A Few Memorial Day Memories

That handsome devil is my Dad, circa 1952. Thankfully he survived his military obligation, notwithstanding North Korea's best efforts.

Of course, the North Koreans never really had a lot of influence over Amarillo, TX, or Anchorage, AK, where he was stationed.

When Dad received his draft notice, bearing greetings from the President of the United States and letting him know that he was going to be a proud member of the US Army, he knew that something had to be done. He was fond of saying many times afterwards, "I decided that Air Force Blue went better with the yellow stripe down my back than Army Green," and chose four years with the USAF over two with the Army. You could do that then; I guess towards the Viet Nam days, you couldn't.

So that's how the old man became an Air Force man. And though it might well have saved him a trip to the DMZ, the Gummint stuck it to him as best it could, baking him for two years in Amarillo, TX, average temperature 183, and then freezing him in Anchorage, AK, average temperature -92. I suppose either place is better than a bamboo jail cell in Pyongyang though.

He hated the service. My God, he hated being in the military. He always said it got better once he learned the secret, which was just to laugh at them. Turn left when they say turn left, turn right when they say turn right, and just laugh at them all the moments in between.

He spent 3 years, 9 months, 18 days in the Air Force. There was a rule at the time that allowed a serviceman to separate early if his overseas billet expired with less than 90 days left on his hitch. At the time, Alaska was not a state - that wouldn't happen until 1959 - so Anchorage was considered an overseas billet. So Senior Airman (now Sergeant) Cyril R Jacobs got the fuck out of Dodge and came home to the old neighboorhood. He stayed at home - his father had a heart attack and Dad stuck around to help him run the glass store and to help with the bills.

One day as he was in his driveway working on his car (he was a mechanic by trade), he spotted a girl he knew walking up the street towards him.

She was just a girl from the neighboorhood, this one, ten years younger than Dad. Their families had known each other for years. In fact, a-way back when, Dad babysat for this girl - Susan was her name.

Well, Susan came be-bopping up to Dad, a child no more, a curvaceous 19 years old with (apparently) a nice set of legs and a good head on her shoulders. They chatted for a while, catching up, when Dad asked her what she was doing that evening.

"I have a date," she said.
"Break it," he responded, and looked deep into her eyes.
"O...K...," she stammered, and broke her date.

They had a wonderful date, one of those low-budget dates that involved a lot of strolling by a river, eating ice cream, and chatting. When she got home, Susan looked at her mom and said "I'm going to marry that man."

11 months later, her prediction came true. And their marriage endured good times and bad, produced three children, and lasted 45 remarkable years.

An update, some thanks, and the disappointment of family

Greetings, sports fans. Full plate today, so let's get right to it.

As regards my incipient life of a grinder, things are moving at more or less the exact pace that I thought they'd be moving at. I'm winning my DoN tables at about a 90% clip; I'm building my bankroll at the exact pace I wanted to. I am about halfway to where I need to be to start playing the $100 tables regularly. My bankroll has some real money in it now; it's a struggle to keep it in my playing account and not do something exotic with it, like pay my bills. But I have a plan, I am executing to that plan, and there's no reason to sabotage that plan because the cable bill came today.

This Double of Nothing deal, it's not for the action junkies, I'll tell you that. It is, let's call it by its real name, boring as hell. But I'm not in this to press the adrenaline button. I'm in this to be a jizzle-oh-bizzle, a J-O-B. In the 47 minutes I spent playing poker today, I made roughly what someone earning minimum wage would make having worked all day. I have to satiate myself with statistics like that to convince myself that playing these games is worth it, because it is, really, so very boring.

I'm considering raising my daily quota, to get to my bankroll number sooner than I otherwise would, so I can start playing for real money. I think $60 a day is a nicer number than $40, so I think I'll upgrade to there.

I've started playing two tables at a time. I think this is a good approach; if I lose a game in reality I only lose a few bucks in vig. If I win both, that's great. And I can't imagine losing both games at once, so rarely do I not come in the top half. So I'll try to integrate that into my comfort zone.

