You’re here to play. The game is $75-150 Stud and everyone at the table is serious. Their skin appears almost gray with the need to win. The chips are slamming into the pots and its 3 and 4 way action every hand. Chips are being moved across the table like casinos are imploded in Las Vegas.
There’s a guy (Da Guy) in the three seat that looks like he has no business being in the game. Da Guy’s antsy, younger than most of the players. He stands up – watching the game at the next table which is $40-80 stud – then he’s back in his seat, putting up an ante for the next hand. Fidgeting back and forth, he watches the dealer like a hawk ready to swoop in and pick up his next meal.
Da Guy picks up chips and lofts them towards the pot, they hit and bounce, going in all directions. Is he distracted or paying attention or what? He seems to be ready to explode with each player’s action when he’s in a hand.
Da Guy gets involved in the next hand and the bet is capped with 4 way action on opening and on 4th street. The pot swells and he starts to fidget and fuss, watching the dealer more than the other players. He’s high with a pair on 5th street and leads with a bet, he gets 3 callers and the dealer burns and turns off 6th street. He’s still high and he bets again, 2 players drop and the action is heads up.
On 7th street Da Guy bets out and the other player takes a year and half to check his hole cards and then look at his up cards. During the year and a half time delay, Da Guy stands up, sits down, stands up again, crosses his arms and finally his opponent calls. Da Guy turns over a full house and a smile spreads across his face as he pulls in the pot and begins stacking.
The action continues and he’s making comments from time to time to the dealer but you can’t tell exactly what the verbal exchange is until you hear her say, “I don’t believe that I can make you happy. No matter what I give you.
He replies, “You make me feel like I’m alive.”
You’re now wondering what that is supposed to mean. Is there something personal between them away from the card room or is poker the essence of his being and he’s associating the dealer with his highs and lows?
Poker is a strange and uncontrollable medium in all of our lives. Poker provokes lust, the will to dominate, anxiety, loss of finances or gains, saving face and all of the standard emotions that we should outgrow once we become adults, (adulthood is a huge variable for a lot of us).
Yet . . . we must face ourselves in everything we do. Perhaps that’s why so many people resort to a poker table. They can erase their existence in the real world for a seat in a poker game. The highs and lows in a session of poker play can be very intense and mind rendering. If you’re a statistical, logistical player, you won’t feel any of this so this is wasted reading for you. If you play by the seat of your pants and watch everything that goes on in the game, you can almost feel those emotional waves moving across the table from some players. You know when you have the best of it with a player that feels they’re unlucky or they’re playing with a bad dealer.
A lot of players live only when they participate in the action. Let’s face it, ordinary life – paying the bills, going to work, doing your ‘honey-do’s’, watching Johnny’s ball game, going to PTA meetings – is boring and dull. When you’re venturing a wager or trying to put a move on a pot, you feel the adrenaline rush, the need to conquer, the ability to step out of your normal, day to day life, and be somebody different. Almost like a James Bond kind of thing. The only big difference is that James Bond has a license to kill.
What happens when you take a seat in a poker game? You’ve just opened a whole new avenue to life. Right? Wrong! If you looked to yourself first, you’d know that everything you do and think comes from within you. If you’re happy with you, poker definitely has its place but it can never replace what happens or goes on within you. If you’re dealing or playing, you don’t have to structure your mood on how your cards are running or how someone at the table is behaving. After all . . . you are only responsible for yourself.
Each poker hand you play finds you stacking chips or counting your losses. Where does that leave you in the overview of life? The world keeps revolving around the sun, the moon still shines and the sun still rises. Did you forget how to live and breathe, how to laugh and love, how to cry and feel sadness? Our license to live is a gift that we may choose to enjoy or let it run its course. There may not be a renewal form mailed to us when it expires. Definitely something to think about. See you there!