A prosecutor elicited testimony Monday coloring professional poker player Ernest Scherer III as a deceiving philanderer who kept the fact he had a wife and child even from a good friend, then, after his parents’ murder, borrowed money he never paid back and searched for safe-haven countries on the Web.

A former friend, a fellow high-stakes poker player and a computer gambling forensics detective took the stand on the third day of preliminary hearing to decide if there is enough evidence to put Scherer III, 31, on trial for his parents’ double-murder.

Authorities charge that Scherer III, deeply in debt and eyeing an inheritance of at least $1.3 million, drove from Las Vegas to the Castlewood Country Club near Pleasanton and fatally beat and stabbed his parents, Ernest Scherer Jr. and Charlene Abendroth, on March 7, 2008. He has pleaded not guilty.

Scherer III exchanged fleeting grins with Robert Golick as the Commerce Casino host and poker player took the stand. Golick testified that he lent Scherer two pink $5,000 poker chips at the Los Angeles card club about 10 days after his parents’ bodies were discovered March 14, 2008.

That wasn’t so unusual among the clique of big-money players, Golick said. He described Scherer III as a good player who favored games with individual bets in the hundreds of dollars. Golick said Scherer told him he was tapped from funeral