Saturday evening I found myself dropping Jessica off with Mommy who was on work duty and heading out along the N2 towards Bellville, where I made the arduous trek through to the De Akkers complex (located very much in my old home-base stomping grounds) to join up with the Grangers Two, as well as anyone else who would dare, for an evening of Poker, Blackjack and of course snacks. Lots and lots of snacks.

Evan and Natasha has been kind enough to host this evening of card-based debauchery, and I managed to pleasantly surprise myself by navigating all the way up to their back sliding door for the very first time without getting lost along the way. Joining us for the evening were the usual suspects of Damen and Michelle, and Karl and Trish, but missing in action was Mr. Brown who was struck down with some mysterious plague/virus/flu, Ryan who is currently gallivanting around Pinnacle Point, wifey who was of course at work, and Dean and Zania who were stopped dead in their tracks thanks to the age old problem of not finding a babysitter in time.

We pretty much got stuck in straight away, with Evan hauling out a nicely boosted poker deck they had picked up from Mr. Price Home (I know, weird place to find something like that, but it is true, I’ve seen them stock these sort of party game things before!), and after a fairly lengthy tutorial session in the hopes that we’d all quickly pick up to play, buy-in money was deposited into a winnings tin (only 10 bucks a piece this time around – didn’t want to scare anyone away!) and the evening went underway.

This was my first time playing Texas hold ’em style poker, and to be honest it has been years since I last played poker, evidenced by an early round “BooBoo” where I happily bet the pot up high, content in the knowledge I had an awesome, almost unbeatable hand consisting of a straight – but with only FOUR playing cards! D’oh! Talk about a rookie mistake, particularly when I was so cavalier in revealing my hand and reaching for the chips before being beaten back by the horde! :)

The use of the clever small blind and large blind with the blind amounts doubling after every few minutes or so was a stroke of genius, because it helped propel the game forward and ensured that no one could ever just sit on their chips by folding every round without costing them anything in the process.

As it turned though, this enjoyable back and forth of chips lasted a good two or so hours, with the final fight turning out to be a catfight between the two pregnant ladies, Michelle in the one corner and Natasha in the other. In the end the blind was doubling just about every minute, and with the stakes at an all time high, Natasha took the crown, quickly taking possession of the money tin before Evan could swindle some of her winnings away from her! :)

Having thoroughly enjoyed the poker (and the snacks. Have I mentioned there were a lot of snacks), we then turned to the game of Black Jack, and after bashing out a set of rules we were all comfortable with, and tasking Natasha as the dealer, we set about some fierce rounds of card guessing in the race to the set winning total or to be at the very least, the last man (or woman) standing.

And surprise, surprise, this time the other Granger came out on top, with Evan stealing the closely contested win out from under the noses of Karl and Trish.

So all in all, a thoroughly enjoyable evening of cards, chatter and snacks (lots of snacks), and definitely something we should be doing more of in the coming winter months!

Oh, and I garnered a lot of laughs by playing Chantelle’s now infamous snoring clip from my phone back to the crowd and asking for their opinion as to what animal they thought it was.

They all thought it was some sort of cow.

On relating this side not back to Chantelle when I finally arrived back home in the middle of the night, well let’s just say she was not entirely all that pleased with me ;)