Lead Story

A Poker Carol

I haven’t slept past noon in 11 years but I spent the prior week in Vegas at a trade show and such inevitable biological margin-calls demand recompensing. It’s been going around these days. Players are getting old and slow...and fat. I haven’t seen belts this loose since my last tune-up. With the median age of 39.5, we seem to be collectively slumping into middle age. This year also marks the first in many to feature more weddings than divorces: further evidence of the disturbing level of contentment and conciliatory climate stagnating our game.

With so much complacency and contentment about how can we stay competitive in a cutthroat game like poker?

Consider the following: Doc G played with us this past week and won money. That bears repeating. Doc G played nearly all-night with us and WON MONEY. This sad fact perhaps crystallizes our fate if things don’t change soon. On any other day this fish would have been weighed and filleted before 10:30pm. We'd have sent him home wrapped in newspaper. But instead, I saw him walk to the elevator virtually gloating over his $60 haul.

Playing a pre-holiday game, we disbanded at the pathetic hour of 12:20am, Doc G leaving a bit earlier “because crazy doesn’t take a day off.” My night was a 'push' due to a lucky late winning hand, but I suffered the 100 yard walk back to my place, my head full of miasmic premonition like I had seen something I wasn’t supposed to see. Like I had just seen the ghost of Poker future. And like I knew if things didn't change soon, we shall all be banished to a world of lifeless poker drudgery. A ring of hell where Hank’s cackle ceases to pierce and enrage; where Chowhound converts to an all-elastic-waistband wardrobe; where Koneo gets married and a job; where everybody’s nice to Dano in an artificial and saccharine way; and where Doc G walks away a winner every night.

These visions appear before me and mist mine eyes as my feet drag repeatedly slumping their way towards West End Avenue. I swear I could hear the faint sound of chains clinking.

"Spirit," say I, shuddering from head to foot. "I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. This is a fearful poker-table. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, Let us go."

"Good Spirit," I pursue, as down upon the sidewalk I fall before it: "Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life."