[Poker] exemplifies the worst aspects of capitalism that have made our country so great. ~Walter Matthau

Bluff it Baby….

Rules were created with the single objective to level the playing field. The intention being to accurately account for athleticism, smarts and civility, but how is it that everyone is assigned a distinct, inimitable handicap, before knowing by default, we’re all playing the same game.

The Unencumbered Coup…
World Series Poker No-limit Hold’em in 1978.
It’s the championship finals and Bobby Baldwin was the 23-year-old joke of a poker player, he is rivaled against the favored Crandall Addington, real estate tycoon from Texas, and also the favored victor. Addington had $275,000 chips compared to Baldwin’s measly $145,000. With a slight hesitation following a $95,000 bet was all Baldwin needed for his zero-sum bluff, he threw in the rest of his chips in – convincing Addington that he either had a flush or a straight. After tossing his cards on the table revealing a nine and a ten of hearts made Baldwin the youngest WSP champion, and making Addington the “ASS” who got played. Now, Baldwin is the President of the Bellagio Hotel is Las Vegas, among being inducted in the Poker Hall of Fame.

Oh, the yucky and annoying paradox of choice, gimme, hold, fold ‘em, to bet all or lose nothing. To not choose equates to inaction, to remain passive can be interpreted as proactive. Yes, no or why bother having an opinion, right? Or wrong? Warren Buffet believes the first rule in finance is never to lose – and the second, forget the first. So, we’re supposed to forget to win?

Not to frame our forefathers as myopic wasps, but it is true that the makeup of our country was written hundreds of years ago by philosophical nerds. Were these “marvelously elastic,” (as Roosevelt believed) free market commandments flexible enough to actually address our migration, terrorist and poverish problems? Example: AK45s had yet to be invented when Adams and Jefferson, or hell, Jesus was around.


Anomalous Upbringing
Born in a privileged family in Johannesburg, one of eight in Corsica, a Kennedy, or an autistic, each has a bizarre and unpredictable amalgamation of luck – some obviously more debilitating than others. But with only a certain combination of cards, each chip has to be gambled with cognizance, aware not of how far there is to fall, but there is always, always an opportunity to win. If you know how to convince people there could be an opportunity.

Cards alone can’t break the bank: How many rich snots have been coddled with Ivy-League education, pristine genetics and healthy and generous portions of time with confidence-boosting parents? And failed.

That said, people yes, can win with a combo of cards and smarts - just so happens you’re Bill Gates and your parents happened to donate thousands to your private school technology department, and pretty much fate is in your favor? Sure, but aside from his prerequisites, Gates was, and is a shrewd, inventive guy – locating holes in future markets, and crafting science in industries that didn’t yet, exist.

And then there are the J.K Rowlings whose imagination and scribbles consisted of a wizard and a child sporting ugly glasses – and has sold more books than any other book in the history of the world (sans the bible). And she drafted such a jewel homeless on London sidewalks. Barack Obama’s heroic feat has been an archetype for how circumstance can be overcome– and even, quotes from Helen Keller commemorate how obstacles can eventually inspire others.

Then Win....
While you might think I’ve digressed from faking it and making it, to outperforming others while bogged down with the severities and injustices some are born into, there is a reason a winning hand in poker is pure in its reflection of success. The sharpest poker players read between the lines, under the facial expressions, behind the smirks and through the fear, while still playing by the same rules.

In poker it there is no value in how savvy you’re dressed, what town you’ve been raised and what is your native tongue… The outcome isn’t a result of how people judge what you’re capable of understanding – and calculating – and achieving, the outcome is if you alone, can play your cards better than everyone else expects.

Ran Away from Freedom

For miles yesterday I ran. I ran away from my to-do lists and piles of laundry. It’s so freeing to watch the world from a pair sneakers, never know what tidbits of life you can see from the pavement. The stories about the couples holding hands, the dogs walking their owners, the strollers being pushed by twentysomethings in maturity clothing, laughing together. Enjoying a moment they're never aware I’m sharing with them, but only for a second, until they're out of sight and behind me.

Viridian camouflage, unmistakable and identifiable from an airport, grocery store aisle, or the front page of the newspaper. The thick material soaked in variations of greens and tans, like a habit to a nun, concealing the body to hide it of its humility, or more likely when it’s a woman, her feminity.

With the bulky boots and stoic expressions, there might as well have had a botox booth set up for the returning army. Underneath the helmet I see eyes looking out to the bodies of civilians that have come to support the troops, arriving in their minivans, with toddles crying and bulky jackets. I’m at 16th and Wynkoop in Downtown Denver and there is a small group of soldiers and a smaller group of citizens, some PR attempt to bring the world back together. The soldiers and the audience are trying to make conversation, polite chatter consisting on anything other than the obvious.

One pair of eyes shadowed by the brim of a helmet catch mine as I run by. I feel guilty that I don’t stop, that I don’t wave, that instead of making eye contact I turn up my ipod and sprint farther away. Running from the eyes that have witnessed a world I cannot even imagine.

The November sunset makes the air chillier and suddenly the warmth of the afternoon has left and my pace is quickened against the gravel. My legs are fatigued and my lungs angry at the altitude. And even though the reality check of soldiers returning home from war is blocks away, I'm not ready to return to my quiet apartment. The soldiers now healed from the shrapnel wounds, the lacerations so horrific, leaving veterans strapped in wheel chairs, those are courageous ones. The ones I want to run up and hug and cry and thank for their strength and endurance. But right now I don't want to. I’m tired.

I reach out at every opportunity I get. I know this. I met a woman in an airport in Austin, she was taking her boots off at the metal detector and I tapped her shoulder, “I don’t know you, but I admire you,” is what I said. She had been deployed several weeks after delivering a baby girl. Can you imagine leaving an infant to powdered milk and instead of rocking and singing lullubyes, hauling a machine gun around the Middle East?

Whenever I see the uniform of patriotism I wince. A bit of guilt for not volunteering as often as I should, a bit of pride to be a native of the same country, but I mostly wince because I don’t want to understand the pain they know, they have felt and that will torture them. I prefer to run far away from the news stations and reality that our world isn’t really the dogs, and strollers and couples laughing over triple vent lattés, it’s a world outside our fictious peaceful American walls. A world where suffering is the norm and people’s only chance for freedom is running away....

The Poker Player...

"With enthusiasm he recounted escapades too risqué for any eavesdroppers. His deadpan expressions concealing a worthless pair of threes that won him a Rolex in Russia, parties in China and South America, which I assumed included drugs and the occasional underage escort. Men who had penthouses broken into (I suspected he might have broken into a penthouse or two), folding a hand on a Ferraris, and my favorite, the woman, whom he described as a bombshell, outsmarting the most masculine poker playing prodigies.

Envisioning myself touting some exotic Versace wrap, camouflaging an insidious smirk with Gucci sunglasses, beating out egocentric males in world-class casinos, all sounded far more alluring than becoming a soccer mom." June 20, 2007