Christophe Claret Ups the Ante With The New Poker Watch

What do you do when you’ve already produced watches that can simulate playing Blackjack and Baccara? If you’re Christophe Claret you go back to your initial inspiration and produce a watch that simulates Texas Hold’em Poker… for three players! If you are the competition, you simply ‘read’em and weep’.

Watches with gaming functions are not exactly new. Girard Perrgaux produced a movement with a slot machine function. Franck Muller produced a watch with a functioning roulette wheel. I can vividly recall how shocked I was on seeing either one for the firs time. “How do you go about making something THIS complicated”?

Never one to back down from a challenge, the playful mind of Christophe Claret (Read all about his Pinball watch HERE!) saw the Roulette watch with the 21 Blackjack watch. His raise was in the form of the Baccara watch (which is actually three games: Baccara, Dice and Roulette all-in-one). At the final turn-card he has seemingly decided to go ALL IN with the new Poker Watch.

The Poker watch actually predates the 21 Blackjack and Baccara watch; it was Claret’s original intention to build a watch to simulate the game of chance made famous by the riverboat gamblers of the 19th century. However, mastering the 98,304 combinations of 52 cards across three players proved a mathematical and mechanical nightmare, so the simpler games were tackled first! Just like it’s sibling watches, the Poker watch is a 45mm, hours and minutes timekeeper with a Cathedral-style chiming gong, which also allows three players to play Texas Hold’em poker against each other.

Without revealing too much of Claret’s technical ‘hand’, sapphire discs with cards painted on them are used to create all 52 cards in the deck. The double-barrel automatic PCK movement with 72-hour power reserve is used to spin and (at random) stop those discs to create each of the three player’s two deal cards and the five community cards that are displayed in sequence by pressing the pushers at 8,9 and 10 o’clock. Each player’s dealt hand is obscured by louvers in over the cards themselves. If you get bored, or as is more likely the case with Poker, go broke, flip the watch over to reveal one of Claret’s signature ‘moves’ (so to speak): a functioning roulette wheel as his oscillating rotor!

The 655 component Claret PCK movement is patented. The Poker watch is offered in four different variants or ‘suits’ if you prefer: PVD titanium and white gold; PVD titanium and red gold; a color option called “Monochrome” (which we are obviously partial to!) with blue spinel hands; “Monochrome” with red ruby hands. Each variant is limited to 20 pieces worldwide.

If you routinely take a budget carrier for bachelor parties in “AC” – continue to use the gaming app on your Smartphone. If you are reading this as your Dassault Falcon 7x whisks you away to Monte Carlo or Macau – then sit down at the Christophe Claret table where there are no ‘small’ blinds and ante up. Your timepiece is waiting for you.

More info: christopheclaret.com