AGAIN, let me set aside politics for my weekend jabber.
One of the things I miss about my old city is my poker group. I am a poker aficionado. I play poker for recreation. There were at least two areas in my previous home where poker games were legally allowed. On most nights we just play poker at home with friends and family. I have yet to know if Bacolod has poker groups. Maybe later when I am fully settled I’ll join a community or two.
You see, there is so much that a player can learn about life and about himself when he plays poker. Let me share to you a reflection I had a few years back when I started to play this game.
Older people may connote poker as gambling and they are probably right (although it does not necessarily have to involve money). But this game can actually teach you a thing or two on how to play or how not to play the game of life.
Why do I like poker? In poker;
1. Everyone is equal the moment you sit down at the table regardless of age, gender, and status. At the poker table the competition is fair. Everyone gets an equal chance. Discrimination doesn’t exist, unlike in life.
2. Although the community cards (flop, turn & river) may increase one’s chance of winning, it is still the player who determines his winning/losing through his folds, calls and raise of bet, not like in the real world where roughly everything that one enjoys isn’t his doing, with a few exceptions of course.
3. Sometimes, all a player needs is a bluff to win everything. In life, on the other hand, bluffing can only bring us as far.
4. Last (and the best lesson I learned in poker) is that in order to win, one needs to be ruthless. Mercy can cost you everything, so you wait for the perfect timing and be ruthless when you strike. You can go all in to get it all.
I like playing poker. It makes me feel invincible. I feel in total control even just for an hour or so. It makes me own my choices. It gives me a sense of power.
On the other hand, poker is not life. In life, equality hardly exists, fair play is just an idea, and even our very own choices are greatly determined by circumstances.
Life, unlike poker, is not a game of power and control rather a game of service and surrender. It is not a game of invincibility, but a game of humility and humiliation.
In life, you don’t need to be ruthless to win, you only need to love. In life, winning does not mean having it all, rather it means emptying and sharing it all. That is why in as much as I like poker, I only see it as a hobby, a break when I get tired of fighting life’s battle, a pause when I get shattered into pieces, a moment of charging so that when I feel better again I’d be on my feet to face the game of life, the game of love.