Fall of 2004. Greg Raymer had turned a $160 dollar satellite entry into a $5,000,000.00 cash in the WSOP. His win followed Chris Moneymaker's famous $20 dollar to $2,500,000 the year before. Poker fever swept the nation. Home prices went up 20% a year, anyone who could pass a mirror test could finance 110% of their purchase price, and every guy from LA to NY, and Duluth to Dallas fantasized about going pro.
Card rooms around the city filled to the brim. On any given night you could find yourself sitting next to A-Rod at Acepoint or even Bill Gates at the Bellagio. Poker was the American Dream personified. At any given table you could find people from every walk of life, every income bracket, every ethnicity all fixated on the random distribution of 52 slips of plastic and small towers of clay. Any old shmuck could go from guppy to superstar in one lucky tournament.
Disposable time and income coupled with an unprecedented lack of a societal work ethic made poker an irresistible draw to generation zero. Fame, fortune and glory was only a few cards away. You didn't have to be fast, strong, graceful, balanced or good looking. Winning made you forget about losing and losing only made you want to win even more. Poker was the opiate of choice.
After seeing Rounders, I'll admit that I fell for the trap too. I had been playing cards for about a year, mostly with people who were as clueless as me. But I went out and I bought all of the classics; Brunson, Caro, Harrington, McEvoy, Sklansky, etc. etc. etc. If I had studied that hard in school, I would have been in the first year of my dissertation.
In 2006, poker paid for my first whirlwind tour of Asia. Sounds impressive right? If I hadn't spent all of my time playing cards then I probably would have had my first whirlwind tour of Asia on a Gulfstream. But money won will always be sweeter than money earned. Thus is the curse of the inveterate gambler. It was in the winter of 2006 that I realized that I lacked both the luck and the discipline to go pro, semi-pro or even successful amateur. Whatever edge I had in skill and technique was overwhelmed by my impatience and refusal to accept the realities of EV. I have learned an re-learned this lesson in various forms in the past few years.
This brings us to last night when I happened to watch Rounders again. The first time I saw it, I loved it. Over time I was taught to mock it derisively as a "noob" indoctrination video. But last night watching it with a weariness I didn't realize I had, I found it thoroughly enjoyable. There are of course inaccuracies, but the type of people who harp on those are the same type of people that can't see the forest for the trees, i.e. people who need to be kicked in the face. It's a movie about following your dreams and the infinite number of possibilities that chase can manifest itself.
Poker imitates life a little too well which explains its enduring popularity. The best hand doesn't always win, hard work doesn't guarantee success, sometimes those who deserve the least end up with the most. However there is an indescribable sense of satisfaction when things work out, a wave of relief when you get away with something you shouldn't, a constant fear that this could all be for nothing and a sense of absolute serenity when you can genuinely accept that what will be will be.
In the next paragraph please feel free to use the words life and poker interchangeably and hopefully you'll see what I mean.
There are those who coast along in poker never making an attempt to rise above where they are. All they see is other people winning in poker and they curse their infernal bad luck and wonder why they can never get ahead in poker. Then there those who constantly struggle with poker, they read books, they practice, they grind, but eventually they reach a plateau. Maybe they break even, or show modest, but consistent profits in poker. They falsely believe that his is all poker will ever hold for them and they never move beyond that level. Then there are those who enjoy outrageous runs of luck in poker, they have the best cards, the most chips and can fall ass backwards into a runner runner gut shot without a second thought. Those fortunate few can glide through the rest of their poker careers fun and fancy free until their luck runs out. That's when they deride poker as a fool's errand and their sense of entitlement magnifies their perceived losses to deafening boom at which point they become a maniacal time bomb in all aspects of poker. Then there are those who never stop trying in poker and for better or worse they accept the cruel realities of poker, but are not dissuaded by what may be hopelessly unattainable goals. But poker is a journey not a destination and ultimately poker is just a game with a beginning and an end; all of the ups and downs should be embraced and enjoyed because those are what make the ride.
My new favorite lines from the movie:
"In the poker game of life, women are the rake."
"It's not a pipe dream."
"We can't run from who we are."
"If you want to see this next card, then you'll stop speaking fucking Sputnik!"
So anyone who's read this far can really see how degeneracy can warp the neural pathways in your mind to the point where something as silly as a card game can take on such enormous metaphysical overtones. Pat you probably started reading this paragraph first, so please scroll up and start from the top. Mohegan on Wednesday Dave? lol
Shuffle (Shut) up and deal (with it)
