A professional poker player is to stand trial on charges he murdered his parents.

According to media reports, a judge in Alameda County, California, USA, ruled Friday that there is enough evidence to try 31-year-old Ernest Scherer III in the stabbing and beating deaths of his father, Ernest Scherer Jr., 60, also a poker pro, and his mother, Charlene Abendroth, 57.

Police allege that the younger Scherer drove from Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, to Pleasanton, California, USA, near San Francisco, on March 7, 2008, killed his parents at their home in the Castlewood Country Club and then drove to his home? in Brea, California, USA, near Los Angeles.

The younger Scherer faces two counts of murder with enhancements for multiple murders and murder for financial gain, making him eligible for the death penalty.

He is scheduled to be arraigned on September 4, 2009.

His public defender, Richard Foxall, argued at the preliminary hearing that authorities had pieced together a circumstantial case built on speculation and unconnected facts.

But Alameda Country Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Horner said the evidence, including that the defendant asked friends to buy him a gun three days before the killings, washed his car and bought new tires immediately after the killings and searched the Internet for countries without extradition policies, showed otherwise.

“The reasonable inferences from each of the facts point only to guilt,” Horner said.

The evidence, Horner added, showed that the younger Scherer needed money to sustain a lavish lifestyle that included gambling, travel, a longtime mistress and other women.

The defendant, Horner also said, was angry at his parents for not helping him financially.

The younger Scherer stood to inherit about $1.5 million, according to his parents’ will.

Additional evidence cited by the judge include the fact that the car shown in surveillance photos passing the country club at night on March, 7, 2008, and again after midnight, was the younger Scherer’s 2001 red convertible Chevrolet Camaro.

Because there were no signs of forced entry into his parents’ home, and many valuables remained, Horner noted the evidence points to a “staged burglary.”

The defendant’s father suffered a fractured skull and a dozen stab wounds and blunt force injuries around his head and neck.

The defendant’s mother suffered 20 stab and blunt force injuries.

“The man who stabbed these individuals and bludgeoned them with a blunt instrument was terribly, terribly angry,” Horner said. “The reasonable inference does not support the idea that these murders were committed by a stranger.”

The day after the murder victims’ bodies were found, PokerHelper.com was the first media outlet to report that the murdered couple’s son was a poker pro.

That led Pleasanton police to suspect the son, gather evidence and eventually charge him with murder.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)