World of Poker

Back when I was in high school, I was first taken by the sport of poker by a couple friends through a gambling friend of mine. At first it was a variety of games that I was pulled into; seven card stud, in between the sheets, guts, black Maria and five card stud. Only once in a blue moon did we find time to play a holdem tournament. We had no clue what chip sets even look like.

But as our nights waned on and the majority of players found that their money disappeared quickly at these high risk games, we thought that a new idea was to be formulated in order to not only raise the level of play out of all of us but to also to put a use to our texas hold em clay chip presents we all got for Christmas.

To suggest that the movie Rounder’s didn’t have any impact on us would be a downright lie. But to be exact, the first time that I, not exactly the entrepreneur of the regular weekend games, actually saw the movie and the impact that holdem had on poker world wide was after a year of our sport. After watching it for the first time, I studied it like a game plan. I would watch Espn’s coverage on the world series of poker. I felt as though I had joined before others and that I was better than others. All that I needed was a authentic Paulson chip to twirl around as I studied my hand.

These regular games between four or five close friends turned into huge tournaments. Poker had become a new form of drink that everyone drank excessively and that everyone always bragged about. People had their reads, they had their nervous hands, playing with as little as 1 single casino clay chip, the cards shuffled and looked at a number of times, the quivering eyes; spells that forecast the doom of defeat for all of them.

What we saw on television, in those casinos so far away from our young minds, were God’s whom we wanted to tear down. We all felt better than them. Our rise became an American rise. My transition to a life of poker, thus far never thought of before high school, was now a way to live. After sex and drinks, the next greatest accomplishment was how nice your chips were, did they come in a chip case, how you could shuffle a deck of cards and how many poker tournaments you won.

My night and raise to fame came one night that had the tension of a forgotten loved one. Being out of the game for a couple months, and back down in that basement with the smoke and the drinks and the foolish players who drank too much to be good; a fifty dollar buy in a good player’s poker tournament was something to wreck my nerves. With a 100 denomination clay chip in hand my poker strategy was always this; never show any weakness, show nothing, give them a blank stare and let them try to carve out your eyes with theirs. I won two hundred dollar tournaments that night.

One should continue to study poker strategies to continue to improve their game.