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“WOMEN seem to make naturally good poker players, because we’re good at reading body language and non-verbal communication, interestingly enough what half of the game is about.”

Who said that?

With no hint of irony that is the considered opinion of one Abi Titmuss, a woman for whom non-verbal communication is a speciality, it being the root of her fame.

According to Titmuss, who for those of without access to a search engine is the one former Blue Peter presenter John Leslie made out with earlier (on camera), poker is 50 per cent tells, tics and touch.

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IN Las Vegas for the WSOP, Barack Obama arrives.

There is no escape. But what’s that in his pocket?

The Obama campaign is in Vegas for a “Change That Works for You” rally.

Change is what Obama is about. He talks about change all the time. He never changes talking about change and may only change when the change has come.

Before Vegas, Obama has been in New Mexico, where he’s asked what lucky charms he carries on him.

“I try to select a number on any given day,” says Obama, who
changes his lucky charms, as he must.

During the course of the campaign, he says he has collected “probably 50, maybe 100″ good luck trinkets, including, we trust, Anorak’s lucky badger’s head.

His spokesman Robert Gibbs then asks Obama if he could borrow the lucky poker chip for the evening’s trip to Vegas. “I might let you take it down,” says Obama.

Ok, with some jokes, a little embellishment and a punchline, it might make good anecdote. But the point is not so much that Obama relies of superstition for victory, but that he would lend anyone his lucky token.

As Robert Johnson told us:

HBOS, the country’s biggest mortgage lender, says it expects the number of houses sold across the country this year to fall by 45%.

And those houses that do sell will do so for “up to 9%” less than now.

Citigroup expects house prices to drop by 20% and volumes 50% by the end of 2009. HBOS and Citigroup are depressed. Banks are as bout as loved as, well, bankers. Shares in both banks are way down the on the year.

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CAN you learn to play poker from a book?

If poker theory as useful as poker practical?

Daniel Negreanu has new book out. It’s titled “Power Hold’em Strategy”.

It says here: “You’ll learn how to play hold’em with cards you never would have played before — and with fantastic results.”

The blurb stop just short of: read this and win-win-win at poker, but there will be “fantastic results”. So maybe…

Negreanu is little less bold:

“When you apply the advice we’ve given you to your own game, I have no doubt that you will improve rapidly. Equally important, this book should help you understand the mindset of small-ball players so that when you face off against one, you won’t be confused by his approach. Instead, you will be able to exploit him.”

In other words: with this book you will have a bit more knowledge then Joe Shmo and should defeat him.

Unless, of course, he’s read Hold’em Wisdom for all Players by Daniel Negreanu or More Hold’em Wisdom for all Players by Daniel Negreanu.

Or played online, like Marc Coupar, who has ditched his career to become a pro poker player.

Says he: “It started out as just a hobby but pretty much from the start I was winning a lot. I read a few theory books but I’ve just honed my own style of play and it has been really successful.

You can learn to player from books? But can you learn to be any good..?

DID you know that Australians spend far more on gambling than they do on food?

In 2006-07, the land Down Under spent almost AS$91.5 million, or AS$4350 per head, on food, Bureau of Statistics figures say.

But in 2005-06 adults spent AS$148 million - an average of $9491 each - on gambling. These figures do also include tourists, although they, one presumes, eat, too.

Is this because food in Australia is cheap – how much can insects and fizzy urine cost?
But people with a cause interpret the figures differently, and Family First senator Steve Fielding says it shows people are spending too much on gambling.

Says he: “The Rudd Government can halve the number of problem gamblers by supporting Family First’s poker machine plans. This would, over time, get poker machines out of our local clubs and pubs and restrict pokies to racetracks and casinos.”

But are Australians gambling too much? Or eating too little..?

Source

WHAT is it about gamblers that people who don’t gamble are so suspicious of?

Over the newswires, the Poker Anorak gets this message: “Deadbeat parents, listen up: Win big at the casino tables in West Virginia or Colorado, and your kids might win, too.”

Why should deadbeat mums and dads be at the casino, rather than, say, at the off license, supermarket or circling life’s plughole while sat on the sofa watching Jeremy Kyle?

The states plan to “garnish” the winnings of casino gamblers who owe child support. (Did they say “garnish?)

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THE Poker Anorak has long bemoaned women only poker tournaments as being divisive and insulting to women and men.

It’s not tennis, US politics or snooker; it’s poker.

At their worst, women’s only tourneys are like watching Loose Women, the shoot-me-now daytime telly show in which journalists, the institutionalised and heavily medicated watch a panel of Z-list celebrity women talks about incontinence, bosoms and useless men.

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AT the poker table, a conversation is being struck up:

“Where are you from?” she asks.
“New York City.”
“New York City! How about that. We’re from Arkansas! What do you all think about Mrs. Clinton up there?”

Riding the F-Train is prepared for this small talk. He’s been reading up.

Before leaving New York, I read something somewhere… that claimed that most of Arkansas thinks Bill and Hillary Clinton are gods. Never, under any circumstances, should you say anything negative about the Clintons to someone from Arkansas…

“We hate her,” the old woman states emphatically.”Yep! They’re real popular in Niggertown. Well, that’s what *we* call it.”

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EVER play poker with an animal?

They did:
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MORE on the stop-start WSOP, which starts in a few weeks, ends a few days later for a few months and starts again for a final flurry.

Writing in the Houston Chronicle, Daniel Negreanu considers the matter and says that the winner will be the one who uses the break best.

