Okay, okay, when you compare it to some of the big, fat televised poker tournaments out there today, $1,000– a thousand smackers!– isn’t the biggest payoff in the world of live poker. But let’s get a hold of ourselves: You kick in $60, you play poker for a couple hours with some of you nearest and dearest (or newest!) friends and BAMMO! (If you win) you walk home with ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS! (And a beautiful silk-screened T-shirt with the logo of the SHECKYmagazine Comics Only Poker Tournament on the front)

Or, you stagger across to the Four Queens and blow it all on pina coladas and blackjack!

Either way, we figure it this way: It’s a great opportunity to fly (or carpool across the desert) into Vegas Wednesday night, hang out with standup comics from all over the English-speaking world in downtown Vegas (at the low, low rate of $39/night at Binion’s), then plunge the next morning (THU, NOV. 17, 2005) into the world of Medium-Stakes Poker!

(We paint a lovely picture. But, just ask anyone who was at our First Ever Comics-Only Reunion what kind of a time they had! We managed to entice 125 comics or so from all over the US of A to converge on Vegas for the sole purpose of hanging out in Glitter Gulch for three days with their comedy brethren and sistren… that’s it– just hanging out! This time– WE GOT POKER!!!)

AND, if your calendar happens to be open that weekend, there’s a big, fat HBO/TBS Comedy Festival on the strip till the 20th. With all kinds of comedy stars and shows and publicity. Their website promises details on that in the coming weeks.

And in the coming weeks/months, we intend to provide you with details, hints, etc. All designed to do three things: Entice you to participate in the tournament, overcome any fears you may have of playing live poker and sharpen your poker playing skills! That’s right: Joe Lowers will be providing our readers with original poker articles which draw on his experience as a real, live poker player. (Joe currently resides in Las Vegas, so he knows of what he speaks.)

Never played live poker before? C’mon out! It will be fun! We’ll go easy on you!

Played before, but only with friends on the occasional Monday night? A little intimidated by a real tourney in a real casino? We’ll address that! (Trust us, you’ll be surrounded by comics– it won’t be all that different from what you experience in at Poker Night in somebody’s basement!)

Are you a competent player who has an eye toward the WSOP? C’mon, bitch! We’ll take your money!

The male half of the staff recently wrote about his experience in his first live poker tournament (a $17 buy-in at Circus-Circus in Reno this past July… scroll down and check it out!). He found it to be quite exhilarating… and not at all as scary as he thought it might be.

And here’s the dirty little secret of the Poker World: If you get hammered real bad in the first round or so, you can do what they call a Re-Buy: That’s right, it’s like a do-over! If you suck real bad (or if the cards you’re dealt suck real bad) and you wind up getting tapped in record time, you can just kick in another $20 and BLAMMO! You’re in the hunt again, just like nothing ever happened! (Of course, there are limits to the Re-Buy thing– you can’t just do that indefinitely, but we’ll outline all that in the coming weeks.) Ah, Poker! the Great Equalizer!

And, we’ll encourage interested parties to download poker software that educates and entertains. And, we’ll also encourage prospective tournament participants to maybe even hop onto the occasional live, online poker tournaments (some for money, others not!) to acquire and/or sharpen their skills!

Tell a friend. We want this to be a rare opportunity for standup comics to get together, if only for a day or two, with other standup comics and participate in a fun and fast tournament in the funnest and fastest town in the Western World. We’ll be gathering email addresses and putting you on a mailing list so that we can keep you up to date on the latest twists and turns.

Listen up, this is mucho importante: If you have ANY QUESTIONS; if you have ANY ADVICE, if you HAVE ANY CAR-POOLING REQUESTS or HOTEL-SHARING REQUESTS, just hit the comment button at the bottom of this posting (registering takes only seconds!) and put them in the comments. This blogging technology allows near real-time communication and networking, so, if it’s used for good and not evil, we can get some questions answered and get some good people hooked up with other good people and make this Tournament a monument to standup comedy. And, maybe one of us will win a thousand clams.

Check back regularly. This particular posting will be accessible via a link at the very top of the FRONT PAGE of this website. The button will be clearly labelled: “POKER TOURNEY INFO!!” In the meantime, please point your browser to THIS PAGE as it contains the fine print and it will serve as the billboard to the world of standup for anyone who wants the boilerplate info on the tournament. NOTE: If you are keen on encouraging anyone to seek out information on this Tournament, please refer them to HTTP://www.sheckymagazine.com/poker.htm There will be a link to this posting off of that, so that, if they’re hooked, they can then hop onto this posting and get the deep details! Thanks!