Halloween night brought with it the usual plethora of revolting young kids knocking the door every five minutes demanding unrealistic amounts of cash and threatening to redistribute the contents of our refuse sacks if it wasn’t forthcoming. Out of the kindness of her heart my wife gave the first few visitors a handful of coins under the condition they wouldn’t spend the money on booze. I’m sure they didn’t, the little darlings probably blew it on crack instead. When I was young we were lucky to get a few sweets or an apple. Nowadays it ends in trouble if they don’t receive enough money to put a down payment on a small house.

    After two hours of trudging backwards and forwards to answer the front door I decided the best plan was to turn all the lights off and pretend we’re out. Next year I intend to electrify the entire front of the house. We won’t be disturbed very much after words gets round the first couple of visitors get 10,000 volts shot though their backsides.

    Some of the costumes were quite good though; a few vampires wandered the streets with ghosts, werewolves, zombies and the odd Ozzy Osborne or two. I was particularly impressed by the child who dressed up as a horse…until she told me it was supposed to be Celine Dion.

    Half way through the evening a commotion attracted my attention. I presumed someone had created something truly horrifying as scores of infants scattered in all directions, screaming and panicking as they fled. But it just turned out to be my mother-in-law walking back from the shops with a new hairdo.

    However, the biggest horror story of this year’s festivity concerned the lunchtime freeroll.

    But first I have confession to make.

    My bankroll yesterday amounted to one whole dollar and in the early hours of the morning I have a brainwave. Why not enter the 1c/2c tables and increase my winnings that way? Excellent idea…with one huge caveat.

    These tables are populated with the same donkeys that play so terribly in the freerolls. I shall explain. In the freerolls, no matter what cards you’re dealt there will always be at least one maniac who goes all in regardless of their own. This seems to happen every hand. For example; I am dealt J-J and call a 50 raise pre-flop. The flop comes down J-9-6 rainbow and I make a pot sized bet. Immediately the lunatic calls me and shows 8-2 off. The turn and river are the 7 and 5 and I lose to a straight.

    This kind of play has nothing to do with poker; it’s nothing more than a lucky dip.

    On my 1c/2c table I make a couple of bets pre-flop with K-K and end up losing the lot to Q-10 off suit and lose to trips. I doubt that half of these players could even count to eleven without taking their underpants off – and even then they’d probably only manage to get to ten and a half.

    So, I’m back where I started.

    I have s suggestion for the poker sites: why not introduce an IQ test as a condition of entry? If they can’t match the intelligence of a mountain gorilla then they should not be allowed to enter. They could then go back to sniffing their underpants or performing obscene acts whilst leafing through this months Playtex catalogue.

    They say that if you can’t spot the donkey in the first ten minutes then it’s probably you.

    Should I be worried that my ears seem to have grown and I’ve got an inexplicable craving for carrots?

Starting bank:  $0