In a game of chance, tourney's poker players leave nothing to chance when it comes to finding the perfect talisman to improve their cards

Poker is a game of cunning and skill, as any player will tell you, but even the most cunning and skillful players must admit that luck also plays a part. That's why most of the 2,350 or so poker players gathered Saturday morning at the Kansas Coliseum seemed to have something -- a pocket watch, a family photograph or a coin picked up in the parking lot -- to enhance their luck.

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In the second weekend of the Park City Poker Round-Up, a Texas Hold 'Em tournament billed as the biggest amateur poker event ever, some players said such talismans are as much a part of the game as careful calculations of the odds or maintaining a suitably inscrutable poker face.

"I've got a little bit of skill," said Terry Anderson, a Park City poker enthusiast. "But 80 percent of this game is in the cards, and the rest is what you can do with them."

To help with the 80 percent of the game that is pure chance, Anderson wears his poker ring. He bought the gold, eagle-adorned ring from the Franklin Mint, at what he describes as "a pretty good price," and wears it only while playing poker.

The first time Anderson wore the ring he wound up winning a tournament at the nearby Slammers nightclub, and he said "it's been working for me" ever since. But he concedes with a laugh that he can't scientifically prove a cause-and-effect relationship between the ring and a good hand.

"It's just one of those superstitions," he said. "It's all in my head."

J.D. Baker of Hoxie believes that luck accounts for a mere 75 percent of poker success, with shrewd betting making up the rest of the game, but he agrees that there's no harm in trying to inject a little luck with some superstition. In Baker's case, the extra luck comes from a ritual.

"I walk around the parking lot and find a coin," he said, showing off the quarter that a quick search had yielded that morning. "It happened to me one time that I found a coin in the parking lot before a game, and I did well in that game. So, ever since, I always try to find a coin in the parking lot."

Other players preferred family heirlooms for their luck. For Tricia Watson, that meant keeping a photograph of her poker-playing father nearby.

Her father had won a local poker tournament, Watson said. "When I got this picture, I won there, too. So, it's very lucky."

Jason Crile covered his cards with a gold pocket watch that once belonged to his great-great-grandmother, a replacement for the lucky stainless steel dice that a friend had made for him.

"I had another lucky charm, but I lost it. So I was looking for something else, and thought of this," Crile said. "Surprisingly, this has been more lucky for me, but really, it's more to hold the cards down than for luck."

Mark Tracy of Peck had a small Buddha figurine keeping watch over his cards. He explained that his friends sometimes call him "Buddha" because of a physical resemblance, "so I just decided to have fun with it."

Sometimes the tiny Buddha seems to bring good luck, Tracy said, and at other times it doesn't, "but I don't hold that against him."

On Saturday, the Buddha seemed to be holding up his end of the deal.

"It's working pretty good today," Tracy said. "Last week I was out in 20 minutes, and today I might make it to 1 o'clock."

Source: Wichita Eagle