Day Fifty-Something

The countdown was not what I thought it was. Beyond the obvious, I thought the subtext to the countdown was something to do with my bankroll, and how its latest iteration might finally fail.

Then the dreams started. I began to see my life in a different way. I did not think this was possible. It has been like visiting a completely forgotten room in the house I built. And then, rooms behind rooms. How can that be?

The convention hall of the WSOP has been a relief. The cool air, the echo of the speakers, the bustle of the players. The games have been fun but hard on me. I’ve delivered some good play during this breakeven stretch. I’ve saved stacks with unusual folds. I’ve gotten bluffs through. So, while the numbers are bad, there is a world where I lost another ten thousand because I played only to par. Tonight I will even fold kings full, knowing my opponent has rivered aces full; yes, I get to see his cards, and it does feel good to be on point.

It’s all so small, though! I’m fighting for crumbs while the Main Event rumbles nearby. These players become larger than life yet there is no barrier to entry except living well. The pool may include some grinders and delinquents, yes, but the majority of the money comes from real life success. Have I been doing everything wrong? I’ve always done everything wrong, after all. They are playing for dreams; I’m playing for potatoes and discount bacon and organic half-n-half cartons. For the next installment of Imponderables.nl.

In the last room, far from the hall, I revisit leaving her. I had stopped doing this after a thousand times, so I must do it again, like Casanova in the Bergman film. She had wanted to follow my progress in the series back then. I could have been there, which is here, fighting for our future, but instead I left her to find someone saner. Yet what is there to fight for without love? Is this why everything is stale? The tournaments became empty for me. I transformed from a dreamer to a grumpy, solitary bear, eating fish and trailing personal disasters like bright white tapeworms.

In the latest session, a player just can’t behave. He angles me three times in one hand, which must be close to a tie for the record, surely. After I call him on the river, he insanely demands I show first, as he is hoping to slow roll me. I don’t show, but I get the slow roll anyway, as if choosing the wrong door on a terrible game show with only wrong doors. Now I don’t think this world series and this blog series, which have had an ongoing subtheme of behavior, means that you or I should get bent out of shape. I think the lesson is that these are our people. This is us. Accept it or don’t. I shouldn’t care about “making the game better,” at least, not all the time. And I don’t. I’m back to smiling with this delinquent an orbit later.

Maybe this happens because poker can’t fill a life alone and yet is full of dreams. The Main Event is the dream. It’s not perfect or particularly beautiful, and we don’t know what those individual dreams consist of. Some dreams are no doubt merely avaricious or even meaningless. Winners quickly become losers. Addiction and darkness follow the gambler. They’ll angle you for the pure pleasure of it. Yet some visions, maybe just a few, matter.

I did not break through my results wall. I came close. There are moves and decisions I would like to have back. To have folded those kings preflop. To turn one particular bomb pot hand into a bluff rather than another “correct” surrender. To make a few more continuation bets in dicey spots. To judiciously skip a few blind vs blind spews; such a leak I’ve created there! To count out that one last squeeze while they’re racking up instead of talking myself out of glory. In my latest session, I make several strong plays then callowly punt with a curiously bad read, leaving that sweet break-even money on the table.

So, I know what I need to work on. That’s good. But is any of that stuff what truly matters? The last room being empty is what would be truly terrifying. If all I’m doing is perfecting a game, what a stone crazy admission.

When I started the blog, I was out of position and that’s what I called it. Was I somehow proud of this state? I showed the first entry to the only person that mattered. The mission, which I did not understand, was to get back into position. She wanted to be there for that mission. That mission is gone. I am not longer “neither young nor old” but fifty-something. Year fifty-something. It is not an age I can make any sense of. Nor can I of any of these decisions.  I remember in third grade calculating that I would have until about 2020 to accomplish a good life.

I like so much of this blog. It’s a mission in itself. It’s more than a game. It acquired a kind of style very quickly, and then even a definitive uniqueness. I think I lost the silliness that plagued it early on. Yet it never really caught on. I toiled for quality, yet I see now that the quality was not necessarily the problem, but the format and style itself. These short, layered entries are not really a journal, nor are they the public relations routine so favored today. These blog entries are a sort of ongoing suicide note. Missives from an exploratory mission no one voted on. Without knowing it, I have been writing and perfecting a thousand thousand-word epitaphs.

When looked at in this light, the room comes together and the doors close. These pieces don’t matter because the interior struggle is maybe selfish or maybe honorable, but no one can quite know and few can say anything about them that makes sense. I enter the room but the room is still empty. There is a troublesome element of absence from my own life: yet absence is not a story, only a struggle that no one wins anything from. Even my concern for honesty over flattery has no special valor in this context, because bravery best serves the storm of the world, not the labyrinth of the mind.

I was, maybe am, proud of the artisanship, but it is not really the issue. As I’ve written many times, I wanted change and fire, not rhyming couplets. So, I need to stop painting portraits for the mineshaft. My writing has become the cards dealt to the empty seat. I have been skipping my own private Main Event for another round of Go Fish.

Day fifty-something. I can do better.

+1336

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Thanks for reading, especially those who have been with me all these years. I’ll be taking a pause and working on other projects; some may appear here. You can still read me (and with me) on my Substack, where I struggle through fiction and the strange world of contemporary publishing as a late-returning reader. I have a chat room for my friends and students and associates if you want to be more involved.

I’m still coaching poker and have been doing my best work of late. So, if you are struggling with the game despite the endless flow of training and public information, maybe I can help.

In any case, I wish you all peace and apologize for my transgressions here and elsewhere. If you need a change like I do, my advice is: get to it.