Tag Archives: poker

Poker Replacement

Leave a reply

I made a joke over the weekend that when I come to power, I’m going to force people to go through every western and digitally replace every poker or blackjack scene with Magic the Gathering. It was supposed to be a funny joke about the juxtaposition of a nerdy game vs the toughness and manliness of the wild west. But then I thought that there must be other replacements for poker.

Board games were a definitive out. It’s hard enough to keep track of all of the pieces while you’re living in a house. Imagine trying to find the top hat for your Monopoly game while you’re on the dusty trail fighting outlaws and trying to maintain law.

Thus we must consider portability. It has to fit in the saddlebag and be able to be kept together easily enough. So, Dungeons and Dragons is straight out. All those clanking miniatures, books, maps, the thousands of dice and such. No way that a cowboy can herd cattle with that. This also ties into knowing how to play. Everyone knows how to play poker but what if you have someone that plays pathfinder instead of DND? What then?

Finally, we have to think about what could cause the most tension when playing it. How many people have died over particularly vexing hands of poker. We know that Bill Hickok was killed holding a hand of black aces and eights. So, that means that you need to have some tension. That leads me to figuring out what the ultimate replacer to poker would be for the cowboys and cowgirls.

Thats right, it’s Jenga. Portable? Yes, sir. Instead of carrying 52 cards, you’re carrying 54 little pieces of wood. It can easily be made again, what carpenter can’t make 54 tiny little rectangles? Plus, if you’re truly desperate, you can use them as fire starters. Tension?

“Son, you topple that tower, you’ll be eating a bullet.”

Boom. Both me proving my point with an onomatopoeia and what’s going to happen to the kid when he topples that tower. Then we got Jenga, where the rules are so simple. Remove block put on top. Done. Plus, you can’t cheat as well at Jenga as when you’re playing poker.

There, I think I’ve proven that card games should be replaced by Jenga in westerns. No one asked for this but there it is.

Something I thought about Casino Royale

Leave a reply

I think that Daniel Craig is one of the best James Bonds because he hates the character and that comes through his performance of it. But there is one thing that suddenly bothered me about his appearance in Casino Royale, which I think overall is a good movie.

There’s a scene where the bad guy played by Mads Mikkelson tricks him into losing everything. Bond stares at the cards for a long time then gets up, grabs a knife and starts stalking after Mads. He tells his associate to get Eva Green out of the hotel.

This is because he plans to messily murder Mads with that knife. Blowing their cover and the entire mission. He’s only stopped by the CIA agent who tells him that he has not just English money but American money for him to lose.

This can only be seen as James Bond having a giant sulk and deciding to throw a tantrum. The only problem is that his tantrum would have probably ended up with him killed because he decided to slice up a man instead of use his gun. And Mads would have probably still ended up with the money.

Also at the end of the movie, James slides the dealer one of his big old betting tablets that equals about 500 thousand or one million dollars. I am all for tipping service workers but that money was supposed to go somewhere else. That could have put money in the mouths of a lot of different people.

And you might be saying “Frank, Taylor Swift gave her crew over 178 million dollars in bonuses during the Eras Tour.” My response to that is that is money she earned, to do with as she liked. It was not money that was going to go to the public, which is what the money James Bond had just won was going to do.

It just feels a little irresponsible. Both to give away one million dollars and to send this giant crybaby on a mission.

Here’s Victoria Coren Mitchell also dog piling on what an asshole James Bond is. Unlike James she didn’t need her opponent to bleed from his eyes to win several poker championships.