I'd love to think that vanToll777 is a poker player. I'm also fairly sure he's a bit geeky.

We got linked to this awesome thing this morning. The artist from deviantART created a series of Super Mario Bro's characters using only poker chips on the wooden floor.

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• Man Loses Wife in a Game of Poker: A Russian man offered his wife in exchange for more chips when he was cleaned out at the card table. He subsequently lost the chips and his wife when his opponent appeared at his house the next day to collect his winnings and he complied. Bizarrely, the wife fell in love with her new ‘owner’ so they all lived happily ever after. 

  Man Gets Breasts for $100,000: A Canadian man made a buxom $100,000 for getting breast implants and keeping them for a year.  This came about after his friends, knowing that he did strange things for money, suggested the bet. He also once lived in his bathroom for a month for $15,000. Strangely, he still has the implants in- he never removed them. 

  Natural Disasters: There are several online betting sites at which you can wager on natural disasters and global warming. Wagers have included when and where the effects of global warming will be most felt and whether Manhattan will be underwater by 2014 . 

  Taking lucky numbers a bit too far: A young man in High Wycombe who was turning 23 on the 23^rdday of the month, celebrated his birthday by placing £23 on the number 23 in roulette at exactly 23 minutes past the 23^rd hour. He walked away with more than £800.

   Scorpion fights: Middle Eastern Gamblers have been known to place large bets on the outcome of scorpion fights held in saucers.

  Reverse Gear: In 1735, a German novelist rode a horse backwards from London to Edinburgh for a considerable wager. 

  Ferret Bingo: this game is played in some parts of England.  Punters get to choose from which numbered drainpipe a ferret would escape from a barrel. 

        Who wants to live forever? 59 year old dare-devil Evel Knievel bet his 37 year old doctor $10,000 that he (Knievel) would outlive the much younger man.  The bet was made in 1998 and Mr. Knievel lost the bet when he passed away in 2007

.Yes, this is a very serious blog- seriously serious in fact. So instead of wasting our time writing anecdotal pieces about Trekkie Poker and The Phil Ivey of Golf (insert growl here), we’re going to talk about the very relevant issue of wearing shades while playing poker.

Why do so many poker players seem to have such photosensitive eyes? Isn’t the room dark enough already? If I wear shades will I be a better poker player?

Eyes are the easiest way to give away tells. If a player quickly looks at the flop and then quickly looks at his/her chips, the flop has probably helped his/her hand. Some reckon that a player’s pupils will dilate when bluffing. Either way, it’s harder to read someone who is wearing shades.

Shades also make players look more intimidating. Think Chris Ferguson or Greg Raymer.  Although sometimes comical, the shades certainly help disguise and distract from what could be going on beneath the surface. The illusion of anonymity that shades provide can also help to calm and relax a player making it more of a token or ritualistic habit than a definite poker advantage.

There are downsides to wearing the sunglasses. You can’t see as well as if you were without them. Phil Ivey once commented in an interview that his, soon to be ex, wife bought him a $4,000 pair of sunglasses to wear while playing poker but he tossed them shortly after misreading cards and losing a big pot. There are a few pros who feel that shades go against the spirit of the game by creating an unfair advantage

Told you we’d have more to say about the Tiger Woods scandal. And before you assume it’s to do with with his ever increasing, and increasingly boring, tally of ladies, check out this little excerpt on how bookies and gamblers alike are having a lot of fun with the Tiger Woods saga:

If you don’t know, the lines have been set for…Tiger Woods Divorce Settlement Odds. You can also wager on which sponsor will drop T iger next. ’(Business Insider)

Punters at Ireland have set the line at $500 million for how much Tiger will ultimately pay out to Elin.

Apparently Wall Street traders have also been betting on how many Tiger ladies are going to come out.