I'll also put out there some long-term thinking: If I start making my ultimate goal number, $200 a day, with regularity, I might start shooting for $300 a day. It would mean a longer work day but it would also mean a $75,000 income per year, which in turn would mean I could pull a nice sum out per week for the bills and still build the ol' bankroll, buy Christmas presents, pay for prostitutes, whatever. Wait, what?

So that's that. The summation of the summation: Things are going exactly to plan, with the future looking even brighter.

I wanted to thank the Duckster as well for the shout out. Duck, I appreciate the tip o' the bill, but I will cop to a little ambivalence to the popularization of the DoN tourneys that Pokerstars has. Not like either Duck or I have the ability to sway an appreciable amount of business towards or away from the DoN's, but bringing in more players would assure the long-term viability of the game type but might also bring in good players. The only thing that might prevent that is that most poker players are action junkies. Sure, the really successful ones are super-genius action junkies, but action junkies they remain. So just remember this, fellas: It's boring. You really good players should stay away. And to the below-average players: I hear they serve cake. You should check it out. The $50 tables, anyone who finishes in the bottom five gets a big piece of cake. Just click "Lobby" and wait for the cake. Really.

Lastly, I have a piece of advice for any of you who are planning to engage in cards as a means of making a living: Don't tell your family. They, instead of being the most supportive people in your life, will not be. In fact they will prove to be the least supportive, and do so in ways which will not fail to disappoint you, to hurt you, and to convey their utter lack of faith in your ability to earn your bread and board by playing cards. I would instead suggest starting up a blog, making some friends out there, and spilling your guts to them. Ruminating on the irony of people you don't know supporting you and people who have known you since birth (some of whom who were indeed directly involved in said birthing) showing you no faith at all is of course optional.

Thanks, friends.

Status Update and a Kindness Over-repaid

So this Pokerstars Double or Nothing dealie is everything I thought it would be: a trickle of easy money. The trickle part is a drag, but that can be fixed. The easy money part is very, VERY cool.

So - I'm going to stick with my initial plan of building up a bankroll, then playing the $50 and $100 tables, hoping to DoN my way to a couple hundred bones a day. My win percentage is over 85% at this point, and I'm sticking to my plan, which is to play poker until I either make $40 a day or lose $60 (I figure if I lose $60 in one day to these meatballs I'm either doing something way wrong or the gods are vengeful; either way it's as strong a stop signal as ever there was). Once I've built my bankroll up to, I dunno, maybe $1000, I'll start playing the $50 and $100 games, stopping when I make $200 in a day or losing maybe $300. And if I can consistently make $200 a day at the tables, why, that's a $50,000 a year job with weekends off!

(I could use some advice regarding the limits and the goals. Do they sound realistic?)

More importantly, when people ask me what I'm doing these days, I'll have something to tell them besides "sleeping, mostly." I'm not sure how much of an upgrade "being a professional poker player" is going to be - the same set that views my lack of employement as a "Shondeh af der mishpocheh" (shame unto the family) would not view my playing cards for money as any great update.

Be that as it may, I'm going to give it a shot. And I must admit there's something appealing in earning my bread on the backs of people who are trying to do the same thing, just not as well as me. And if I can git 'er done working three hours a day, all the better.

So there's that. Now there's something else I have to do: Readers of Very Josie might be aware that I offered to let her in on a tell that I picked up on an otherwise damn good poker player, if she would write something nice about me. Well, she actually wrote 9 nice things about me (10 really - as a comment she also called me a Cat Whisperer). So I think it's only fair that I say some nice things about her, with an eye towards you all getting to know her better:

1. She knows every Italian word I've ever asked her about. She doesn't speak it, at least in front of me, but she certainly knows all the words.


2. When she hears something that is unexpectedly funny, she will execute a perfect Danny Thomas spit-take, that not only makes me laugh but also covers me with a fine mist of Sicilian spittle.


