I was very happy to come across a brilliantly unique and artistic website that mixes video art with poker.  Since this website was created by Women's Poker Hour host, Jennifer Shahade, I asked her if she would be so kind as to share with us some of the thought process on PokerFairyTale.com and how this interesting glimpse of artistic inspiration came about.

The game inspired video art on PokerFairytale.com reimagines Cinderella and Goldilocks as grinders. I made these pieces with Daniel Meirom to create new images and to explore aspects of a being a female gamesplayer.

Cin I depicts an exaggerated heads-up match, in which how you appear is more important than how you play. Cinderella and one of the wicked stepsisters are playing for silicone implants. In this dark tale, becoming poker's next starlet requires a plastic surgeon, not a fairy godmother.

Violence in connection with improving one's appearance has precedent in the original Grimm's tale. In the non-Disneyfied version, the two stepsisters cut off their toes and heel to fit into the glass slipper. But the prince noticed the seeping blood and shunned both.

Women still go to extreme lengths to conform to specific standards of beauty such as thin waists and large breasts. It's enough to make an already well-endowed woman like Cinderella feel inadequate.

In Cin II, set in Atlantic City we see a bustier Cinderella, who obviously won the match.

But something goes awry on the boardwalk. Prince Charming is more terrifying than alluring when he chases after her to try to return her lost implant.

 When we shot this piece in Atlantic City, we hired a man pushing an urban rickshaw to take Cinderella from The Tropicana to Caesers. He talked about how much he hated his job. His dream was to be a cook again. It was hours into his shift on a bitterly cold night, but we were his first customers of the night. This left us with a final thought: "When Cinderella becomes a princess, who becomes Cinderella?"

In Goldilocks, our heroine ransacks the bears' home and strips their bankrolls, without punishment. I always remembered Goldilocks as one of the few childhood stories without an explicit morale, except perhaps that you can get away with more if you're a blonde. Goldilocks seemed like the perfect heroine for Poker Fairy Tale- not afraid to play with growling beasts and purely joyous when she took all their money by sucking out on the river.

There is a moment in Goldilocks where we see that she is destined to play poker for decades, a visual that coincides with the history of the tale. In early versions of Goldilocks, our protagonist was an old woman. As the story aged, she became the child of today's coloring books.

Time goes by fast when you play cards. It is sad in a way, but in another way, it is a privilege.

To see all these videos as well as nakedchess and hulachess, please visit http://www.pokerfairytale.com/.