I know who I'm voting for as the next Anthony Fauci to stop the next global pandemic that basically killed all of humanity last time.

I've been considering breaking out a card protector to help revamp my table image.

No comment on card protectors but if you have precious metal stuff at a poker table you can often sell it for a nice profit, well over market price.

i use a card from another deck as card protector

A guy offered to trade his gold ring for my silver coin once. Crazy offer since a version of my coin can be purchased for around $32 online...yet I was still reluctant to swap, and not just because I had to assume his ring was fake for him to offer the trade. Various people I've interacted with at the table have handled my coin and their energy has now been imbued within it...it's not just a king Charles coronation coin to me anymore, it's Lucky Chucky, a fearless companion who has been through many interactions and battles at the table with me.

I think I'll start carrying another one with me for future trades or gifts I'm inspired to engage in. I told one dealer at our local casino that if she deals me a big enough pot someday, I might give her the coin...but if I did so, I'd rather give her a new one than my Lucky Chucky.

I should also start carrying a magnet and scale in my backpack to test authenticity in case future trades are offered.

"King Charles" lol. Sorry, but that just sounds so childish. Monarch worship in 2024? Still?

Anyone who uses any card protector, other than a chip from their stack, is 100% a tool..

Hot take lol. Goon.

Prove me wrong, muppet..

Already did, crackhead.

Child, please..

Nothing is quite as pathetic as someone trying to get the last word in an Internet argument.

In before "I'm rubber and you're glue..."

My only objection is people who take it too far. I mean that's a cool figurine of Conan stabbing a giant snake but it's twice as big as the cards and hard to see if you are in the hand or just pretending your card protector is about to vivisect the dealer.

I owe the British monarchs a debt of gratitude for allowing me to renounce my allegiance to the crown without an issue.

if your op was going to be that long , you could have at least shilled us a site we could have bought this at..

i actually like the silver coin idea

Stopped reading your essay right there.

Lots of good players seek a solid image and don't want to be perceived as recs. There's genuine mathematical advantages to this, consider the following scenarios and then you can extrapolate them to standard play:

- Targetting recs, not sharks: If you want to target recs (you do), you don't want to play agains sharks. It's in the shark's interest to mutually signal sharkhood to avoid mutual destruction. Same species animals in the wild rarely fight each other, they avoid fighting each other and resort to non lethat battling for honour if necessary.

- GAP Concept: Especially noticeable in short stack games, if you give the image that you'll call all ins, people will be less likely to go all in against you, you get to keep your blinds and squeezes.

You seem to be conflating good player with tight player, you feel that revealing your skill in the game will reveal your ranges, so that you will be predictable. So don't worry, reveal as much as you want, because you are not a good player, so there's nothing to reveal.

Unrelated note. Silver to gold price ratio is almost at that neat 1:100 ratio

You mention targeting recreational players, which I agree with if your objective is to win money, but that doesn't mean you should have to go out of your way to signal to pros that you fear confronting them. Ideally, you should be one of the best players in the games you play and so playing with other good players should be at worst a break-even proposition and not something you have to run from. Many bigger games are built around just one fish and if you want to win at decent stakes, you'll need to accept that you'll regularly have to deal with good players in the game.

And a good player won't fool a pro for long into thinking they're an amateur by using a card protector, because once they start playing well, good players will realize they are doing so and place more significance on that than whether they have a card protector.

Bad players, conversely, don't know what good play looks like and so if your non-play decisions indicate to them you are also a recreational player, you can more easily fool them and it will lead to additional opportunities to play with them. E.g. maybe they won't quit the game 4 handed when you're present because they assume there's at least one other recreational player at the table.

Update: I wearied of questions on King Charles and have ordered a replacement. It is black rhodium plated and a limited mintage proof coin designed with collectors in mind, but I'm willing to sacrifice its numismatic value by handling it to have the coolest card protector in town. I look forward to seeing what conversations it generates.

I changed my mind again. I'm just going to get a bunch of cool ones and switch them out.

Thank you to everyone for your attention.

Nah, we'll just stick with the alien one. The rest I'll keep preserved.