3. She is the only girl I've ever met that has used the phrase "I'd like to shank that son of a bitch."


4. She's a die-hard Red Sox fan, has been for years. Her current favorite Sox player is Tim Wakefield, and you gotta love that.


5. She is OBSESSED with being shown on the JumboTron at whatever sporting event she goes to. And wouldn't you know it, the only time I've ever been on the JumboTron was because she was sitting next to me, at Fenway Park against the Yankees.


6. She has no great love for hockey but she'll go to a couple of games a year with me when I'm stuck for a partner (I'm a season ticket holder), just to make my life a little easier.


7. She is/was a member of Mensa, and tortured me about it long enough that I finally applied and got accepted, just to shut her up. When I got my membership card I snuck it in a deck of cards and dealt it out to her. We still laugh about that day.


8. She's full-blooded Italian, yet hates sausage. When asked about it, she makes a face like she just smelled something bad and shakes her head. Maybe this isn't a "nice thing" about her but I find it oddly endearing.


9. She's mentally strong, so strong that words can't describe it. Look, nobody lives completely free of the hurts and harms of life, but she's taken her share - maybe even more than her share - and held her head up, tall and proud, throughout it all. And finally...


10. What's the most important quality in a friend? All a friend ever has to do is have your back, all the time, no matter what. And whatever else goes on, I know she's got mine.

Jesus, now I need to shower.

SHOCKING NEW DEVELOPMENT!

I have found pictures on line of the '89 Mustang that I wrote about in that post I re-posted about my first new car. This one is 1988, not 1989, but it's the exact same car.

http://www.cars-on-line.com/36390.html

That goofy red interior still takes my breath away. My god, I loved that car. If it had air conditioning I'd still own it.

Some quick hits whilst waiting on the Mookie/Dank

• Just read Schaubs' post about his less-than-perfect relationship with his Dad. That took guts, m'man. It's easy to write about how much your dad meant to you - god knows I've had practice - but it can't be easy when your dad is a disappointment. Schaubs, you have my respect.


• Speaking of blogs, I've been reading Hurricane Mikey's with amusement and interest. Just the right mix of poker and life, well-written, conversational, and entertaining. Nice work, Mikey - keep it up.


• I used to really like DB Cooper's blog until he went nose-to-nose with the Boston Red Sox. Now listen: I'm no Johnny-come-lately Sox fan. I remember watching the 75 ALCS against the A's back when it was a best-of-five series. Dick Stockton and Ken Harrelson called the game for Channel 38 (that's right, it wasn't nationally carried!). I cried when they lost the '78 tiebreaker game. Cried! A boy of 10. Later that day I played Monopoly with my brothers and to needle me even further they called Free Parking "The Pennant," those bastards. If Free Parking is mentioned to this day they'll call it the Pennant, and probably won't even remember why. Anyway, I like Coop, I like his blog. But Coop, dude, you gotta lay off the Sox or I'm taking my ball and going home.


• Then there's Josie. We've had our moments, she and I, but it's one of those deals where we do our fighting in private, and even if I'm so pissed off at her I can't even speak, don't you DARE disparage her in front of me (right Wolfie? I still apologize for that!), even if you're kidding. I've known her for more years than I'd care to remember, and I value our friendship a great deal. AND, to nobody's surprise, she's a good blogger. I've been bitching at her to start writing for years now - not blogging per se but whatever gets her to put pen to paper is ok with me. Did you know that she is/was a member of Mensa? If she wants to give more detail she certainly can.


• In closing, and since it's six minutes to Mookie/Dank (can we just agree to call it the Dookie? hahahaha) I'll leave you with another "best of" story. The "Last post" referred to in the title was the one where I fell and broke my ass. Enjoy!

Reaction from My Last Post

The consensus from the small yet passionate circle of friends, acquaintances, and various and sundry hangers-on is unanimous: Everybody loves a post wherein Your Hero inflicts pain upon himself, whether that pain be physical or mental. Apparently, they can't get enough of some good old-fashioned pie-in-the-face humor and debasement, as long as 1) they are NOT the subject of the humor, and 2) I am.

