O-Week “The Next Frontier” puts a twist on mainstream casinos

BUSU embarked on a very interesting event for the Thursday night of O-Week. The scene: the Walker Complex, the game: condom poker, possibly the most talked about event in the 2007 O-Week schedule. Hundreds of students made their way to the Walker Complex gymnasium with the understanding that a poker tournament would be held; when they got there they were greeted with a plastic bag of swag and condom poker chips. “We wanted to run a casino night, what we came up with was using condoms as poker chips.” James O’Brien explained.

By 7:30pm nearly 400 students were huddled around poker tables check-raising their opponents with Durex Condoms. Those not playing poker were able to partake in Crown and Anchor, Blackjack, Over-Under and a horse race game, all betting with condoms.

“This event went great, it was something very new to O-Week, it was slightly risqué, but we made sure it was classy. We had dealers dressed in tuxedoes, we had an information table from Brock’s Health Services providing information about safe sex and other health information, we had an information table from the YMCA Responsible Gambling Initiative, we had a live DJ, we had free ‘mock-tails’ and we made sure that the mood and evening was light and all in fun.”

For the second and the final round BUSU staff and volunteers dealt at the tables. James O’Brien felt that it was a great way to engage small groups of students, “it showed these students that we truly do want to engage them, we got to talk to them and I know for myself that I asked tons of questions of the 4 players at my second round table about their majors, where they were from, how they thought O-Week was going, they all responded saying ‘we wish this was longer than a week.’”

By the end of the night the final table was set for the main event showdown and two students were vying for the title of Poker Champion and the prize of a 30GB IPod and a white water rafting trip in Ottawa. When the dust settled John Verscheure was crowned the winner of the poker tournament and he took home the 30GB IPod prize and his white water rafting trip.

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