pokersharks: Poker Sharks

European Space Operations Centre (Unofficial) Poker School.

Welcome the ESOC (Unofficial) Poker School. We have been playing, or at least attempting, low limit poker since February 1999, when motivated by nothing more than greed and a desire fleece as many people as possible, I organised the very first game on record. Since that momentous day I have donated many hundreds of groats to various people from around the world who have sauntered through the hallowed gates of Valhalla only to be asked "What yer doing Thursday night?". Many have come and gone, some richer, some poorer, but all I hope enlightened by such witty banter as "Fer Chrissakes will you hurry up and deal!".

Being bears of very little brain, our creed is correspondingly simple. Our rotating hosts, under biologically explicit threats, provide free beer for the night in the hope it will encourage a rash of betting similar, if not worse, than the Great Plague. Why they think we need encouragement I never know, but free beer is always welcome.

We always play Hold'Em, and for some reason like to think we play O8. We also dabble in about every other vice under the Sun, but never, ever, wild cards, for they are the work of Stan. We usually play Thursdays cos Fridays don't count as work days, and we usually play in the Griesheim/Darmstadt area, because our maps have "Here be dragons" marked on the periphery of them. Occasionally we go to the Wiesbaden casino, but only if accompanied by a responsible adult.

Should you care to join us, and you wouldn't be reading this if you weren't thinking about it, all I can say is we're mostly harmless, drink far too much beer, and as often as not are trying to escape from the wife. Rather worryingly, the wives sometimes play as well.

So, if I may quote the legendary Nick 'The Greek' Dandalos, "The next best thing to playing and winning is playing and losing. The main thing is to play".

Look forward to meeting you,

Frank