Well, who am I not to oblige? Forthwith then one of my most embarassing moments on this earth.

My first new car was a 1989 Ford Mustang, black with a red interior. I bought it for the princely sum of $9,400 in the summer of that year. And I loved that car, whether it deserved the love or not. Hey - I was all of 21 years old - what can I tell you? If you want to take a look at what it sorta looked like, click here [don't bother - link long since taken down]. Mine was a hard-top, and not automatic, but it's more or less the same car. The details aren't too important; suffice to say I loved the car and felt like a million bucks driving it.

One fine day as I was driving down the highway (128 South, heading towards 93, for you townies), I looked to my right and saw some dude driving the exact same car as mine. black exterior, red interior, the whole bit. My car down to the floorboards. So I did what any car-proud youngster would do: I sidled up to him and made eye contact, making what I hoped was the universal gesture for, 'hey, check it out, we're driving the same car.'

The other guy looked at me as if I were holding up a fresh turd for his examination.

Undaunted by this apparent rejection, I pointed at his car, then pointed to mine, again in a gesture I thought was immediately recognizable as an acknowledgement that we were, in fact, brothers in automobilia.

Again, he gave me a look that would wilt lettuce and pounded on the gas, speeding away.

I was left only to reflect on the unfriendliness of my fellow man when it struck me why he had reacted the way he did: I was driving my girlfriend's car at the time, a decidedly girly Honda Prelude. Instead of "Hey, we have the same car," he could have only taken my gesture as meaning, "pull over - I'm a homosexual." I turned the color of the interior of my car, a humbler boy, but a little bit wiser.

And because this story has no real moral I'll borrow the one from my previous post: Don't mess with your own ass.

Day 2: Batting 1.000

So day 2 of the great Double or Nothing experiment continues with nothing but smiles and sunshine for all parties. It truly is just a game of patience and ABC poker; I know it's only day 2 but this does seem ridiculously easy.

Only a little drama today. As BB I flopped an open-ended straight draw. The villain min-bet and I called, even though I didn't have the odds. I turned a Queen which made my straight and bet it hard - I think it was 1.5x pot, kind of a monster bet all things considered. I was pretty sure I had the hand at that point. But the river gave the board a third diamond and the villain bet out 240, which was maybe 40% of the pot. And this is one big difference between DoN poker and a more conventional tourney. Normally I would have raised at this point the 755 chips I had after the call. Maybe I smelled something fishy, maybe I had already adjusted my game to a DoN environment, but I just called. The villain turned over A8d and caught his flush, and I was down to 755 in chips.

A few hands later I was in good position and got a good blind-stealing hand - Ad8c, almost the same hand that crushed me a few minutes previously. I got a call, which didn't make me happy but wasn't the worst thing in the world. The flop brought me two diamonds, one of which was the King. Check check. The turn brought me a third diamond. I shoved, trying to get the villain to fold. He snap-called with a King. Thankfully the poker gods evened things out for me and I caught my flush. Lucky? Sure, but it was bad luck that brought me to that point. The gods owed me one, I guess, and they paid up for a change.

Anyway that brought me back up to my original stack size and I was able to ride things out until a couple of the guys took their dicks out and tried to convince everybody that they knew how to play. Why on earth, in this format, would anyone play aggressive poker? I've been playing DoN for less than 48 hours and I've figured out at least that much. But these two frat boys in seats 2 and 3 kept pounding each other and between that and the collateral damage it inflicted, we got down to five people and that, as they say, was that.

I really think I'm on to something here. The only bad thing about it is that it's kind of boring. But all I need to do is picture myself at this machine that you put $20 into and 45 minutes later it gives you $40, and I get over the boredom in a fast hurry.

