The New Turbine Poker Watch from Perrelet Breaks All Rules of the Game

It is said that the credit for the first self-winding mechanism, in particular a double rotor and turbine system, goes to Swiss horologist Abraham-Louis Perrelet. It was built exclusively for pocket watches in 1777. Ever since its revival in the early 1990s, luxury watch brand Perrelet has developed a double rotor system that connects the winding weight of the automatic system to a rotor on the dial side. Perfecting this movement is the newly launched Turbine Poker, a 50-piece limited-edition watch for Poker enthusiasts.

Don’t expect a serious game of Poker though. The watch prefers to play the game as per its own ‘riddle-style’ rules. You can see cards beneath a 12-blade wheel, playing hide-and-seek with us. It rotates constantly following the wrist movement and you can see the deal only when the rotation fully stops. Serious poker or not, the time-only watch definitely has some serious technical aspects. 

The 44 mm stainless steel watch gets black PVD coating, a flat and smooth bezel and redesigned lugs with a black crown at 3 o’clock. The outer periphery of the dial gets a 60-minute track in white, accompanied by rhodium-plated Arabic numerals for even hour markers and bar-shaped ones for odd markers, filled with white Super-LumiNova. The large hour, minute hands also get Super-LumiNova coating and there is a red seconds hand.

Below all this lies the 12-bade rotating turbine, which also acts as the first peripheral rotor. Under the rotating turbine lies the third element of the watch, a black subdial with the poker cards. The cards are of the royal flush in red and black, in suits of hearts and spades with aces, kings, queens, jacks and 10s, along with a pair of 7 of hearts and spades. 

The watch is powered by an in-house self-winding Calibre P-331-MH movement with 42 hours of power reserve from a single barrel. This movement has an updated design and is the brand’s first-ever COSC chronometer-certified automatic movement. Turning the watch over showcases the sapphire crystal caseback with circular graining decoration on the bridges and the rhodium-plated oscillating weight, engraved with the Maison's logo, the individual watch number out of 50 and ‘Limited Edition’. The Turbine Poker watch is finished on a black alligator leather strap with rubber lining. There is an additional rubber strap with a fastening tool for easy exchange.

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