2004-12-10 - 12:43 p.m.

Tonight is poker night at Bruce n� Pablo�s. I feel there�s nothing that promotes general feelings of wellbeing better than losing flipping great wadges of cash to close friends. I�m slightly apprehensive at my utter lack of gambling skillz, though I�m moist with excitement about playing with the shiny, casino-weight chips that we�ve invested in. Being robbed blind is less painful when you have good-looking gaming accessories.

We might even get visors, and Bruce is going to wear reflective glasses so that no-one can read his reactions. My poker expression is less to do with facial discipline than not having much of a clue what is going on, exactly. You don�t exactly instil your opponents with money-leaking amounts of fear when you have to keep checking what beats what. (�Er, can you tell me what three of a kind beats again�hahahaha, I don�t HAVE that of course�er�just a hypothetical question�er...I fold.�)

My introduction to playing cards for money happened in the none-more-glamorous environs of the casino of the overnight ferry from Harwich to Hook of Holland. I say casino, it was more of a skanky dolly bird with her own pack of cards and a tatty line in green baize. Keep your Monte Carlo and Vegas Strip, I want to play my cards on a Formica table with a croupier who might have been in jail as recently as that morning.

I did seem to be losing heavily within minutes, though a slight contributory factor may have been the fact that the ferry shop had run out of soft drinks, and my party had been using vermouth as a vodka mixer substitute. �Counting� was not high on my list of �Things I can do without physical assistance� that night. Neither was �Seeing�. Neither was �Realising you�re about to blow all your holiday money on a hand of cards so bad that it has yet to be discovered by science.�

I woke the next day with a mouth like a dingo�s chuff and no legal currency. Luckily, that�s the perfect way to experience Amsterdam, so no great loss.

The way back was salvation, though. I found a chip in my pocket that I must have mistaken for my room key or something to eat, and by betting on red and black on the roulette wheel, I was able to build up that solitary token to a pile of a value approaching almost one tenth of my original losses. Pretty sweet, huh?

With such an armoury of gambling acumen at my disposal, I fully expect to have cleaned up by the end of the night. Or more probably, be pawning my visor first thing in the morning.