kevin_standlee | Cards and Chips

With the cooperation of the SMOFCon 41 committee in Seattle next month, I plan to run the by-now-mostly-traditional Probability & Statistics Seminar on Saturday night. The decks of playing cards I've used for the past two years are worn out. (An evening of playing a card tournament generally wears out even good-quality cards.) We had several 20% off coupons from Walgreens from our recent immunizations, so yesterday I went over there and bought three sets of two decks of cards (with contrasting backs). Each table (maximum three tables of ten people) gets two decks of cards so that we don't waste time waiting for cards to be shuffled: dealer gets a shuffled deck from the person ahead, while the next player shuffles the cards from the hand that just ended. Of course you have to have contrasting backs if you do this; otherwise, you'll inevitably end up with the two decks intermixed.

Walgreens had lots of "novelty" decks, but experience shows that we only want standard decks. Fortunately, Walgreens had the three sets of two that I wanted.

Generally, I pay for the cards myself. I've won the tournament once, but I don't think that makes up for my entry fees for the others or for supplying the cards. Like most things I do for Fandom, I do it as a contribution to my hobby.

The gaming tokens were contributed by a fan who was upgrading his set. Quality chips are heavy, unlike the cheap plastic chips you can get in places like Walgreens. That has led to some odd logistics, as the two cases of chips have moved all over North America depending usually on who was driving to SMOFCon and could take them to close to where they needed to next be. The most recent move was Providence RI to this year in Seattle. Originally, I thought I'd be driving to Seattle, but it turns out that I'm flying, which set up a problem: how to get the chips back home with me? Fortunately, I was able to use frequent-flyer miles to buy a first-class round-trip Reno-Seattle, which includes two checked bags. I'll only need one going up, and will thus pack a smaller empty bag inside my larger bag going to Seattle. I can then put the chips in one of the bags coming back, putting other things in the second (soft sided) bag. It needs a bit of figuring because of the weight of the the chips, but it should work out in the end.