Summer finds me busily creating new tools and resources for you. So, today, instead of a new article, I’m enclosing one of my poker articles. You can read more of my poker articles at www.gutshot.com by clicking on the titles in the right column. I also highly recommend the articles of Tommy Angelo, available at tommyangelo.com/articles
I’m very pleased to have served Tommy as an editor since the beginning of 2006.
And, instead of a new book recommendation, I have made a page containing all my recommendations to date. For your convenience, they are all listed at www.annaparadox.com/recommendations with clickable links to buy them at Amazon.com.
Have a great summer! I’ll be back on the first Tuesday in August with a new article. Until then, please enjoy this piece of poker humor.
They say you can’t win them all. Well, they’re wrong. I can win every single session. It’s easy. I just set my winning condition to ‘play some poker’.
So I sit down, pay my blind, find it’s three raises back to me, have a look at Nine-Three off-suit and fold. Hurrah! I won! I played some poker! Wasn’t that great!
Maybe not. A winning condition like that is so easy to fulfill that it doesn’t seem very satisfying when I make it. So I look for something a little harder.
Each hand of poker has a defined winning condition. The winner is the one who gets the pot. Leaving aside split pots for the moment, it’s that simple. Take the pot, win a hand. The rules define who gets the pot, and sometimes those rules become quite baroque. But the condition itself is simple.
So let’s say I play a session and win eighteen pots but leave when I run out of chips. And my buddy Josephine comes along and says, “Did you win?” and I say,
“Yeah! I won eighteen pots!”
So she says, “Cool! How much did you win?”
And at this point I am forced to sheepishly admit that I lost everything I took to the table. And then we both step back and Jo says, “Hey! Winning means having more money than you sat down with when you leave!”
“Jo, do you think most poker players would agree with that?”
“Anna, I certainly do.”
“Jo, I think you’re right, you brilliant and gorgeous figment of my imagination. Hey, great dress you’re wearing today!”
“Thanks, you look great too!”
“Thanks!”
So Jo and I have settled to our own satisfaction that we both look fabulous and that the usual winning condition of poker is to leave a cash game with more money than you brought to it. Any disagreements, take them up with Jo.
After tournaments, the players commonly make two kinds of statements. “I was just happy to make the money”. These players had their winning condition set to taking away more money than they bought in for. And, the second place player commonly says, “I really wanted to win the whole thing”. These players have their winning condition set to “Come in first”. And maybe most of the time, neither group realizes there was any other choice of winning condition possible. Those second place finishers certainly can seem seriously glum about scoring one hundred times their buy-in.
So, anyway, I set my winning condition to ‘leave the table with more money than I brought to it’, and one day, quite by accident, I dump a plate of spaghetti on Radulich. He screams, shoves all his chips into the pot, and runs to the Gents’.
Two hands later, he returns to his seat and quite serenely re-buys for the table maximum. “Sorry about the spaghetti, Rad,” I say.
“What spaghetti?” he replies. Interesting, I think.
The next session, I come prepared. I bring a slingshot and a dozen shot loads of spaghetti. Each time I flop a strong hand and Radulich is still in, I hit him with the spaghetti and take all his chips. Thus assuring myself a hugely profitable session.
After Rad calls it a night, still not sure what hit him; one of the guys comes up to me and says, “Great dress! But hey, it’s not right what you’re doing to Radulich. At least share your spaghetti.”
“Good point,” I say.
So next session, every player except poor Rad - who fortunately has unlimited funds - comes armed with their own slingshot. Every time he sees a flop, someone hits him with the spaghetti. Rad spends more time in the Gents’ than at the table, and meatballs and noodles and sauce is flying everywhere.
Finally, when our dealer has taken all the Parmesan in the eye he can stand, he calls Management. And Management says to us, “Look, Gentlemen and Lady - and I use those terms very loosely to describe this table full of spaghetti-shooting degenerates with the maturity of two-year olds - you players are costing us a ton in carpet cleaning. We did not sign on to host a game of pasta potshots, this is a card room. So play poker, or I’m tossing the lot of you out.”
So, we all put away our slingshots, and Rad gets to play the rest of the evening in peace.
And when it comes time for me to leave, I take my chips without counting them, and I go tell Jo, “Guess what! I won!”
“How much,” she asks.
“A lot! I learned that there are some things you can’t do in poker to get more chips!”
“So,” says Jo, “You’re saying you won because you learned something?”
“Yeah. Isn’t it great!”
“I can buy that,” says Jo. “Besides, that tomato sauce didn’t flatter your Vera Wang at all.”
“You’re so right,” I say.
May you all find the winning conditions that make your games an enjoyable challenge.