Why Do I Play Poker?

It’s 5:00 a.m..

I’m outta here.  It’s late.  Good thing I don’t have to waste any time at the cage.

I get up and walk past the valet that I was too smart pay $3 to and head to self-parking.

I get in my car and let the fact that I just gave $500 to a bunch of rank ama­teurs sink in.

It’s one of those nights when I can’t help but ask “Why the fuck do I play poker?”

Tonight, it’s cer­tainly not for the thrill of vic­tory.  Out­smart­ing my oppo­nents? Came up a lit­tle short there too.  Comm­raderie? The guy who just got out of prison was pretty cool.

Tonight was too bru­tal to rely on cute lit­tle say­ings like “the next best thing next to win­ning at poker is los­ing at poker.“ It’s going to be a while before that pearl of wis­dom is going to be amus­ing again.

Right now the only ray of light on this sit­u­a­tion is that McDon­alds starts serv­ing break­fast in twenty minutes.

The sausage McMuf­fin is not going to take the sting off tonight.  Okay, fine. It’s three Sausage McMuffins but that’s not the point.  There’s not enough Sausage McMuffins to make me feel better.

What hap­pened? The night started off just right. I get to the casino. My table is per­fect. Loose, jokey and most impor­tantly, emi­nently beat­able. The free prime rib is still in the vicin­ity of vaguely rare.  Tonight’s going to be all right.

It’s easy to wait for a pre­mium hand while you’re  eat­ing prime rib table side. So that’s exactly what I do.  For the first cou­ple of rounds I play my blinds and not much else. First hand.  Aces cracked.  Per­fect I think.  Next time you’ll give me the money. I’ll wait.

I won’t kill you with the details, but basi­cally I lose three buy-ins play­ing solid poker.  I get my money in with the best hand only to watch the other guy rake in the chips.  Oh well, that’s poker.

Now back to the mind numb­ing defeat. Here’s why I’m mad.  I know you lose some­times.  That’s part of the game.  I usu­ally can accept that.  But not last night.  Last night, after fairly los­ing the first three buy-ins, I just gave away another two.  It would’ve been bet­ter if I just gave the dealer a two hun­dred dol­lar tip and got to sleep an hour earlier.

But then McDon­alds would not have been serv­ing break­fast yet and I would’ve have deprived my arter­ies three Sausage McMuffins worth of grief.

Fine, I’ll just sleep it off.  Okay, maybe I won’t.  My son wants to watch car­toons.  Great. Jus­tice League?  Okay, he can watch Super­man while I can plan the assas­si­na­tion of the fuck­tard in seat five who plays QJ under the gun after get­ting three-bet .   It doesn’t take long before my mind goes from how much I hate poker to won­der­ing if I can squeeze in a SNG if we watch another episode.

Why do you play? Let me know at stories@whydoiplaypoker.net