If Carl Johnson says, it must be so.

Liz: It's just that with Ed here, it's no wonder I always bring my flatmates out, and then that only exacerbates things.
Shaun: What you mean?
Liz: Well, you guys hardly get on, do you?
Shaun: No, I mean, what does 'exacerbates' mean?

"Shaun of the Dead"

Bloody brilliant movie. My room mate was a huge fan of "Spaced" and forced us to watch this movie - well, to be honest when the marketing describes it as a "Rom Zom Com", how can you go wrong? It'll make you laugh, make you cry and change your life. Well, maybe at least one of those.

I played a grand total of one game of poker on the weekend, a $5 fast tournament at Pacific. Damn, I should have learned my lesson in these. The levels rise up every 5 minutes, so you need some action very early on. I wasn't getting good enough hands to play - well, by my standards anyway. Everybody else was going all-in with K6 suited. And winning. Damn. From the initial 500, we were down to 136 when I was the short stack at the table and limped to see four to my nut-flush. There was aminimum bet in front of me so I pushed. He called with TPTK and I rivered the fifth spade for the win and doubled up - this meant I was $10 above average, the first time in the entire game I occupied such a position.

The next hand I played was very similar - with 77 people left, I had an OESD as well as a flush draw, and if both the turn and river were golden a straight-flush draw. I pushed again and this time got nothing when TPTK held up. Out in 77th, 27 places out of the money. I feel I played just fine, and I couldn't have limped into the money without a pot so I needed this one. I took a chance, and lost. No hard feelings, and for once at least my downfall was my own, not somebody else hitting a 4 outer on me!

Still waiting on Ultimate Bet to process my withdrawal so I can get on to the Casino Whore challenge. I have never played Black Jack for real money before, and to be honest I never thought I would. I know about the different "systems" and card counting options available to everybody and their autistic brother, but that would require far too much work (and Mum wasn't keen on having more kids anyway). So I downloaded one of these strategy cards that the Scurvy Dog suggested, and looked at it. Pretty, all those colours. I never knew "surrender" was an option at casinos - looks like a good deal for them anyway. I thought about trying it out to see what happens if I follow that strategy for some play money. After all, I know the house always has the advantage. So instead of getting onto some of the online casinos, I tried the "Four Dragons" casino in Los Venturas. That's Los Venturas of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I'm happy to say that my starting stack of $300,000 is now $900,000, and I'm on easy street (even dating one of the freaky croupiers!). Of course, I had to reload a couple of times because I owed the casino more than $1,000,000, but I figured 6 had to come up on the roulette wheel EVENTUALLY. Sadly, it did not. In all honesty, the strategy did work for this little tiny Black Jack simulation over a very small sample of hands. That's good enough to jusitfy the $100 experiment for me. And it it hadn't given me reason to jusitfy the experiment, I'm sure I would have found it elsewhere anyway.

Not much else happening folks. The WGPBE is very hot, very tired and ready to get into the casino action. We spent most of yesterday playing Halo 2 - elliminating all weapons besides the shotgun and running around playing silly buggers with it. Good fun. Now, when anybody is killed, it is a ritual to move over their body and kneel down repeativly. This places the crotch of your character over their head, in a move many drunken college kids have dubbed "The Tea Bag". Nothing could have been funnier to us that having the Master Chief getting Tea Baged by an Elite after haing a plasma grenade explode on his face. This kept us entertained and laughing in hysterics for hours, which says a lot for our maturity levels.

Sorry for those non-Halo folk who have no idea what I am talking about. I'll post more about poker when I play more poker.