FINALLY, a poker-related entry. I was going to write a completely different entry up until Sunday where I had several epiphanies.
Ageism is Dead to Me.
I keep reminding myself that old people don't always suck. Skill does not favor the meek, skin, or background. You simply account for how they play; plus, sometimes if they're the talkative type they have amazing stories. Sunday's table, the old people were the only ones going pro. We were Donald Gennaro on that flimsy Jurassic Park toilet, and the grand baby-boomers were the poetic-youthful raptors who eat Aussie-shotgun-totting game hunters. Dinosaurs, 1. Tourists, 0.
Tight People Who Think They're "Good."
Moan, "Just give me cards and I'd play with those donkeys! I think we can play just about any card and we'd be good against them har har!" and I just watch them get blinded out or run over by a loose table. I mean don't get me wrong, I'm a bit TAG myself but there are cats out there who play ONLY with premium hands, and that is not the way to go my friend. Dubious 6 times BB pops, and checking on the river EVERY TIME you don't hit is just predictable poker. And we know where that gets us.
Plus, when those ass-hats win money, they just sit on it for another two hours. They hoard their chips as if that crap was giving out free handjobs. As if I have time.
Hot Women are the Rake. Literally.
You just can't play with attractive women. It's arguably the worst combination ever: money & hotties. How WILL you ever spend that cash?
Try calculating your eight outs on a back-door flush draw with a gut-straight draw while you see a beautiful chest in a low-cut top wrapped in a sheer blouse. Nosebleeds, I tell you.
Poker is a Lonely Path.
In the beginning it was all fun and games. Friends were enthusiastic, and determined to go on a tear. Now I find myself in a precarious situation. It's like the recreational drug user suddenly shooting up before the morning shower by himself, and he says, "Uh oh..." That's me. And when you're in self-doubt, it's even worse. I mean, who do you really talk to about that. Interestingly enough, prayer seems like a good anecdote for my short-term bad luck.
Honestly I'm not playing enough to combat the variance. If I have one bad session, I can't just reload the next day and run it again; Foxwoods is another state away. At most I'm playing break-even poker. I win money, buy in tournaments, SNGs, and piss it out there. Which begs the question, "So why do you keep doing it?"
There was recently a snippet I read online from one of those forgotten-hacker-novels before The Matrix came into existence by Neal Stephenson called Snow Crash:
"Until a man is 25, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherf-cker in the world. If I moved to a martial arts monastery in China and studied real hard for 10 years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad."
Sic writing. It's a pretty good read, too for those loose in reading morals. But to answer the question, I suppose poker's my outlet for vice in my youth. It kindles the hope of overcoming all the failures and short-comings that we all inevitably suffer.
So I scratch away a small bank-roll near an associate of sins in hope of wild success that we've only dreamed of, not planned.
