The views expressed in this article are strictly those of this writer. They are not meant to infringe upon, imply or describe the religious or spiritual belief of any society, organization or individual.

Ever wonder if the players sitting next to you believe in God? What are their thoughts?

Dear God, If I win this hand, I swear I will never sit at the table again. I can pay the rent and all those people I owe money to and feed my kids. Please God; don’t take this pot away from me.

Or perhaps their prayer is not one of desperation.

Thank you Father for the blessings you have given me. Each day that you give me brings warmth and sunshine, an opportunity to improve myself, to learn more about why I’m here and to help those who have less than I do.

Let us open the pages of Random House Webster’s College Dictionary and define religious versus spiritual:

1. Religion. A set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usu. involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code for the conduct of human affairs. 2. A specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religions.

2. Spiritual. Pertaining to the spirit or soul, as distinguished from the physical nature. 2. Of or pertaining to the spirit as the seat of the moral or religious nature.

A lot of players have “got religion” as the saying goes . . . either from going broke or the circumstances that life or they force themselves into. There are some players that are very religious and blatantly outspoken about their belief even at the poker table. Some days it would seem that you would have to convert or you may never win the pots that they keep dragging and stacking. Is it God or their play, do they have help or are they just at peace with themselves and the world?

New Age thinking has come into play more than once in statements of God . . . having faith, believing. The power of thought plays a tremendous part in the way we structure our lives. Visualization is a very valuable tool. If you believe something to be so, it is so in your thought that has been proven in lie detector tests, hypnosis, and also in medical studies using placebos. Believing or visualization is not the same thing as faith in God. This is not a lesson in Bible Study . . . just the facts.

Do religious players feel remorse as they win pots from their fellow man? Do they ease up on the guy that cannot win when he’s running badly . . . or do they beat the hell out of him and take his last dollar and then offer to buy him a bowl of soup and ease his suffering through brotherly love? Most religions view gambling as a sin. How do players practicing that religion justify monetary gain from playing poker? The wages of sin – scary thought so let’s skip past that one.

What about the spiritual player, the natural order of life, peace of spirit, karmic evolution . . . how does it relate to poker? Obviously each person who takes a seat in a game has the desire to win. At the time that we put a beat on our fellow man or win with the best hand, we are still trying to use our skill to take advantage of the player with lesser skill and knowledge or a ‘steamer’ that can’t control their emotional roller coaster.

Statement from a player, “They are going to give their money to someone, it may as well be us.” Does God or our spiritual sense approve of this?

A player once made the statement that he felt sorry for people who had the need to believe in God. Yet at a gathering with his friends he also said that if he was in the middle of the ocean in a sinking life raft and sharks were circling his craft, (just in case), he would cry, “God, help me!” The other side of the coin is that people who believe in God, may feel sorry for him because he doesn’t believe in God.

Another player states that God must have a representative in all walks of life and the people at the poker table definitely need help. He tries to prevail as a chip leader but where does he rank as an apostle? Still other players state that if people want to talk about God, they should do it at home or at church and not at the poker table.

Also to be considered is the person who works in the industry. They are an active part of the gambling world. Many of them read Bibles on breaks and have study or support groups with each other and then return to the tables to provide the mechanics for a win/loss situation. Do they detach themselves from the situation without thinking about the guy that lost his whole months pay in a poker game? Maybe they feel they are merely a tool and have no bearing on a person’s moral choices.

A lot of people believe that our lives are preordained. Aaayahhh! You mean all of our bluffing and check raising had no effect because the hand was going down that way no matter what? If the road map to our lives is already set in stone from birth, some of us would never play poker. Now that is a bad beat.

Life is all about choices. You are given so many that sometimes the menu is too big to even ponder. It’s so easy to take the simple choices and just barely get by. But . . . is that what it’s all about? Look around you. You could be on the Strip in Las Vegas, on a bus in Chicago, in the mountains in Montana, floating just off of Queen’s Surf in Hawaii or anywhere that carbon based life forms can survive.

You have made the choice to be where you are at this moment. If you’re reading this – it is by choice, if you are in a bad relationship – it is by choice, if you are unhappy – it is by choice. Try blaming it on someone else – wrong choice.

You can be and do anything you choose. No, it isn’t about divine intervention. You are thinking, walking, talking mass of cells that is capable of making a choice. That is the beauty of this whole experience . . . the body, the mind, the spirit, forced to deal with each other, the wants of the flesh versus the mind and the reckoning with the spirit.

One quote on the “net” that is truly thought provoking is, “We are not humans going through a spiritual experience, we are spirits going through a human experience!”

Personally, I believe in God. I would like to believe that if God took a seat in a game of poker, He would know the rules were defined. Lying and stealing are a go. Cheating is wrong no matter where it’s done. If you beat Him in a hand with a 1 card out, He wouldn’t throw His cards at the dealer or swear at you because He understands that the cards come off of the deck at random. If He beat you in a hand with a 1 card out and you raged and had a fit, He’d look at you with empathy and say, “I understand your pain, my child. Just yesterday I got everything I played beat in a $3-6 holdem game.”

Poker is a complex field of competition – a sporting event if you will. The rules of the game are already set. You can steal, lie, and take your best friend’s last dollar. It’s part of the game. Just remember . . . while another player may be able to read and predict your hand and play . . . God knows what’s in your heart. You can never bluff the Almighty!

See you there!