On the non-poker front, I redeemed some credit card points and got a digital 8-track recording studio, which makes a frustrated musician like me all squidgy below decks. Check out this bad Larry:

Now all I need is some talent and something to record.

See you at the tables.

Day 1: Me Likee

I've played four Double or Nothing (DoN) tournaments today. Won 3, lost 1 - and the loss was one of those flukes: AKs vs. AKo, the villain caught runner runner spades to hit a miracle flush. Hey, what can you do. But I "won" the other three, and that ain't so awfully bad.

The play on these tables, apart of course from the idiots, is very conservative. Lots of folding to strength. It kinda has the feel of play at the bubble: people tend to have a whole different concept of "is it worth it" than a winner-take-all or a tourney heavily weighted towards first place.

As I mentioned earlier, the DoN tourney rewards patient play but I like a turbo game. The play is slow enough - and PokerStars is slower than FT anyway - so the turbo element pushes things along nicely.

I'm going to build my bankroll organically, if I can, and take my chances at the $50-ish level. If I can stay in the top half of the table at that level, I could actually grind out a living there - at least enough of one to get Toots off my back about going back to work!

It has potential, friends. It does seem like a backdoor entry into the world of professional poker, but being a grinder is more about patience than flash anyway. And if nothing else it'll give me something to write about, a reason to rise before 11, and maybe a couple hundred bucks in folding money at the end of each week.

Of course, this could very well be the unreasoning optimism of 3:56 AM - we'll have to see. Watch this space for further info.

Double or Nothing?

Tried my hand at PokerStars yesterday. I think it was a wise choice. They have a type of tournament that FT doesn't have: Double or Nothing. Basically, all you have to do is finish in the top five of a 10-top, and you double your money, hence its title.

I like this option a lot, and I think that despite what I think is a cheeseball interface, I'll be playing Pokerstars from here on out.

Double or nothing rewards my kind of play, I think. If you are patient, and pick your spots well, all you really need to do is win one or two big pots and you've pretty much won. More importantly, you don't need to be in the top 5 percent of players to win consistently; just be in, say, the top 35 percent and you're a consistent winner. Now I'm by no means a great poker player, but I could hold my head up and put myself in the top 35% without shame. Therefore I think I'll win consistently here, and isn't that what it's all aboot?

So it's Double or Nothing for the next few weeks exclusively, to give me time to fine-tune my game accordingly. I'll report my gains/losses in the upcoming posts.

Attention Bruins Fans:

GOD DAMMIT.

That is all.

Best of The Crafty Southpaw: Learning to Fly

Since it's the weekend, I figured I'd reprint a particularly funny post from some years ago. Hazel Mae, by the way, was a Filipino (I think) sportscaster with gigantic breasts. Enjoy.


LEARNING TO FLY

Humans, I found out the hard way, are not meant to fly. It's neither exhilarating nor, ultimately, pain-free - but I get ahead of myself.

A little background on Your Humble Scribe, for those of you who don't know him or know him well: I wear socks to bed. Yes, it's strange, I suppose. I have to have my feet covered more or less all the time or I kinda get the willies. Sure. It's a thing. But at least I'm not turning the lights on and off six times before I can go to bed. As things go, it's pretty mild.

The second and third things you need to know to get maximum impact from this story are these: my house has hardwood floors, and a sunken living room. The perceptive among you already can see where this is going. But for the slow, I continue:

This past Thursday, upon awakening, I staggered out of bed and, as is sometimes my custom, made my way to the living room to watch Hazel Mae doing SportsDesk and dream my little dreamy dreams about being her mug of Dunkin Donuts Coffee. Except I never got there.

Right before the step down into the living room, my left foot went completely out from under me and my momentum sent me, for one long moment, airborne and completely parallel with the ever-approaching earth.

Time stood still. A thousand thoughts raced through my head - most of them some variant of, "this isn't going to end well."

I was not wrong in my assessment of the situation.

