A cou­ple times a month, I make it to the Bicy­cle, Com­merce or Hol­ly­wood Park casino. Okay, it’s once a week. Some­times twice. But I wish it were more. On those days, there is a lit­tle extra skip in my step.  I smile a bit wider. Of course, the day couldn’t go any slower. When 7:30pm finally arrives, I eagerly hop in the car and head down to the Bike.  I can’t get there fast enough.  But if I didn’t cut off that dude on the 710 I would’ve have missed the light and never got­ten that park­ing space or those glo­ri­ous cow­boys on my first hand. You know, wings on a mos­quito shit?

Finally I get to the tables, sit down and away we go. First hand.  Cow­boys get busted and cost a rack. Sec­ond hand, fold. Third hand,  I fold. I con­tinue to fold for the next 2 hours  Must have spent my karma else­where. Maybe I shouldn’t have cut that guy off.

This is utterly ridicu­lous. I think I should loosen up. But, I did that last week and promised myself I would exer­cise dis­ci­pline tonight. Instead of donk­ing off $200 on unplayable hands out of bore­dom, I fold. After 3 hours, I start won­der­ing who I pissed off. Just last week it seemed like the poker gods were hav­ing an orgy while I was play­ing. Now some­one ain’t get­ting laid up there, but they’re mak­ing damn sure I get roy­ally fucked down here.

Usu­ally I fend off the bore­dom by gorg­ing myself on a huge bowl of ice cream, or ask­ing the pimp next to me how his girls are per­form­ing. But tonight they’re out of ice cream and the pimp just got a call and left abruptly.  It was prob­a­bly Sheila. He did men­tion she was with a new cus­tomer tonight. Hope she’s okay.

Now it’s 1am. I have drib­bled away $78. This night has not turned out as planned. I had no action at the table. The play­ers weren’t par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing. The food wasn’t sat­is­fy­ing. Why did I play tonight? Why do I ever play this bor­ing game? I sit with this for a moment and then it hits me.

Every time those cards are dealt to me, I feel like a kid on Christ­mas about to open an incred­i­ble present. That feel­ing of antic­i­pa­tion and poten­tial joy is amaz­ing for me. Even though I didn’t get to play a hand tonight, I did open about 200 Christ­mas presents. All of them were essen­tially ugly clothes from grandma, but I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

Why do you play? Let me know at stories@whydoiplaypoker.net

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