It's a funny old world

In Walthamstow for the £30 rebuy at the Equal Chance club. This is the craziest game of the month there and this time it was even worse due to a TV crew making a documentary on the club. This led to a "feature" table of the loosest fishiest players in the club doing their plums for the cameras. Hardly a compelling argument for the luck vs. skill debate.

I got out of the game early when I realised I was never going to get a stack and remain within my budget without some serious divine intervention. Instead I waited for Rod and killed time playing pot limit Omaha split eights or better online. Now Omaha hi/lo is perhaps one of the sickest poker games around, a true game of odds and calculations and thus home to some degenerate gamblers but nothing compared to what I was about to witness.

A large gentleman of middle eastern origin had one of the club staff deposit £1000 into his account via credit card for him and set up the terminal for him to play on. High stakes game? I wondered. Nope he was going to play an online fruit machine.

For the next half hour he roboticaly clicked away the full £1000, £2 a click even the "winnings". Most of the time he wasn't even looking at the screen as he was in conversation with a friend. The barman brought them both cokes and a heated discussion ensued as the fact that alcohol had once been served in the glasses was an issue for them both. I couldn't help but ponder the odd hypocrisy of a religious belief that meant they would argue over how well a glass had been cleansed of alcohol while mindlessly gambling what must be a months wages for someone.