors from The Sopranos. The videos are very informative, as well as entertaining, and are available at http://www.wiseguyson.com/.