Blake Eastman holding court (Courtesy of School of Cards)

NEW YORK — Nestled in an industrial strip of Chelsea just a stone’s throw from the Hudson River, a small group of strangers meet to try their hand at No Limit Texas Hold ‘em. The barbed wire and warehouse surroundings give the Saturday evening a clandestine feel. It’s the perfect location for a smoky, dimly lit poker room full of notorious gamblers.

But there’s only one card shark this evening and his name is Blake Eastman. He’s teaching an introductory poker class at the newly formed School of Cards — the first brick and mortar poker school in the United States.

It’s a one-room schoolhouse complete with chalkboard, projector and bookshelves. Instead of basic arithmetic, the chalkboard outlines advanced bankroll management, the textbooks all focus on counting cards and game strategies, and the projector broadcasts live online poker games. The lounge chairs, mini-fridge, boxes of candy and corner bar give the space a sense of a college dormitory more than a sober learning environment. But at the School of Cards, poker is no frivolous pastime – it’s a serious business.

Eastman, a 25-year-old professional poker player and psychology professor, first started playing poker at 18 after seeing the 1998 cult classic “Rounders.” He gave up the game completely after casual play only found him losing money, be he found a renewed focus when he entered graduate school for forensic psychology at age 20.

“I treated the game academically, like I was in grad school for poker,” Eastman said. “I read every book. I talked about it nonstop. I played nonstop. I won and lost enough times because I wasn’t really practicing proper bank roll management, and once I did that I started playing with more stakes and started doing better.”

Eastman did well enough to pay off grad school through poker and earn a living with his winnings as his primary source of income.

“I wasn’t making incredible money, I was probably doing better than most 20-year-olds of course, but I wasn’t playing as significantly,” he said. “The plan was that I was supposed to go to law school, … but poker was bringing so many opportunities and I knew that I could make more money playing poker over the three years that I would be in law school.”

Born and raised in New York City, Eastman said he always had a desire to be an entrepreneur and playing poker gave him the freedom and the funds to invest and create his own start-ups.

“I realized I wanted to start doing more things than just playing poker, because playing poker is really like a grind,” he said. “You are always playing, always playing, you’re up and you’re down. And I wanted to hedge my poker playing abilities, so I started teaching.”

After giving private lessons and hosting Profitable No Limit Hold ‘em courses at the Grand Hyatt and W Hotel for the past couple of years, Eastman’s teaching turned into full-time work this summer when he rented out space on 28th Street and opened up the School of Cards. The school currently offers an introductory class; a 21-hour profitable class for more advanced players; and frequently hosts private poker parties and free events that allow students to come back and refresh their skills.

Saturday night’s Introduction to Poker class is made up of a hodgepodge of young professionals from New York City and the surrounding suburbs: a military man, a magazine designer, a special education teacher, and a foreign couple. The experience level ranges from not knowing the difference between a straight and a flush to fanatic Facebook poker players and occasional casino gamblers.

Over the course of three hours the session covers the basics of No Limit Texas Hold ‘em – what makes up a hand, what generally you should play and what you should fold, how to responsibly and strategically place bets, and the etiquette and procedure of the game. The goal is to make a novice player feel comfortable enough to walk into a casino and sit down at table.

The class (much like a real poker table) is only as interesting, challenging and fun as the other people at the table. With an absence of stakes, one or two poor listeners can make the lesson draining at times. But everyone gets a chance to show what they’ve learned at the end with a winner takes all tournament round. Those who were listening will last the hour, while those who don’t heed Eastman’s advice are stuck watching for the remainder of the course.

Eastman’s plans for School of Cards include adding Black Jack courses and offering a reputable dealer school program. Eastman said he is open to the idea, but isn’t really interested in offering classes on other casino games. He just doesn’t see the point in playing games like Roulette or slots.

“Why would you want to play a game that you will lose in the long run — it really just doesn’t make sense to me,” he said. “Poker is number one in terms of long term profitability, at least in my opinion. Right underneath that is Black Jack.”

Poker has the unique perspective of not having a house edge. The game is played against other players at the table not against the casinos.

“The reason I love School of Cards is because people at [casino] poker tables – at the lower stakes games – they are so bad that we can teach some core fundamentals to teach people to play what we call ABC poker,” Eastman said. “It’s a fundamentally aggressive and tight way of playing poker, and [our students] can make money – if they stick to what I taught.”