I landed, ass first, on the unyielding hardwood floor, the step having lodged itself cozily in the small of my back. The pain was exquisite. Toots, putting on her face in the bathroom and hearing both the sickening thud and the subsequent howls and whimpers of pain, asked me if I was ok.

"I don't know," was my honest reply.

I took a quick inventory. Toes: wiggling. Good. Limbs: seemingly intact. Also good. Shards of broken bone piercing the skin: absent. So it appeared as if there were no permanent damage - but I couldn't help but feel like I got run over by a boxcar. And there was this unsettling fact: my ass hurt. Real bad. I had landed right on my tailbone and I learned quickly and poignantly that a tailbone injury was no laughing matter.

Thoroughly out of options - staying upright was unthinkable - I staggered back to the bedroom and threw myself, face down of course, on the bed to collect myself and take a more accurate assessment of the harm my body had just taken. Thankfully, after about a half-hour and three Advil, I was enough of my old self to drag this miserable excuse for a body into the shower and get to work, only about 45 minutes after I normally do.

However, the (pun intended) kick in the ass is, my ass still hurts. And the only two positions in which the pain is gone is standing up, or lying in such a way as to put no pressure on the offending area - neither option of which is palatable to my day job, or to the pressbox at McCoy Stadium, where I'll be this evening, squirming like I've sat on an anthill and wishing I'd taken my Advil with me.

So the moral of the story is this, and it holds true in many walks of life: Don't mess with your own ass.

Two Years Ago Today

May 5th 2008 was actually a day exactly like this - unseasonably warm, bright sun shining in an optimistic sky, a glorious Spring day bringing word of warmer, brighter days to come.

My mom was inside the house, watching TV. My father was outside in a lawn chair, putting pebbles in a flowerbox. After the pebbles would come the soil; he was going to plant some four-o'clocks in there. He went to the side of the yard, presumably to the hose bib, to put some water in the box, so the four-o'clocks had a decent shot at taking.

And there it was that my mother found him, fallen on a cement stoop in front of the hose bib, glasses askew, skin cut but not bleeding. His heart, weakened from three heart attacks and genes that always work against our family, finally just gave out. The cuts that didn't bleed told the doctors that he was dead before he fell.

Cyril Robert Jacobs, my father, the anchor of our family, was 75. And his death broke my heart, in ways from which I still have yet to recover. Two years have passed since that awful, awful day, and I have made no more than an uneasy truce with it.

I sunk into a depression that lasted 18 months. In the last six months I have been able to laugh freely again without guilt; I can remember my dad without tears most days; it cannot but be admitted that the slow passage of time has some curative value.

But I'm still broken. And days like today, where he is all I can think about, and the sun is shining brightly in an optimistic sky, are very hard to endure.

So I'm sorry if I'm not quite myself today. I'll be playing the Very Josie tonight. I hope I play well; my dad was tickled at the fact that I showed some small aptitude at poker.

Hey, thanks for listening. I'm sure this was an incredible downer but it helps to type it out.

Must See TV

If you enjoy watching poker on TV, and who here doesn't, you have got to catch Poker After Dark for the next two weeks. NBC, 2:05AM - 3:05 AM. It's usually a winner-takes-all 1 table affair but every so often (a couple, three times a season) they run a two-week cash game. If you're not an inveterate night owl like myself, you can TiVo, DVR, or hell, even videotape it.

Why?

I don't want to give up the juicier details, but - SPOILER ALERT - Phil Hellmuth gets his ass handed to him BUT GOOD. Now me personally, I think Hellmuth is a wretched, ill-tempered, ill-mannered gasbag who is pathologically unable to admit to poor play or to keep his trap shut after a bad beat. When you combine that with his Caesarian ego (the metaphor is apt; he makes his entrace at the WSOP main event dressed as Julius Caesar himself) it all adds up to a particularly odious human being for whom I've lost all respect. Better still he's lost the respect of his peers, by the sound of it: He hasn't changed his game since 1989 and he's been getting hammered for the last few years, just hammered.

