Can you hang with pros?

Leila Navidi

Host Vinnie Favorito chooses members of the audience to play poker against two professionals, Scotty Nguyen and Eli Elezra, during the interactive poker show “The Real Deal” at the Venetian. Favorito, an insult/improv comedian, says, “I’m not your typical game show host … I swear. I bust (chops). It’s a fun show.”

By Jeff Haney (contact)

Saturday, Nov. 29, 2008 | 2 a.m.

In Texas hold ’em lingo, a starting hand consisting of a pair of aces is referred to as “pocket rockets,” or “bullets,” or “American Airlines.”

A pair of kings is “cowboys,” or “kangaroos.”

Two queens are “the Hilton sisters,” or “Siegfried and Roy.”

And so on.

It might be wise to polish up your knowledge of starting-hand nicknames before attending “The Real Deal,” the new interactive poker stage show in the Venetian Showroom.

Even a cursory review would allow you to avert the misfortune suffered by Darryl from Los Angeles, who was selected as one of six audience members to compete against a couple of well-known poker pros at a recent showing of “The Real Deal.”

After choosing Darryl, emcee Vinnie Favorito quizzed him on the nickname of a starting hand consisting of an ace and a king. When Darryl couldn’t come up with the answer, he was hooted down by the rest of the crowd. Evidently he was the only one in the theater unfamiliar with the term “big slick.”

In a rare display of mercy, Favorito, the superb insult/improv comedian who also performs in his own show at the Flamingo, allowed Darryl to play anyway.

He and five others picked from the crowd went up against professionals Scotty Nguyen and Eli Elezra on a recent evening. Other members of the rotating cast of pros are Doyle Brunson, Todd Brunson, Phil Hellmuth, Antonio Esfandiari, Jennifer Harman, Phil Laak, Gavin Smith and Daniel Negreanu.

In the main event of each performance of “The Real Deal,” the six amateurs and two pros compete on stage in a mini-tournament scheduled to last about 90 minutes. Meanwhile, the audience plays along via wireless touch-screen devices attached to each seat.

At the beginning of the tournament, audience members punch in their choices in a series of “prop bets,” which allow them to take an interest in every “flop” — the first three community cards in hold ’em. They choose a color (red or black), a suit, and any three cards from the deck, scoring points whenever the flop hits them.

The audience is dealt two cards to start every hand, just as the players on stage are, and given the option to fold or call — at escalating prices — before the flop, the turn (fourth card) and the river (fifth and final card). The same hand is dealt to everyone in the audience, though individual members of the crowd make their own choice about folding or continuing to play.

An electronic leader board tallies up-to-the-second scores, listing audience members by the nickname they type in when they sit down.

A variety of prizes are at stake for the winners and those finishing high in the point standings, including gift certificates for restaurants and spa treatments, poker instructional books and autographed posters of poker personalities.

As Darryl & Co. competed on stage during this showing, the audience was dealt junk hands such as 8-3, king-7 and jack-6 in the game’s first several hands, so many of them folded immediately.

It wasn’t until the first hand of the second level of the tournament that the audience was dealt pocket kings (cowboys!) and hung on to win a hand, beating the remaining players on the stage and inching closer to a potential bonus prize.

The format of “The Real Deal” — think poker meets a game show — is novel, but easy enough to follow once you get the hang of it.

Four times during the evening, in a competition separate from the on-stage tournament, audience members choose five cards at random from a 52-card deck on their touch-screen device.

A prize of $1 million is awarded to anyone who manages to hit a royal flush. (It hasn’t happened yet.) A Canturi necklace is awarded for a straight flush, with other prizes handed out for lesser hands.

Favorito, whose banter is often risque and nearly always hilarious, keeps the action moving throughout the proceedings. No one is safe as he takes aim at the nationalities and occupations of the audience members, the participants’ poker skills or lack thereof ... and in one instance, a certain aspect of “The Real Deal” itself.

When a smart aleck from the crowd complained that the $1 million prize for the royal flush would be paid out over 20 years, Favorito took the bait.

“Yeah, it’s 20 years, so what!” he said. “What’s wrong with $22 a month?”

Ah, genuinely witty and subversive. We need more of this in Las Vegas.

“I’m not your typical game show host,” Favorito said. “I swear. I bust (chops). It’s a fun show.”

Addendum, or confidential to Darryl: In addition to “big slick,” other acceptable answers for the nickname of ace-king would have been “walking back to Houston” (because that’s what old-time Texas poker players supposedly did after going broke by overplaying the hand in games in Dallas or Amarillo), or “Anna Kournikova” (because of the initials and a common poker players’ lament that the hand looks good but rarely wins).