When you're a poker pro, you often forget what day of the week it is. But I never forget Wednesdays. When I wake up on Wednesday, something in my body immediately feels a little excitement. Why?
Because on Wednesdays, the poker room serves free lunch! Omygaw, check this out:
Wednesdays are also a little funny because all of the richest most powerful people in Santa Fe have agreed to take the day off and play in a high stakes poker game at our local casino. After having success in day games, I was tipped off to this game by one of the dealers who said I should play. I think the dealers like seeing out of towners play in these games as a little experiment for them, just to see what happens. I'm cool with that.
Since the players in the game are comprised of uber successful business guys, they like to get up early, meaning if you want to play in the game, you need to be at the casino by 8 am or you won't get a seat. Luckily having a bad hair day doesn't matter so much with this job.
Poof, roll out of bed, get in the car, go to work. Usually if I just leave it alone, my hair settles down a bit from Asian-fro to a respectable public level of bedhead.
Yeah, that's more like it.
Here's my office, very spacious. Lots of coworkers here also getting their grind on. Best perk of the job is that we get unlimited soda and coffee.
On Wednesdays there's a raffle for the guys playing poker in the room. Tickets are pulled from a tub shaped like a pentagonal prism and cash prizes are handed out every other hour.
I have special permission granted from the poker room to give the tub a little spin whenever I feel like it. I've utilized this privilege to invent a game for when I get bored called "The Price is Right" where I spin the wheel and make light small talk to my imaginary friend, Bob Barker.
Playing in this game is pretty strange. I've played enough Wednesdays now where I know all the guys sitting at the table. It's a table comprised of the most powerful old men who control Santa Fe, a world class limit poker pro from the area, and then random little old me.
This game has been running for years with the same guys. The first week I sat down nobody knew who the heck I was and all the players were licking their chops assuming I was some out of town fish.
Playing this game always used to make me extremely nervous because I was unfamiliar with the game, the stakes were high, and there was a player sitting at the table who I knew was better than me.
I approach all of these poker challenges like I'm playing an old school Super Nintendo RPG. Each major hurdle is like a boss battle. I can accrue experience points and level up by grinding in my normal games, and then once I heal and restore all my HP and MP, I go off to fight the big boss.
Usually it takes many attempts and lots of failures to pull out a win. Even when you lose you can still collect data, probe strengths and weaknesses, and devise strategies and counters for the next time you go to war... these failures have enabled me to grow and figure out how to consistently defeat each boss I've faced in the past.
The thing with poker though, is that there's always another boss battle on the horizon. I know one day I'll probably face a boss that's too powerful for me to beat no matter how much work I put into trying. Until then, it's fun thinking of the remote possibility that I could someday become the biggest, baddest boss out there.
Eating free lunches like it's nobody's business,
-Sto:)ps
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