As if he wasn’t talented enough already! Michael Cera, one of Hollywood’s youngest and most promising stars, has apparently got a real talent for playing poker.

Apparently Cera has been cleaning up while playing poker with his co-stars during downtime on the set of his newest film Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. While the reports are that he plays and cleans up like a shark, he remains quite humble about his poker prowess. "I wouldn't say I'm great," he told PEOPLE, but he did concede that his co-stars "didn't know what they were getting into … I play in a really good game in L.A. with really good players, people who are a few levels above me.” He also added, "I just try to walk away with my money from that game, and that's made me a better player."

Cera’s co-star Johnny Simmons added:  "He's a damn good poker player, and he takes all your money” and “Michael and Keiran Culkin are shark-level. I lost so much per diem to those guys."

Michael is not always lucky when it comes to gambling though. They apparently also frequented the local casino during filming, where he says he lost any of the winnings he made in poker while playing at the casino.

With a series of cult classics already to his name, perhaps it’s Michael’s penchant for risk that got him so far in Hollywood at such a young age. 

WSOP bracelet winner Annie Duke, otherwise known as the “Duchess of Poker” can now add another name to her collection- a congressional witness- as she is now advocating the right for every American to gamble online in the privacy of their own homes.

Duke expressed this view to the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday, and also argued that there were huge advantages to legalising and regulating an ever growing and lucrative underground online gambling market.

"At its most basic level, the issue before this committee is personal freedom, the right of individual Americans to do what they want in the privacy of their homes without the intrusion of the government," Duke said.

As it presently stands, online poker is illegal in the US but players still go to the online casino sites that are set up offshore and therefore beyond the reach of federal regulators.

Duke is firmly behind the views of Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, who is trying to introduce a bill that would legalise and tax the online gambling websites.

Frank advocates the players’ freedom to choose: "Unwise choices [are] part of freedom."

If this bill is passed the taxes on it could bring in almost $42 billion for the federal government for the next 10 years.

While we wait for the rare but awesome occasion of a film being released whose primary focus is poker, such as the pending Rounders 2, we’ll have to make do with a film that doesn’t have poker at the centre of the plot but does include the game as a catalyst of events within the plot.

Guns, Girls and Gambling is a film in the making that stars Gary Oldman, Christian Slater, comedian Dane Cook as well as Sam Tammell of True Blood fame, amongst others. The plot centres round the search for a precious American Indian artefact that has been stolen during a poker game at an Indian Casino. The search is on for the missing artefact and it leads to encounters with “Elvis impersonators, Indians, modern cowboys, a 6-foot-tall blond assassin, a frat boy, a corrupt sheriff and a prostitute.” You know, the usual.

Slater will play a normal dude who unexpectedly becomes involved in an Elvis impersonation contest. Oldman plays the “mega-contender” of the contest (this alone makes us want to watch this film).

The film is currently being shot in the Utah desert and should be released sometime in 2011 and seems like, if we’re lucky, it could become one of those messy cult classics.

The US celebrated yesterday, the 18th of July, as National Ice Cream Day. This was great news for poker and slot machine players in Atlantic City and Las Vegas who were in the midst of soaring summer temperatures and experiencing the loss of air-conditioning in several casinos. Things got so hot prior to National Ice Cream Day that The Trump Plaza Resort & Hotel had to shut down after facing damaged air conditioners.
 
Marvin Blascow, a poker player in New Jersey said: "Today, I took time out from my daily poker tournament to enjoy ice cream with the wife and kids. It was a fun day."

The Las Vegas Strip also celebrated the day. With the WSOP going on for a month, the main event concluded yesterday when the final table was announced and players and spectators took to the strip to choose their favourite flavour and cool down after a month of heated poker playing.