I read Crime and Punishment this summer. It's a great book. I mention this because it is not related to poker.
If you don't play for a living it is all new and fun, but professional poker players can find themselves stuck in that movie Groundhog's Day. When they are not reading the same poker book they've been reading forever they sit at the same table with the same people and eat the same meals and drink the same drinks and say the same things while being dealt the same cards, which they play the same exact way, and then they go home and wake up and do it again.
What I don't understand is the people who play every day out of choice and not necessity. There is a group of wealthy retirees who convene in the afternoons and play a Hi/Lo game at a local casino. They have nothing to do so they play poker. They have nothing of interest to talk about, but they talk anyway. Listening to this septuagenarian cluster of dullards is like being tortured with a slow, sporadic assault of ping pong balls. They rarely raise before the flop and after the flop they usually check their hands down without even betting. If one of them happens to bet he will show his cards to ensure his buddy that he was not bluffing him, as if this is the way gentlemen are supposed to play poker. Someone once stood up in disgust and said, "This is like watching old men die," and left.
I read somewhere of a suggestion for a poker doll. You could pull a string for the appropriate situation, such as the time two players end up splitting a pot with the exact same cards and one of them invariably says, "You play that shit?" I've heard this same comment countless times. It would be nice to be able to pull out that doll and yank the cord at the right moment. "You play that shit?"
A wise man once said there are two roads in life. One leads to immediate extinction. The other is excrutiatingly painful and long.
Pray that you choose wisely.
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3 comments:
I think I prefer the excruciatingly long and painful road.
That's good Dave because that is the one you are on.
This post reminded me of my father. he played poker for a living for about 10 years and was able to overcome the tedium in the following way...
We lived in MN and at the time there was no poker. He played in the occasional home games, but usually only played on the road.
In October every year he would head out in his car for a tour of the country. His goal was to make as much money as possible and as such he drove and old car usually a buick with 200K+ miles on it. He would fix up the passenger seat into a bed and tint the windows so that he could sleep in the casino parking lot. His whole goal was to make money so any way he could save money was enjoyable as it was part of the game. Reducing expenses is a must when playing poker.
He would take off going east and stop for a few days in Detriot (Cananda actually) and play there for a few days. And then off to Foxwoods where he would usually stay for a few weeks. His days consisted of getting up in the morning and eating a very small and healthy breakfast reading the paper in the casino. He would then head off to the local Bally's for a workout and a shower. Heading back to the casino he would start playing in the early afternoon and continue on until he was tired usually pretty late at night. He played only low limit and extremely tight. Every four hours he would get up for a small meal and a walk. He claimed that big meals drained your energy as did sitting at the table for extended periods of time. By doing this he was able to stay sharp the whole time he played. When he got tired he would go out to the car and fall asleep in his passenger seat bed.
After foxwoods, he would go down to Atlantic city for a while and then down to see my brother in Florida. He would stay at each Casino until it got old. He kept no time table expect that he would be back in MN sometime in the spring. When he was in Florida he would hang out and rest up and enjoy time with his son.
Then off to Biloxi, lake Charles, and all the gulf coast casinos making his way to texas to spend some time with his father.
After this rest he was off to Arizona, maybe stopping to play in New Mexico along the way. Back then the only casino in Arizona was Fort McDowell. He really loved this area and now lives there.
He would spend maybe a month or so in Los Angeles living with a cousin he rarely saw. The cousin had a beautiful house in the hills with a pool. He would spend the days lounging around, then when his cousin came home they would eat dinner and he would go out the casino till late hours. Spring would come and he would stop for a short time in Vegas and then head back to Minnesota for the summer. His goal was to make enough money on this trip to pay for his summer. He usually did this.
To some this might seem like a lonely boring life, but he lived on his schedule, stayed in great shape, spent truly valuable time with his family and never had to "work". The nicest part was that whenever he got bored he would just move on.
I am sure he would still be doing this today if he would not have found a wonderful woman who had even more appeal than low limit poker and a bed in the passenger seat of an old buick.
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