I'm one of those people that, when watching a Bond film, is totally confused during the "reveal", when Bond turns over his cards at the culmination of a long-winded, high stakes poker game. I find myself thinking "what does that mean? Has he won?"

The foreign language of poker hands were explained to me, however, when I visited the Rose and Crown in Thorney, near Peterborough (or at least the basics). I'm not scared to admit I was a little intimidated as I arrived at the former coaching house for one of its regular amateur poker games.

The visitors to the Tuesday session were chatting amiably about hands they had been dealt, and runs of luck that had run out, and, being somebody who struggles with rummy and pontoon, I was worried about how I'd get on playing such a complex game.

As any player will happily tell you, however, poker is completely removed from these other card games, in that there is so much more to it than knowing the rules and what does or doesn't constitute a good hand.

Landlord at the Rose and Crown Steve Shreeve has been playing for some time.

"You've got to be patient . . . you've got to wait and you've got to be able to read people . . . you've got to be able to look for tells," he explained to me before the games started.

Tells, in case you don't know, are the little eccentricities of behaviour that give players' true intentions away as they raise the game.

Thankfully, Steve and son Gareth, who organises the league at the Rose and Crown, were used to having beginners along to the sessions, and Gareth even said my ignorance of the game could work to my advantage during play – a statement that would prove eerily prescient (but more of that later).

Gareth and Steve ran through the basic rules, and I tried my best to keep up, but, like anything, the best way to learn is to get stuck in.

I made my way to one of the tables and began playing, with a great deal of much appreciated help from the players sat either side of me. It took a few games to get the hang of it, but one of my fellow players advised me that if I had anything . . . anything at all that might make a winning hand, then I should go all out to win. It was advice that I stuck to, and continued to raise the game until I'd manage to get a fair amount of chips.

Gareth and Steve told me that a lot of beginners benefit from beginner's luck, and this proved to be the case; not only was I dealt some lucky cards, but my total haplessness and tenuous grasp of what was going on made my game difficult to read or predict.

Where Bond might confound his enemies with bluffs and subterfuge, I was able to baffle the other players simply by being totally baffled myself.

The Rose and Crown league is part of the wider Amateur Poker League, meaning that if players succeed at their local venue, they can progress to regional and national championships.