One little story that might have escaped the casual watcher of TV: At a very early WPT event, season 1, Hellmuth made a final table with Esfandiari, who knocked Hellmuth out. When he did so he did this wave-kinda-sorta-thing before he shook Hellmuth's hand. Apparently the insult of making Phil wait with his hand out for a second or two prompted him to say, "show some class, kid, shake my hand when you beat me." And THAT'S how I like my irony, friends. Here is the unquestionably LEAST CLASSY person in the whole poker world, bar none, schooling someone on poker etiquette. Screw you, Hellmuth. Seriously. And you know what? If it's all an act, a sort of poker Grand Guignol of the mind? Drop it. It makes people want to spit hot solder in your eyes. Yes, your enemy would have burned his mouth in so doing, but that's how much the world hates you.

Anyway, watch the show. It's so good you'll be licking your fingers afterward.

Non-Poker Content: The by-god Boston Bruins have opened up a 2-0 lead over their second round opponents the Philadelphia Flyers. If they win this series, which is looking at least a little likely, they'll be playing for the Eastern Conference championship and the right to win the Stanley Cup, for the first time in about 20 years or so. Heady times for the Black and Gold. We need the Montreal Canadiens to do their best to defeat or fatigue the Penguins, putting me for the very first time in my life in the awkward position of saying these words: GO HABS!

An Open Letter to the Scumbag I Played Poker With Last Night

FUCK YOU.

It's just shy of 4:00 in the morning, you self-important shit dick. But even if it wasn't, there is no reason on earth why it took you 18 seconds to make every single decision. Playing poker with you was less like a game of skill and chance and more like fucking root canal surgery.

We're playing for 33 bucks - not the crown god damned jewels of the British Empire. If it takes two minutes to play every hand because you're doing the god damned ROBOT and clicking your mouse in super slo mo, nobody is going to want to play you. I know I've made a note, and will never willingly play you, as long as I live.

My boiling white-hot hatred for you knows no bounds. You should accidentally swallow a Ginsu knife and die, horrible and slow. You should get bitten by a rabid mongoose, go crazy with rabies and die, horrible and slow. And then the rabid mongoose should eat its fill of your entrails and take an extremely satisifying CRAP right where your chest cavity used to be, and when the mongoose is done, the flies will come and use your now-decaying corpse as a combination hotel and all-you-can-eat buffet. Then your rotting, flyblown corpse, stripped of sinew, bones bleached white, WILL TAKE THE SAME FUCKING AMOUNT OF TIME TO PLAY A GOD DAMNED POKER GAME THAN YOU DID LAST NIGHT, YOU WORTHLESS PRICK.

20 Reasons Why Poker is Like Life

• You can do everything right and still lose.



• You can do everything wrong and still win.



• Sometimes the bastards win.



• Sometimes the idiots win.



• When the chips are down, you usually lose; but when you win under those circumstances it's incredibly sweet (and memorable).



• Every so often you don't deserve what you get but you get it anyway.



• There is no substitute for hard work.



• You can be cruising along, thinking you have the world by the balls, and something will come out of nowhere to bruise and bloody you.



• It's not what you deserve; it's what you take.



• You will get the feeling that your friends, life, and God Almighty Himself are conspiring against you. Sometimes you will be right.



• Coming in second place can win you acclaim, notoriety, and money - but it's a pale shadow to winning.



• Having friends is more fulfilling than being a lone wolf. Defeats are softened, and victory sweetened, when shared with friends.



• If you don't learn from your mistakes, you are bound to repeat them, over and over again.



• Know thy enemy as you know thyself.



• Chance favors the prepared.



• Boorish, brash, uneducated behavior wins you little but the silent contempt of your peers, bearing in mind rule 4.



• In a perfect world, you either win with honor or lose with honor. Sometimes your adversary does not believe or practice this rule - but you should still, all the more because he does not.



• If you don't love it, it's an excruciating way to make a living.



• If you swim in waters too deep for you, it rarely ends well.



• There is always someone smarter than you.