Written on every chip at School of Cards is the motto: “We never gamble.”

“If you’re not thinking you’re gambling. I say that we never gamble because we don’t,” Eastman said. “Any given day we are making a gamble, but at the end of the year we’re not gambling. We are making decisions that have positive expectations. [Those decisions] are going to win us money over the long run.”

While many of Eastman’s intro students go on to take his advanced classes and make profit off of online play, the fundamental game play isn’t for everyone. Some people at the introduction class said they missed the thrill of a Roulette wheel or would probably still prefer to play the craps tables on their next trip to Atlantic City.

As one student put it, “If I’ve learned anything today, it’s that you fold a lot.”

Months after losing its Major League Baseball, and only weeks after settling a lawsuit by MLB for allegedly illegally using its trademarks anyway, news has broken that the National Football League will not renew Upper Deck’s licensing agreement.

This means no more (official) baseball or football cards from UD.

Upper Deck released the following statement:

"Over the past year, Upper Deck has attempted to negotiate a new licensing deal with NFL Properties. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we were not able to reach agreeable terms, and therefore will not be issuing any NFL Properties-licensed trading cards for the 2010 season. Upper Deck will continue to focus on its exclusive license agreement with the Collegiate Licensing Company and co-exclusive agreements with NHL Enterprises and the NHL Players’ Association, as well as its multiple entertainment licenses.”

I’ve been in a pissy mood lately when it comes to card games.

Since moving to Boston in 2002, it’s been all poker, poker, poker. I like poker. I’ve made money at poker. I’ve paid for a trip to Vegas in the Harrah’s poker room. Though, I’m an awful tournament player (ask Mark Scalia).

It seems like computerized card games have boiled down to solitaire and poker, with every geek’s dream of going to the World Series.

I didn’t learn how to play poker for real until college. Growing up, we had two games: setback with my friends and pinochle with the family.

I’ve been really pleased to see Pinochle making an appearance on more and more commercial products, but no one has gotten it right yet with the rules and the artificial intelligence. (you’ll see an Old Shoebox article in a few weeks about someone who DID get it in 1993)

Reel Deal Card Games ’09 includes but doesn’t at all understand pinochle, but I’m not going to dwell on that fact any longer.

What you do get is more than 80 games and free online multiplayer, which is nice, but there aren’t exactly a ton of people lining up to play.

Phanton EFX, the game’s publisher, did manage to put together a good platform. What they should have done was give it away and just sell advertising on the multiplayer servers.

The artificial intelligence, while cute and often entertaining, is just really stupid. They get the rules wrong a log, they bet, raise and fold without any obvious reason in the poker games, but most of all they just aren’t programmed to understand the subtle nuances of most of the complicated games. (pinochle)

The game, packaged on two CDs, includes Harts, Bridge, Cribbage, Canasta, Golf, Rummy 500, spades, War, Pinochle, Gin, All Fives, Wist, Euchre, Pitch, Old Maid, Spite & Malice, Go Fish, Skat, Pepper, Crazy Eights, Memory Match, seven poker games, Blackjack, and 45 solitaires. As you play the games, you earn points towards virtual prizes, and that’s just ducky.

If you’re looking for a PC cards game, I’ve seen worse, and better.

Warning: Oh Crave Entertainment … I’m so sorry. This a complete rant. I’m glad you put Pinochle into your game, but you failed to account for house rules. And Pinochle players take their game very seriously.

Normally, the chance to play Pinochle on my PlayStation would make me jump up and down and recommend the game no matter what the shortcomings.

But no. They messed up the rules.

Well clearly the integration with the PlayStation 2 Eye Toy and challenging others over broadband would just be awesome.

But no. I don’t think anyone actually owns the game.

Then, surely a challenging computer opponent and feisty computer teammate would result in hours of addictive entertainment in your game package, which includes Spades, Hearts, Rummy, bridge, Crazy 8′s and 10 kinds of Solitaire, right? No, no, NO, god dammit, NO.

How on Earth do you muck up CARDS? CARDS? It’s one of the most basic principles of video games. People have been doing it in computer games forever, and I have been reviewing card games since I was 13 years old. (The awful, awful writing is evident.)

Pinochle. It is my family game. I’ve been playing it since I was 4 years old, and I’m escatic to see it in a PlayStation 2 video game, but there are just two problems. The first problem is that the artificial intelligence is not intelligent, usually just throwing out cards without much strategy. And forget about online play.

