I wait for a seat at a brown table in a brown room. And I observe.
The most serious players tend to be young men with baseball caps and much older men whose faces reflect 70 years of dealing with bullshit.
Time is spent setting up a new table. The pit boss hovers, holding his hands in front of him.
Rules from tonight:
1. Wait for your turn.
2. Never chase a hand.
3. Tip the dealer if you win.
4. You don’t have to play every hand.
5. And you have to let some good hands go… like pocket 8s when you see j and k in the flop and others are raising. This kills me. Everytime.
Patience is the greatest need when playing and my greatest weakness–in life and in poker.
The action line runs around the center of the table like a horseless racetrack. Luck is what runs around that track here.
I think only optimists play poker. Some say only fools play poker but is it foolish to be optimistic? (A fine line to be sure.) One must be optimistic with poker. You must have some degree of hope or faith when pushing your own money away from you and into the hands of gambling gods.
Then again, I just lost most of my chips based on my optimism. So maybe the pessimists are the real winners… at least at the tables?
But no pessimist would risk losing money like this. And a pessimist would call himself a winner because he wouldn’t be foolish enough to play in the first place.
So who wins? And why?
That’s an answer I don’t have answer yet.
Tracing My Words 