Poker disaster

February 10th, 2005

I’m getting well into this poker business. Poker is great fun. Everyone should play poker.

That said, the last game (I play a regular monthly game) was my first disaster. It was the first time ever I have lost money. This fact alone may account for the fact that I had previously regarded poker as ‘great fun’.

Normally I’m twenty to thirty quid up at the end of the night. That night, I dropped fifteen.

I have four entirely plausible excuses for this, all of which combined to doom me.

The main excuse (besides the ‘bad luck’ one) is the book I got for Christmas. It’s called ‘How to win at poker’. I read the book from cover to cover and declared myself a poker ace. According to the book, I needed to play less of the hands I was playing and tighten up my game. I tried out it’s winning system online and I have to say, I have never lost so much money so quickly in online poker. After losing twenty quid of my pre-book-reading profits, I was ready to uninstall the damned thing.

Nevertheless, the damage to my playing style was done. I have completely forgotten how I played before reading the book. Taking this playing style into my regular game was disasterous. I hardly played a hand all night, and won only two. That I only lost fifteen quid is a miracle.

‘How to win at poker’ my arse. Here’s how to win at poker… Write a book about poker, and sell it. That way you will make money out of poker players. The only time you ever will.

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