Last time, on Celebrity poker showdown, we explored which popular superhero would claim victory at the poker table. This time I am having the characters of Star Wars shuffle up and deal. As ground rules, I am taking the players from the original series as seen in the Empire Strikes Back. The dark side is excluded in that Vader would refuse to play, not check his lightsaber, and most likely cause a scene. (i.e. kill everyone in the room.) The players will stay true to their nature in their efforts to win the kitty. The first contestant is C3-PO. Today’s best computer can’t best today’s top professional, but in a galaxy far far away the technology is no doubt more advanced. Using the speed in which my favorite droid calculates odds, C3-PO will have the poker math down pat. However, he never did seem to understand human motivations well, which hurts his ability to read bets. At least he doesn’t have to worry about the ol’ jedi mind trick. Speaking of jedi mind tricks, the next contestant is the son of Vader himself, Luke Skywalker. Luke will avoid the dark side of the game and keep everything on the up and up. ...

Imagine a table of superheros getting together after a night on patrol and unwinding with a friendly game of poker. Being heroes, they would probably do the ethical thing and not use their powers to cheat. That is pretty boring for my purposes, so I’m going to forget that. I will also dismiss some popular heroes whose powers just don’t translate well to poker. Green Lantern may be good in a fight, but at the tables he’d need a green deck to do any tricks. And Wolverine is only good for cutting the deck. Lets start off with Spiderman. Most of his powers don’t apply well to cards, but perhaps his “spidey-sense” would warn him when to get out of a hand. Usually this ability is related to physical danger, but financial danger could be close enough. Superman has a lot of things going for him. Like the Flash, he thinks much faster than you and me, allowing ample time to come to the best decision. He could hear your heart beat to tell if you are lying or, of course, he could simply look at your cards. With x-ray vision he doesn’t only know what the other players have, but also ...