How Poker might be the thing that helps fix my life.
Last night, I managed something I’ve never been able to do before. I played a damned good game of poker and won.
This means a few things:
1. I’ve stuck with something long enough to become “furniture” in a new social group (as Joe kindly put it). This is amazing to me for a few reasons.
2. I’ve figured out the game and the people pretty well in a fairly short amount of time.
3. Unlike my usual pattern of doing really well, then losing it all to a few poor decisions, or lack of attention, I managed to catch myself before I fell too far, and continue on my rampage on people’s chip stacks. That basically breaks my default life pattern right there.
You see, when I fell into a giant pit of nothing this summer after the break-up, and had nothing and nobody except for the one old friend that answered the call to be leaned on for a while, that friend invited me to join him for his regular poker night. My new years resolution that year had been to stop saying no to things that scare me, so I agreed to come along. I had no idea what a snowball that would start in my life.
I ran into a few people I used to know, and met a bunch of other good people.They were extremely welcoming, and pretty damn patient with me as I figured out the game. It was a different experience from any of the group experiences I’d had in the past. I could get used to this.
$5 buy-in per game. 2 games per night. $10k in chips to start. Blind levels go up every 10 minutes. 10 minute break every 3 blind levels. Last man standing gets 50% of the cash pot. 2nd gets 30%. 3rd gets 20%. When you take someone’s last chips, they owe you $1 as a prize for taking them out. 10-21 players a night. Alternating between 2 venues. Same time, same day, every week. Once you’ve been here, you’re always welcome back. Bring a friend if you want. This is a serious group of players, and the rules and timers will be taken seriously. Aaaaand, go!
Honestly, I didn’t go back for the poker. I went back because I needed the people. There was an added challenge for me here: the friend that had brought me suddenly up and moved in between poker nights, and if I was going to go, I was going to have to just show up by myself, nobody to hold my hand. To my surprise, I was welcomed back very openly, even without an escort or an announcement that I’d be coming, even though only a couple people there sort of half knew me.
So it was. I went every 2nd week, not knowing where the other venue was. Slowly, people started connecting with me on facebook. Soon enough, I was told I should start coming the other weeks too.
I ended up going that next week, not because those people told me where it was, but because my friend was back in town for the weekend. Now, this was a couple weeks after my boyfriend and I had gotten back together, and some of the girls were clamoring to meet him. My boyfriend had also gone to high school with the friend who had moved and hadn’t seen him in about 15 years, so I figured I could get all of it out of the way and brought him to poker. There comes part 2 of the snowball poker started.
Now, my boyfriend was not a fan of poker. He thought it was a stupid game for stupid people and there was no skill involved in the game at all. There was a little grumbling involved in getting him there. In the end, he ended up placing pretty well and making money that night.
Over the next few days, we’d be in the middle of a conversation, and he’d suddenly realize… “Oh God, am I talking about poker? Again?”
And so, it started. At first it was for the people. At first we only talked about the people. And then we started talking about the poker. And then we started trying to get better, and tried harder to win. We spent time learning more. We spent time playing online. We went every week. Eventually, we even started going to Sunday games. We’ve been invited to the Saturday games but the buy-in is more, and a little pricey for what we’ve been told is mostly random craziness without all the rules. But the poker bug bit us pretty hard.
And so, we’ve been dubbed “furniture” in the group. We’re just there, always. We’ve been to birthday parties, and other social events. That’s something we haven’t done… in forever. Social groups, especially mutual social groups… they just weren’t something we’ve had as a couple, or as individuals since we weeded out all the bad friends a decade ago. Things have changed so much in so little time.
But it’s the making it to the end and taking the win that might be what I really needed in my life. I’ve definitely gotten better at poker since I started playing, but I’ve never been able to take it all the way. I tend to do pretty well, and play pretty aggressively. When we merge tables, there are many nights where people from the other table see my stack and start lamenting their future demise. There are many nights where people curse my name, and over smoke break tell the story of how I took them down.
…But I would always do something stupid to lose it all. It would usually just take one really bad call to do me in. It wouldn’t kill me right away, but it’d only be a matter of a few hands before I was out. Poor decisions. Not paying attention to the players enough, missing a read on what they had. Not reading the board well enough, not considering what was probably out there. Testing my luck. Not caring enough. I’d always screw it up somehow.
In a moment of clarity this morning, I realized that the way I’d been losing poker is similar to the way I’ve been losing at life. I find things I’m interested in and that I’m good at, and I make a big push and a good go at it… and then somewhere along the way, I let myself hit a wall, and let everything slide until it’s gone. Jobs, projects, interests, people. It’s my default pattern in life.
So maybe learning to play a good, solid game of poker all the way through is just the breakthrough I could need in life. A stepping stone, of sorts. Poker has been a stepping stone for so much for me so far. I couldn’t imagine it’d take me where I am today, and I can’t possibly imagine where it will take me in the future, but if things keep going the way they are, I’ll be the person I want to be soon enough.