side blog 5: poker, girls, and the "real world"

I have nothing really to update because I took a break from the usual friday activities this week to go out and have a little fun playing cards. Basically, a bunch of people were busy and I wanted a change from the norm. I played 1/2 NL and ended up winning a peanut of a margin after about 5 hours.

However, I'd like to use the rest of this space to discuss how poker relates to life. I think understanding your purpose in life is very difficult to do, so you have to make comparisons to things that are more understandable(ie sports, books, famous people). I've really never liked trying to describe a part of life with something else because it always feels that something is lost in the translation. So the rest of this will be devoted to how poker almost perfectly mirrors love. Let's start at the beginning. Sometimes you look down and see a hand that you know is going to be great; you just get a feeling about this one. You know that going into it that you're going to get what you want out of this one. Problem is, these hands come around so rarely that you really have to relish in the moment whenever you find yourself in the middle of one of these. Most of the hands you look down at you just don't see anything you like. Then you'll come along a hand that's pretty borderline, but you decide to throw in a look and see how it developes. Almost parallel to love, you decide to see if anything materializes after the flop. If you have something like two small suited connectors and the flop comes down A K Q then you know that you've totally missed everything. It's somewhat like seeing a girl that you think you'll like and going out and having just an awful date. I mean, you saw potential at the start, but nothing happened. You totally missed everything and it's easy to get away from. You smile as you muck the hand, thinking briefly about what could have been. Then there are those flops that leave you guessing. You might flop a two way straight draw or a three or four flush and you really have to start thinking about how far you want to go with this one. When you decide to make the call and it materializes, the feeling is priceless. You know that you were behind and you cracked a better hand with some help. Sort of like when you go out with a girl and you notice that the date didn't go bad, but either one likes the other one more. Then, out of nowhere, they both decide that they like each other and all that began well ends well. However, when you don't hit these hands, it can be frustrating and can leave you not wanting to play those cards again. Finally, there are those hands that I'll simply refer to as "tilt causers". You just have an eerie feeling that you're going to get your teeth kicked in until they bleed. You flop two pair and you're up against a set. You know that after the money is in you need a miracle to get out of this one or you're going to fall faster than the iraqi air force during the first gulf war. You have a great date with a girl, you become interested, and then she plays it off like she's interested. Then, you realize that you've overcommitted yourself and that your bottom two pair don't look all that great anymore. Maybe you learn your lesson to take your time the next go around, but mostly you just leave with the sour feeling in your mouth. Maybe you thought you had something great and you got cheated on and didn't find out about it until all the chips were in the middle. Perhaps in the future you're lucky enough to go through this situation in the future and if you've learned your lesson, you can avoid getting burned. I think norman chad said it best once when he said: "great poker players make huge laydowns and that preserves their life in the future of the game. If they don't make these laydowns, they're out and amongst the railbirds." How true norman, how true.

mh