“You Gotta Know When to Hold ’em,
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
Know when to run.
You never count your money
While you’re Sittin’ at the table
There’ll be time enough for count in’
When the dealin’s done.
Take it away Kenny.
Just got back home from a road trip, albeit one of tres short duration, to the town of Ganonoque on the banks of the St. Lawrence, on the eastern tip of Lake Ontario if truth be told.
We had a good time, cruising, walking down to and along the water front 
playing around (a round that is, of miniature golf, so get your collective minds out of the gutter and put them back where they belong – in the sewer) – fooling around (again, please get your collective minds out of the sewer and put them back. where they belong – the gutter) – it was I actually, who was fooling around 
with a couple of remote control cars in the parking lot
and in our room of the lovely and highly recommended Ramada Inn,
right on KIng Street in downtown Ganonoque.
Not far from there, a little further along the road, is the OLG Casino where we spent a pleasant couple of hours at the gaming tables, playing Black Jack and Texas Hold ‘Em, and having a ball and making a bit of bread doing it, especially playing Texas Hold ‘Em.
You see the first and last time til yesterday that I was at the above-mentioned casino, I got stuck on a ten-person Hold-‘Em table where one has a one in ten chance of winning which one can only do if one beats the other nine players at the table. Tough. Note that in this game, the dealer just deals the cards and manages the chips unlike the dealers below.
Yesterday the first thing that I did upon entering the casino was to make a bee-line to register in the so-called “Poker” room. The ten-person table – and that was all there was going at that moment, one table – was full and I was eighth on the list.
I then had some time to kill, about 45 minutes to an hour – or so I reckoned – and so away I went to play Black Jack which I did for a while. Nothing spectacular and broke even there. I decided to abandon that particular table when the dealer had to re-shuffle the shoe.
I sat down at what I thought was a different Black Jack table but soon found out that I had landed up at a Texas Hold-‘Em table with a twist. For at this table, all you have to do to win, is to beat the dealer, just like in Black Jack, where, as in the game I am describing, what the other players do doesn’t really affect your hand except in very rare, and extremely unlucky circumstances for the house.
Anyway, I decided to leave after the dealer made the following remark to me: “it seems that you have at least tripled up since you sat down.” That was said at ten minutes before six at which point I turned to Lee and said that I intended to pack it in at six. The next ten minutes passed uneventfully as far as action at the table was concerned and come six, I pushed away, leaving my nearly full “on-the-house” Coke but taking my chips with me to the cashier where I cashed in and away we went, feeling alright.
But we both knew that as good as were feeling yesterday, we could feel equally as bad under different circumstances as early as our next visit to that Casino. For those of you thinking of “home-invading”, you wouldn’t find it to be worth the risk, financially that is.
A very good day was had by all on Sunday, including a really fine Chinese dinner served up at the aptly-named “Boston Chinese Restaurant”. Great food which we found was the case when we ate Chinese food in Boston itself, many years ago. Much better than what was served up at Boston Pizza further along the Ganonoque strip.
Peace.