Let’s tie together this weeks poker on film theme with our now regular Friday’s-with-Ernie Kovacs feature with this little poker-themed nugget from a 1961 Kovacs special. Let me be honest; it’s not very good. But its important to remember that visionaries like Kovacs often are more process-oriented than result-driven and I think of this little item as something of a sketchpad doodle, performed on video rather than on the back of an envelope. By the way, I love the look of this video. I mean the look of the videotape itself. Can it be replicated, as the look of super 8mm can now be? Another question: were they able to edit video back then? Or was this subject to live cutting, with Kovacs in a booth cueing some guy named Bob when to cut to which camera’s angle? I’ll let you know if I ever find out…