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Hottest poker avatars on PKR

You can’t deny Lara Croft and the Little Mermaid are hot.

But which is the hottest poker avatar on PKR? Here’s my top 5:

AngelKate22 – fox

Take Chip – if you like a red head. Looks dirty

Mega Vino – national treasure

Fara678 – classic blonde

Titesouris – sexy girl next door. Hot

Guy or girl, I congratulate your fine work. These are the hottest chicks on PKR unless anyone has any other recommendations – they should pay out to number one.

Ever wondered where poker card suits originated? Actually they were thought to be an early Chinese gambling invention of around the 9^th Century. What we now know as Spades, Hearts, Diamonds and Clubs started life a little differently. There were still four suits but these were depicted as coins, a string of coins, a number of strings and then loads more strings on the last suit. These were thought to be ‘money cards’ used for the earliest form of poker – the card itself became the stake.

After growth in popularity through India and Persia, the suits transformed to become a ring, cup, sword and baton – typical signs of wealth, royalty and so on. By way of Egypt they made their way to Europe in the 1300’s. Suits began to vary by country influenced by indigenous symbols. For instance, in Germany they became hearts, bells, leaves and acorns – still used in areas of Germany today.

It was the influence of French King Charles VI that produced the suits we know and use now. The spade, taken from the German leaf symbol, was designed to represent royalty. The club, taken from the German symbol of the acorn represented peasants. Hearts remained the same and stood for the church while diamonds, traditionally the ring, represented the merchants.

A real poker face

Finally, a deck of cards is said to hold religious and astronomical significance. The four suits are the four seasons, red and black are day and night, 13 cards per suit are the 13 phases of the lunar cycle, while 52 cards in the deck are the number of weeks in a year. What’s more, if the value of all cards in the deck is added, it reaches 365 (1 joker added) which represents the number of days in the year – add the other joker and you have a leap year! Of course, all of the above was said to be the excuse of a 15^th Century poker player who, when caught with a deck of cards, claimed their intended purpose was that other than gambling!

Not everyone is blessed with a photographic memory so here’s a technique, suggested by Derren Brown in his book Tricks of the Mind, that could help you remember anything from your day-to-day tasks to building up a bank of information on your opponents that you’ll be able to access anytime, anywhere.

Here’s how it goes and really try this as you’ll be surprised how well it works. I’ll use Derren’s example. Try and remember the following list of 20 words – give yourself about 30 seconds or so and then try and write them down afterwards in order.

It’s pretty difficult to remember too many more than about 9 or 10 isn’t it? The following ‘linking’ technique will leave you stuck with this list in your head for the next six months.

The key is to create highly visual links with the words. Take a word and apply a vivid picture to it – take time to ‘feel’ the picture i.e. if it is a disgusting image, feel the revulsion of it. Make sure it is an unusual picture too. Mundane images don’t work as they’re not weird enough to stop your brain in its tracks. Now link one image to another by adding some kind of interaction between the images – again, the weirder the better.

Here’s that list again with the above applied. Read it and take the time to clearly picture and ‘feel’ each image – is it gross or funny and so on. Give it a go – it’s surprising what your brain can absorb if you ask it to remember in the right way.

Telephone/Sausage: Trying to dial an old-fashioned phone with a flaccid, uncooked sausage. It feels disgusting and cold and doesn’t fit in the dial. You can only move the dial a bit before it purrs back into place.

Sausage/Monkey: You’re watching a documentary of a monkey in the jungle cooking a sausage over a barbecue. These are rare monkeys and it’s the first time they’ve been filmed. Next to him, he has a selection of dips.

Monkey/Button: You never have to do your shirt buttons up again because you have a monkey to do it for you. You can stand there in your socks while your monkey does up each button with his little monkey fingers.

Button/Book: It is a book entirely about buttons and in order to open it you have to unfasten a line of big colourful buttons down the side of it. A stupid marketing gimmick which makes opening it really irritating.

Book/Cabbage: Opening a book to have a quiet lunchtime read only to find all the pages have rotten cabbage stuck to them. It stinks and has ruined all the pages which are soggy with putrid cabbage juice. It’s all over your hands too.

