Well we finally managed it. Billy held his inaugural poker night on Saturday after the previous attempt had been postponed. Myself, Kev, Tommy, Niall, Chantal, Billy and Lisa rocked up for our first night of gambling. Preparation had been fairly rushed once we had learned that Billy was playing online, but we still spent the first two hours deciding/explaining the Hold ‘Em rules we’d be playing under and organising food.

It was a strictly low stakes game, so it was decided that everyone would buy $25 worth of chips and away we went. Niall adopted the rube approach, pretending he had no idea while at the same time piling up the chips. Chantal was the same, having begun her deception, as soon as we’d collected her on the way to Billy’s, by saying that she’d be worried she’d giggle too much when she had good cards. She racked up a significant pile before admitting it was all a ruse and she was a bit of a shark. I did pretty well too, though since Billy and Tom took it upon themselves to occasionally bet without actually having looked at their cards it was possible to get by with only a rough idea of what to do.

It finished up after about four hours with Chantal making a $32 profit, me making $18 and Niall making $11. One other point to note is that the three of us who finished with the most amount of money were also the three supping on the beers. Food, or drink, for thought…