It has now been nearly ten days since I last played a hand of poker!

“That’s not a big deal” you must be thinking, but for someone that has played some form of poker everyday for the past few years . . . let me tell you . . . it is!

On the flip-side however is that I haven’t once felt the urge to play any form of poker. I may be only one click away from loading up a sit-n-go, about a ten metre walk to over twenty different decks of cards I can fiddle with and about an hour to Crown to get a live fix, but even with all these potential poker distractions, I still haven’t veered off course of staying away from the game for the remainder of 2009.

Friends re-runs, dominating FIFA on my playstation and cricket training have keep me occupied in those boring times of the day, but it is my new addiction to a computerised board game of Risk that has kept my ass glued to my chair and eyes firmly set to conquering the world as poker drifts far far away!

For those of you that don’t know, Risk is a strategic board game released in France in 1957. The primary object of the game is world domination by occupying the world or to complete a mission on a board that is divided up into six continents and forty-two territories. Normally played with an actual board, dice, armies and reinforcements, the computerised version was shown to me by my mate James who introduced me to the original version of the game.

Completely addictive due to its varying nature of scenario’s, dilemmas and strategy needed, there is great personal reward when you can capture the world by owning up to seven computer opposition souls; and in the picture below . . . world domination was an understatement!

RISK
He just never stood a chance! C’mon Western Australia . . . FIGHT BACK!

If you have something on your mind, download the game, boot it up, and you’ll totally forget about whatever it was once world domination strategy goes swirling through your head at a 100-miles an hour!

There are about fourteen different officially licenced versions of the game, but I think I might try an add a fifteenth . . . Risk: Shuffle Up and Deal*!

* name needs lots of work