His position is that the schedule change will benefit those players that “study video of their opponents, seek expert coaching advice, and work on their game plans”.

Negreanu’s thinking is based on American Football which he says improved when teams began to study their opponents by watching videos of the games.

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THE International Monetary Fund says “inflation concerns have resurfaced after years of quiescence”.

Why? Because food and energy is getting more expensive, that’s why.

Just look at the crude oil market shoot for the stars. The price of crude has reached a record of almost $124 a barrel – that’s a rise of 99 per cent in the past 12 months.

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WHAT does a poker chip look like to you?

It’s not a trick question, and, no, there’s no GSCE in Chipology for answers of between 200-300 words. Discuss.

It’s just that the Poker Anorak has just spotted a 20-year-old Canadian visiting her local bank.

In her hand she holds a roll of chips.

We should note that in Canada there exists the two-dollar coin, the Twonie.

The name is a cunning blend of the number “two” with the name of the Loonie, Canada’s one-dollar coin.

We should not mock. In the UK, the two pound coin has yet to earn a nickname.

Suggestions on a postcard as to what it should be called.

Back to the woman in the bank. She hands the teller the coins and makes off with the equivalent in cash, about $100.

Clever stuff.

Only she then tries the same trick again in the same bank and is collared.

Who has not be so defrauded by chips or tokens? Is there any gambler who has not sifted through their fruit machine winnings and found a Kenyan Schilling, a washer or a homemade piece of metal?

We can recall those halcyon days of 50pence parking meters, which could – we are told, yer honour – be triggered by wrapping a bent matchstick around a 10pence piece.

The question is not so much one of honesty but if poker chips have any intrinsic value, other than the number the casino has ascribed them.

What is a chip worth, and can a chip ever be worth as much as money?

Discuss.

IT’S hard to look at the cards when there’s an aroused bull approaching from the rear.

Is that tell on the other’s players face, a bead of sweat, or is it a line of snot flicked from the bull’s flared nostrils?

This is entertainment in the USA. This is rodeo day at Angola Prison, Louisiana, where Convicts’ Poker is the go.

The game’s winner is the last man sitting as the bull stampedes the table. He gets $50.

The show’s finale is called Guts and Glory. The clue is in the title.

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YOU’Ve made it to the Main Event WSOP final table.

You and eight others are now vying to win the millions. You’re on a roll and keen to get on with it. You’re as hot as Vegas on July 14.

July? That’s too soon. You need to wait until Nov. 9 for the next hand to be dealt.
Jeffrey Pollack, the WSOP commissioner, says: “This is no different than the final chapter of American Idol or The Apprentice. It’s about building interest and excitement for the final chapter of this story.”

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WOULD you steal from a bank? And is a bank a legitimate target, more so than, say, a casino, an orphanage or a blind man’s purse?

This is a hypothetical question and in no way suggests that you are a chancer on the look out for an easy buck.

It’s just that two “poker kings” who stole £150,000 to fund a Vegas spree have been jailed for 18 months.

The Scotsman newspaper reports on Brothers Mohammed Imran, 33, and Mohammed Irfan, professional poker players who stole more than £150,000 from cash machines over three days.

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POKER fans, punters and living things, every wonder what the odds are of dying from a certain misadventure?

Well wonder now more:

YOU can learn to play poker.

You can learn to play poker in a classroom, just as you can learn to drive a car in a dodgem, learn to be an astronaut in a game of Space Invaders and learn to play tennis by eating strawberries at Wimbledon.

In the Olympus Ballroom at the Caesars Indiana Hotel & Casino, the WSOP Academy is teaching people to play poker.

It’s a WSOP Academy poker camp.

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AMY’S audition for Sarah Ferguson: The Engagement Years continues for another week.

The ginger hair, the lurid frilly, fussy hideous dresses and the fetish for open-toed sandals, alleged, are all reminiscent of young Fergie in her pomp.

Free £10 bet

Such a reason surely lies behind the fact that Amy is 250-1 on the Betfair markets to be named as I’ll Do Anything’s Nancy.

If Amy wants to improve her chances, we suggest she goes for the Bianca Jackson look, the EastEnders harridan whose return to the soap brought with it an upsurge in viewing figures.

On the telly, we like our gingers boisterous and feisty. Amy needs to break some cups and start calling Lloyd Webber Andaaaaaayyyy.

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YOU got to know when to gold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em…”

You gotta la-la-la-la-dum-dum, la-la-la dum-da-kerchum…

Who can forget the rousing theme song to the England rugby team’s World Cup bid?

But not all poker lyrics are so memorable. The Poker Anorak takes a look at five of the most interesting poker lyrics of all time:

5: Poker Lyrics - Electric Light Orchestra

Play me another hand,
Loose everything I am,
Until we meet again.

To rhyme “hand” and “gain” is no easy thing. But having achieved the barely possible, ELO move on to safer ground:

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A POKER game in New Mexico has decided the outcome of an election.

It is democracy in evidence.

Well, it beats deciding who wins on Hanging Chads.

Over in the United States, Josie Richards has a pair of nines.

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NUDITY in Las Vegas. The Mirage casino is opening its Bare lounge.
The Las Vegas Review Journal describes it thus: “You can enjoy European-style sun bathing in its two luxury pools while a DJ spins the latest in party music. You don’t have to worry about anyone looking in as you’ll be secluded by towering palms.”

The idea that its takes a gigantic palm tree to secure your modesty is an attractive one for many male revellers, we are certain.

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