Second of all, the rules are different and can’t be changed. Yes, I know there are more house rules and family rules in Pinochle than Monopoly, but I play a pretty standard (I think) game. Min. bid is 150, single deck, no passing cards, no auction bidding. In some games, I’ve seen players use two decks and teams pass cards around, but I’ve only seen card passing with double deck.

In World Championship Cards, bidding starts at 15 instead of 150, (manageable) and four cards get passed between the teammates who take the bid (stupid). Still, it’s Pinochle getting some sort of commercial recognition. I think it should be an Olympic sport, personally, or at least on ESPN with million-dollar tournaments.

Here’s the bottom line before I shut myself up finally. The AI isn’t smart, some of the rules are different, like no jokers in the game spades, but there’s enough of a variety to potentially justify spending the $7 that Amazon’s sellers are asking for the game. That is, of course, if you need another video card game product. Of course you do.

Oh Jesus Christ.

Okay, folks. We’ve been very, very nice to Electronic Arts lately, particularly giving them high marks for their E3 lineup, but this is just off.

Electronic Arts’ Casual Entertainment Label announced the release of Solitaire For Dummies, the second “For Dummies” game themed on the popular books. The game, available on Pogo.com, lets you play 10 different solitaire games like Klondike (Windows Solitaire), Pyramid, Scorpion, etc. It also gives you how-to, practice and play modes so you can learn the basics.

Cool so far.

They want $20 for it.

Come now. You already have Klondike on Windows, and there are literally hundreds of similar solitaire games out there for download and web play, mostly for free. This should be no more than $4.99.

The first title in the series, Poker For Dummies is also available and lets you play Texas Hold’Em, Omaha and Seven-Card Stud, with learning modes included also. This is also great, but you can still do that on FullTiltPoker.com and Pokerstars.com (Well, .net anyway) for free.

A DS title, Travel Games For Dummies, features crossword puzzles, Sudoku, and solitaire, and will be available in November.

I just think price is the kill factor with the solitaire game.

But we still are in love with Lightbox, so here’s a gallery:

With current tech trends, your inbox may be full of them right now. E-cards, carrying messages of “Happy Holidays,” “Happy Birthday,” “I’m Sorry,” and various stages of romance flood e-mail accounts with cute, fuzzy, make-your-insides-warm images and songs. And, truth be told, they’re usually deleted after the minute it takes to watch them.

I’m guilty of it just the same.

“Mainstream (e)-cards tend to be sappy and maudlin. In a word, they suck,” said Nancy Gomez, who decided to try to change all that by starting Rattlebox.com. It’s a new e-card website that prides itself on a new kind of card. “They have attitude,” says Gomez.

Rattlebox e-cards try to keep from “sucking” by using footage from over 40,000 hours of popular television show. The site is also open to visitor-submitted videos, and users can make money by submitting popular videos for others to use.

What I found most appealing about Rattlebox is the amount of power a user has over the card they send. A unique feature of the video content is the fact that the clips are totally customizable.

In the majority of E-cards on the internet, the greeting and/or closing is the only thing that a sender gets to customize. However, this restriction does not affect the Rattlebox cards. Every message is presented with a default script, but every line in the card can be changed, giving senders the opportunity to customize the card specifically for any recipient.

It’s almost as if you’re the producer of each card you choose to send. “We’re very excited about this unique feature, since it gives people the opportunity to really interact with the media, personalize it in a whole new way, and communicate and connect,” Gomez said.

This amount of editing power users have, plus the opportunity to submit their own material for cards, is what founders hope will attract visitors to the site. “People are drawn to social networking sites (like MySpace and Facebook) because they want to express themselves on their own terms. Rattlebox lets them do that,” Gomez points out.

Rattlebox continues with this approach with the option for users to send their cards through Instant Message or post them in blogs and networking sites for their own visitors to see.

Like other e-card sites, Rattlebox offers cards for a wide selection of occasions, such as birthdays and holidays. Although, unlike the majority of competitive sites, Rattlebox offers cards that they sort into categories like “Insults” and “Provocative”. Quite a few of these cards are preempted with a cautionary message, warning that the following videos are “probably (most likely) offensive. If you are easily offended, you should go. We understand.” Try finding a message like that on a Hallmark e-card.

So the next time you want to send someone an e-card that’s not going to get deleted- say a nice “Happy New Year” card- check out Rattlebox.com. You may actually get a thank you card in return this time.