Cabbage/Glass: A beautiful but enormous cabbage, realistically created out of glass. The artist is showing it off , flicking it with his fingers and making a pinging sound. People are stood around with glasses of wine appreciating it. You actually think it looks quite ridiculous and ugly.

Glass/Mouse: You go to drink a glass of wine and find the wine has gone and there’s a little mouse in there instead. He’s clearly drunk and hiccupping bubbles of pink fizz with a limp party hat skewed in between his ears.

Mouse/Stomach: your stomach is full of squeaking mice and they start to stream out of your navel like the rats out of Hamelin.

Stomach/Cardboard: A pregnant lady covering her stomach with cardboard from old boxes. Taping it round her until she’s enormous. Now she feels protected.

Cardboard/Ferry: A massive P&O ferry is sinking in the sea because a seriously misjudged cost-cutting exercise meant the entire ferry was made out of cardboard. People are escaping on lifeboats that they haven’t realised are made of ordinary paper.

Ferry/Christmas: A little ferry sat on top of a Christmas tree, perhaps at a school for the hard of hearing. Little streamers, windows, everything. Tinsel around the hull.

Christmas/Athlete: It’s you and all your relations you normally spend Christmas with running round a race track with Christmas hats and crackers and the track is covered in snow. Your Gran is doing really well, racing ahead in her coat, hat and bag.

Athlete/Key: The winning athlete is given a four-foot long golden key on a ribbon as a prize. She tries to hold it up as the National Anthem plays but it’s too heavy and she wishes she was given a real medal.

Key/Wigwam: A key hangs unnoticed from the head gear of a Native American Indian. He really needs the loo but can’t unlock his Wigwam to get in. He searches red-faced for the key that he can’t see on his head dress.

Wigwam/Baby: Latest new-age fad, put your baby to sleep in a wigwam each night – dreamcatcher above him. Imagine a giant baby asleep inside sucking in and blowing out the sides of the wigwam as it snores.

Baby/Kiwi: A baby shoving green furry kiwi fruit into its mouth one after the other. A huge pile to be eaten and its got bright green kiwi juice all down its bib and throwing up kiwi vomit. He loves kiwis, the little tinker!

Kiwi/Bed: Tucking up a little kiwi for the night in a king-size bed. Pulling the covers almost over it, then sitting next to it to read it a story about the Little Kiwi until it falls asleep.

Bed/Paintbrush: You’ve re-decorated and your bed no longer matches so rather than buy new covers you decide to paint them the same colour as the walls. Sloshing paint all over the entire bed, watching it go hard and uncomfortable.

Paintbrush/Walnut: Not owning a nutcracker, you’re forced to try and open a walnut with the end of a paintbrush. Trouble is, you’re using the brush end which isn’t working and there’s paint sloshing everywhere. It’s a mess but you really want that walnut.

If you took the time to do it properly, you’ll be able to remember this list for ages – repeat it backwards at the drop of a hat even.

It’s a simple technique that you can apply to any aspect of life – don’t have a piece of paper and need to remember some shopping, need to remember someone’s name etc. In the poker room it is a good way to remember winning hands from players, styles of play etc as it takes no effort to actively remember it. Once the image is in your head you can simply add to it and then shut it away again until you need it next. You’ll find you’ll be able to remember the whole table’s shown hands as the game progresses and build up a valuable bank of information to improve your game going forward.

Ben doesn’t like full houses and this is one reason why. He has pocket aces when the flop came with A-K-K. His opponent went all in. Thinking he had the game, he called. To cut the story short, the opponent had pocket Kings. The turn and river didn’t help Ben’s cause with 2 and a 9.

Henry has pocket aces with only five players in a home game. He decided to raise pre-flop. Then someone re-raised him so Henry went all in. The other player called while the rest of the table folded. The other guy opened his A-9 hand. Henry is sure that this is his game when the flop was K-5-3 rainbow. Then the turn was a 9. Henry prayed that river is not another 9. Well, his prayer was unanswered. River was a 9.

This could happen to anyone. There’s a guy who had pocket 8s. The flop was 8-8-J. What he did not know is that another player was holding a pair of Js. Then the both of them slow played, both confident of their hands. The river was a Jack. The opponent called all in and the guy called. The guy proudly opened his hand only to realize he lost to quad Js. The other players consoled the loser.