My mom used to tell me, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.” This is such a profound and righteous philosophy. And I’ve stuck to it. For example, when I eat popcorn, I think it’s worth doing, so I do it well. With the fingertips of one hand, I can pick up a surprisingly
I played poker for ten years before I discovered folding in 1984. That’s when I met Bobby. He had a big belly, a big beard, and a big laugh. Bobby was like Santa Claus, minus the giving. He just kept throwing his hand away, and he didn’t seem to mind. Then he would carry the
What is tightness? And where did it come from? To find the answers, we have to travel back in time, to the birth of poker. I wasn’t actually there, but I can imagine how it happened… Fred and Barney were playing cards for the very first time. “Let’s make up a game,” Fred said. “I’ll
Dear reader: Alfonzo and Charlie are characters in my book, Painless Poker. This story is not from the book. It comes after. Alfonzo Calibri threw an aggressive question at Charlie. “What, precisely, is a bad beat?” Charlie replied in his usual non-combative tone. “A bad beat is when you lose with a hand that
(Dear reader: These are the last two pages of Elements of Poker.) During bad times, we get unhappy. Let’s say we wanted to be less unhappy during bad times. We could train ourselves to do it, if we were to use our bad times as opportunities to practice getting better at getting over bad times.
Before anything flows, there must be a difference. Between different elevations, water flows. Between different pressures, air flows. Between different poker players, money flows. What is Reciprocality? What is Reciprocality? In the world of reciprocality, it’s not what you do that matters most, and it’s not what they do. It’s both. Reciprocality is any
“If you ask for a dealer-button change, you might be tilting.” “If you make a short buy with $1 bills, you might be tilting.” “If you decide to check-raise that lag fool one more time because there’s no way he can have it *again*%@!&!!, you might
Ever heard of Jeff Foxworthy? He’s a comedian who did a bit called, “You might be a redneck if…” In his skit, he fires off one-liners, like this one here: “If you cut your grass and find a car, you might be a redneck.” Here’s another: “If you’ve ever been too drunk to fish, you
“I would rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.” Novelist Dorothy Allison wrote those words, and my sister Judith sent them to me, lettered and framed, when I became a Professional Poker Player. That was in 1990. I was 32. This was Jude’s way of saying, “I get it.
