My philosophy
I look at life like a marathon stretch at the poker table. Anyone can get lucky for a while, but the real pros are those that can ride the highs and endure the lows and persevere to make it worth sitting in for the long haul. A true player doesn’t always come out blasting. Like any good prize fighter, he knows that the fight is won in the later rounds when everyone else has grown weary. The game is not always exciting, not always morose. You have good hands and bad. Sometimes the deck runs hot for you, sometimes it can run downright ice cold. I'll tell you one thing, though. When you're perpetually drawing thin, it helps to have lady luck whispering in your ear from time to time.
You can have every angle covered, or so you think, and then the heartrending river rolls and it all goes down the tubes. Bad beats happen, it's a fact of life. You can't control how the cards fall, and you can't control how others play their hand. What you can control, however, is how you let them effect you. You have three options. You can let anger consume you, blinding yourself and ruining your play for a time. I've fallen prey to this behaviour in the past. Some take the "Dear God, why me?" approach and wallow in self pity, meekly folding hand after hand, never knowing what you might have missed out on in the meantime. Again, I've been guilty of this before I matured as a player. I decided long ago that the third approach is the way to respond. I simply smile, complement my opponent on his or her play, gently rap the table and set my mind to the next hand. There will always be another hand, and you can't let the previous one sour you, thus preventing the proper play in the moment. You will inevitably take hits that make you question why you even play in the first place, but you take your lumps and do the best you can to learn from them. You don’t always like the people that you play the game with, but you play your hand anyway.
Sometimes your hand is a complete dog, so you watch from the outside for awhile, waiting for the cards to get back into the thick of things. It can be boring and monotonous at times, and you may find it hard to keep your interest. Don’t let your tedium dissuade you from keeping your wits about you.
Other times are dangerous, depending on the players that you surround yourself with. Trust should not be handed out like candy at Halloween, rather awarded like the precious commodity that it is. Sometimes we choose the wrong people in whom to place our trust. Not all are worthy. Trust is like a ceramic vase. It can be easily broken, and once shattered, it is almost impossible to fully repair. Sure, you can try. You can glue all of the pieces back together, but the cracks still show. Cheats and liars are everywhere, but so are the moral and all shades in between. You have to learn how to read people to survive. It comes more easily the longer you sit at the table. You learn to notice the subtleties, the variations from one’s normal behavior, that reveal things they’d rather keep hidden.
The game can also make you feel infallible. When a heater hits, it doesn’t matter how long it lasts, it’s what you make of it. Some runs can go for years, making you think they’ll last forever. Some of the best are the odd hands in the middle of a cold deck. You’re having a terrible time of it, folding hand after hand. Then she smiles at you, maybe she even gives you a little wink, and that lucky seven falls to fill your inside straight. It could be over as quickly as it starts, so you hold onto it while you can so the win can get you through darker times. That’s what life is all about, building on the wins and learning from the losses to improve your play for later games. Sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down. Then there are break even times that can make everything you’ve done seem futile.
© 2011
You can have every angle covered, or so you think, and then the heartrending river rolls and it all goes down the tubes. Bad beats happen, it's a fact of life. You can't control how the cards fall, and you can't control how others play their hand. What you can control, however, is how you let them effect you. You have three options. You can let anger consume you, blinding yourself and ruining your play for a time. I've fallen prey to this behaviour in the past. Some take the "Dear God, why me?" approach and wallow in self pity, meekly folding hand after hand, never knowing what you might have missed out on in the meantime. Again, I've been guilty of this before I matured as a player. I decided long ago that the third approach is the way to respond. I simply smile, complement my opponent on his or her play, gently rap the table and set my mind to the next hand. There will always be another hand, and you can't let the previous one sour you, thus preventing the proper play in the moment. You will inevitably take hits that make you question why you even play in the first place, but you take your lumps and do the best you can to learn from them. You don’t always like the people that you play the game with, but you play your hand anyway.
Sometimes your hand is a complete dog, so you watch from the outside for awhile, waiting for the cards to get back into the thick of things. It can be boring and monotonous at times, and you may find it hard to keep your interest. Don’t let your tedium dissuade you from keeping your wits about you.
Other times are dangerous, depending on the players that you surround yourself with. Trust should not be handed out like candy at Halloween, rather awarded like the precious commodity that it is. Sometimes we choose the wrong people in whom to place our trust. Not all are worthy. Trust is like a ceramic vase. It can be easily broken, and once shattered, it is almost impossible to fully repair. Sure, you can try. You can glue all of the pieces back together, but the cracks still show. Cheats and liars are everywhere, but so are the moral and all shades in between. You have to learn how to read people to survive. It comes more easily the longer you sit at the table. You learn to notice the subtleties, the variations from one’s normal behavior, that reveal things they’d rather keep hidden.
The game can also make you feel infallible. When a heater hits, it doesn’t matter how long it lasts, it’s what you make of it. Some runs can go for years, making you think they’ll last forever. Some of the best are the odd hands in the middle of a cold deck. You’re having a terrible time of it, folding hand after hand. Then she smiles at you, maybe she even gives you a little wink, and that lucky seven falls to fill your inside straight. It could be over as quickly as it starts, so you hold onto it while you can so the win can get you through darker times. That’s what life is all about, building on the wins and learning from the losses to improve your play for later games. Sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down. Then there are break even times that can make everything you’ve done seem futile.
© 2011