Question #1: You’ve had a number of big wins in a row. As a result, you have almost doubled the money in your online poker account. Do you:

A) Leave the money in there because you want to build up your bankroll.

B) Cash out some of the money and buy something nice, but leave the bulk of the money in your account.

C) Cash out all of the money, bring it home, spread the cash all over your bed and roll around naked in it.

D) Think to yourself, “I’m the greatest poker player alive,” move up to the higher-limit games, and immediately lose it all back.

Question #2: You are playing no-limit. On the turn, you have top pair with a great kicker and only one opponent, an aggressive player who has been beating you out of big pots all night. The river card pairs the board and also makes a flush possible. He goes all-in ahead of you. His stack is bigger than yours so you will bust out if you call and lose. Do you:

A) Think about the pot odds and compare them to the odds of your opponent having a better hand. Review the play of the hand in your mind, taking into account his style of play, then make your decision based on careful consideration of all the information.

B) Call because you cannot stand the thought that he might get away with bluffing you out of a big pot.

C) Call because you desperately want to beat him.

D) Fold, hurling your cards disgustedly into the muck. Whine to everyone how your luck is so horrible and you just can’t win a single hand, then pointedly ask your opponent if he has a horseshoe lodged in any part of his anatomy.

Question #3: A similar scenario, but reversed. You are the one going all-in on the river and you are bluffing. You have nothing. Your opponent – the aggressive one who has been beating you all night – folds and you take the pot. Do you:

A) Quietly muck your cards, not wanting to give your opponent any information.

B) Show him your cards for advertising purposes because you want him to be more likely to call you when you do have a good hand.

C) Show him your cards because you want to see the look on his face.

D) Triumphantly throw your cards face up in front of him, pump your fists in the air and exclaim: “Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! I finally got you, you bleepity-bleep bleeper!”

If you answered “A” to all three questions, great job. For “B”, not bad. For “C”, you have to work on your emotions. Regarding “D”, you need to join a zen meditation club or something like that.

After all, Schirripa lived in Vegas for over twenty years, holding down jobs ranging from bouncer to maitre ‘d. He even worked simultaneously as entertainment director at the Riviera while he played Bacala during his first season on HBO’s cult phenomenon. He does not play at any of the online poker rooms, but he knows the Sin City like his pocket.

It was while making the rounds at the Stardust and the Horseshoe in those early years that he became familiar with some of the local poker pros like Chip Reese and Brunson. Back then he simply knew them as “diehard poker guys.” Today, the world knows them as legends. It’s among the thousand or so reasons why Vegas looks very different to Schirripa on this fun November night. “I just knew guys who lived there that made a living playing poker. Those days are over, I guess. It’s a whole different ballgame now,” he reminisces. “Vegas is a good city if you’re in your 20s or you’re retired. It’s not for me. I moved there when I was 21. It was great.”

You can tell by the way he teases Brunson that he still feels a little comfortable in Sin City. Of course, it helps that his friends from TV’s most notorious crime family have also descended on PURE for the first annual Comedy Cares Celebrity Poker Tournament, hosted by Sopranos creator David Chase and the show’s star James Gandolfini.

They’re all here, the names reading like the box score at a typical Italian family dinner: Christopher Moltisanti, Uncle Junior, Paulie Walnuts, Silvio Dante, Johnny Sack. Practically the entire cast has got Schirripa’s back. And for anyone who knows the group, that’s not so unusual. It might not outlast the considerable shadow cast on pop culture by HBO’s signature powerhouse, but the friendships these men have made on and off the set are practically inconceivable by Hollywood standards. So what better way for the gang to come together over a few hands of Hold ‘em in Las Vegas?

“I love them like family,” says Steve Van Zandt, the E Street Band guitarist whose role as Soprano consigliere Dante is one of television’s least likely reinventions. “I don’t like them very much but I love them like family.” It’s a typical backhanded compliment among the cast, who has arrived at the $15,000-buy-in tournament to help raise money for a 460-000-square-foot addition to the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

It’s not the only time you’ll see this group together after hours. Series stars Schirripa, Michael Imperioli, John Ventimiglia, and Vince Curatola host a live variety show, Comedy You Can’t Refuse. Imperioli and Schirripa tell jokes while Ventimiglia and Curatola sing their favorite Sinatra standards in a show that has headlined at the Vegas Hilton, Harrah’s in Atlantic City, and Foxwood’s.

Curatola, the razor-sharp actor known for playing imprisoned underboss Sack, even teaches scene study at Studio Dante, the Manhattan theater founded by Imperioli, whose role as the thuggish Moltisanto eventually helped him graduate to the show’s writing staff. Like the event at PURE, you’ll occasionally see the Sopranos cast come together to help the helpless.

When Schirripa began organizing charity events benefiting the New York Fire Department (two of his childhood friends from Brooklyn were FDNY firefighters who died on 9/11), the rest of the cast was there to help. Same with Curatola’s work with the Hackensack University Medical Center, and Tony Sirico (who plays Walnuts) and his efforts for St. Jude’s Hospital in Brookville, New York.

When Schirripa beats Doyle Brunson at the Comedy Cares poker tournament, you know he’s going to savor the moment. He stands and makes allusions to striking out Babe Ruth, to knocking out a legend. Brunson can only sit back and laugh. “I made a fool of myself,” Schirripa admits about the victory celebration.

Van Zandt, a poker novice among the cast members, makes the tournament’s final table alongside comedian Ray Romano and Sopranos actress Aida Turturro, herself a beginner at the game. It’s around this time that the party kicks into high gear. Van Zandt credits his accomplishment to the tutelage of “my personal poker gurus, Johnny Marinacci and Mike Scelza,” themselves members of the extended Sopranos family who have appeared on the show.

The rest of the cast is simply dumbfounded. “Steve Van Zandt has hardly played poker in his life. That’s why I question, is it luck or is it skill?” Schirripa says. “I think it’s a combination. Jim Gandolfini, he knows how to play. Some of the other guys, so so.”

“To the people I love,” fictional mob boss Tony Soprano toasted towards the end of the show’s fifth season. “Nothing else matters.” The Sopranos gang uses the break to come together. “Over the last seven or eight years, we have become very much like an off-camera family,” says Imperioli. “We had mostly known one another from past TV and movies and just being part of the New York acting community. I think it’s part of the chemistry that also makes the show so successful.”

It’s not unusual for a lot of that camaraderie to come out in a poker game. Certain cast members even enjoy the odd game in their trailer during filming. Per the show’s dramatic license, the most intense hands tend to be interrupted by a rap on the door and a request to get back on the set. “We play sometimes in our trailers. We scream, we curse,” says Curatola. “If we filmed it, you would think it was part of the episode. We get cantankerous and we throw things.”