UOPokerPlayer
05-12-2005, 08:29 PM
...But he's a really good writer.
Just kidding. I saw someone do that a little while with one of their short stories. I actually wrote this for better or worse. It's an essay about society reacting to a setting or situation. Human's acting on an emotion. I picked poker. I started out with a story mostly to get the reader kind of into it, lay some background, and foreshadow my main themes. This is going to be a graded essay that will pretty much determine my grad in the class, so be blunt!
Note: This is just the beginning introduction, but most things after this are pretty cut and dried with less voice and opinion and more or less mechanical writing that can't really be critiqued without an extensive knowledge of the assignment.
Let the Best Man Win
It's eleven o'clock on a Saturday night and I'm checking into work. The lights are bright, the tables are active, there is a buzz in the air at the La Center casino tonight. The slot machines blink and beep their coaxing call. The dealers chat it up and dramatize the drop of each card at the blackjack tables. A crowd has gathered around a middle-aged woman who just hit the Jackpot in Texas Shootout. People start clapping. I walk over to the poker room. No lights, no shine. The only sound I hear is the monotonous click-clacking of poker chips. The dealers are bored at their best, angry at their worst. Smiles are rare to see at the poker table. All conversations are limited to a close whisper.
None of this matters. Anyone that wants to play blackjack or slots can have their choice of machine or dealer. The wait for a seat at the poker table is two hours. There are more people standing stiffly against the wall watching the poker tables than there are playing any of the table games or slots offered at the casino. For all the flash and flair offered at a casino, nothing can compete with poker for today's America.
I sit down at the table and plop my two white racks of one hundred one dollar chips on the table into neat stacks. Looking around the table tells me half the story. Who's leaning forward awaiting to get dealt their next hand? Who's hoping to get something good enough to play and good enough to win? These ones are here to gamble, to play a hand they can tell their friends about, how they beat the pros. These are the live ones, and they don't have a chance. The one's sitting back, sipping their, drink and waiting patiently. These are the ones I'm afraid of.
An hour passes by with me tossing every hand back to the dealer. The game is Texas Hold Em, the most simple poker game largely played. You get two cards down, five community cards are dealt up, and the best hand made from all seven cards wins. Texas Hold Em, (what they play at the World Series of Poker,) offers the most fortuitous ups and downs. Because of it's easy learning curve, and media exposure, it's the most popular game of poker right now.
All players fold in front of me and I look down to see two queens. I stack ten chips and slide them to the center silently. "Raise," announces the dealer, looking off into the distance. Everyone folds to the last guy with cards still in his hands. He trumpets "Re-raise" with authority, pushing in four of his own ten high stacks and delivering a penetrating glare at me. The rest of the table joins in staring at me. I give a sort of shrug and smirk for show, looking back at my memorized cards for a whole minute to add effect. I'm just killing time.
I push the rest of my chips in the middle, (as I knew I would the moment my opponent re-raised,) and point my eyes toward the felt table, trying my hardest to look nervous. I wish I could say that this was a tense moment for me, but I'd be lying. This is the battle between the gambler and the player. The gambler stares at me for a full five minutes, believing somehow he can find out my holding by seeing into my soul. He's operating on a feeling, he's emotionally committed to this hand. Everyone is watching and awaiting his next move. The gambler is now, for this moment, the center of attention. This is the allure of poker.
"Call," the gambler announces. He turns his two cards over for everyone to see and stands up from his chair. Others at the table stand up in excitement. A pair of blackjack players leave their table to come watch. The dealer hits the felt where I am so intently focused. I lift my head up.
"Oh sorry," I sheepishly reply and turn my cards over. I glance over and see my opponents hand, an ace and a jack. For the player, the hand is already over. The money is in the middle, and it's just percentages. This is game of math, a game of patterns, strategy and skill. The cards that come don't really matter.
"Give me that lucky ace dealer!" the gambler begs loudly. The gambler is different, the cards hold him close, they make him or break him.
The two queens will win exactly seventy-two percent of the time. The player knows that there is no luck involved in this game, only percentages. The better player almost always has the two queens, but the better player doesn't always win.
The 'lucky' ace falls on the fourth community card and the gambler pumps his fist in victory. His friends pat him on the back, congratulations come from all around the table, and a four-hundred dollar mountain is sent his way.
I reach into my pocket and pull out two hundred bills from my full wallet. Another two racks are set in front of me. I lost the hand and all my money, but I couldn't be happier. Two new players are now leaning forward, waiting for their moment to shine.
To the gambler, he plays the game for one moment, to be excited in a not-so exciting life. The gambler thinks of this more than a game, it is an outlet, a time for him to be anything but himself. The player plays in respect to the ruthless meritocracy that poker represents. It's about money, it's just a game and percentages.
The seventy two percents add up, and the player will always win. Maybe not this hand, maybe not this night, but he will win. There lies the nature of poker. It is a game of contradictions.
Poker is a game where anyone can beat anyone at any time. The game where Chris Moneymaker can be anointed champion of the world in his very first tournament. It's a game that glorifies lawyers, accountants and retired police officers on ESPN. It turns nobody's into somebody's, and that hits us deep, embodying the American dream and creating starry eyed gamblers flocking to casinos and home games to see if they can be champion for one day; or at least taste what it feels like.
For all the drama and unpredictability of poker, it is short-lived. It's the same game of poker that in the end, only one out of ten people win, and one out of fifty win enough to survive on. For every Chris Moneymaker, there are thousands of dads, moms and teenage sons pumping their life savings into an online poker account in hopes of getting that ultimate thrill. There are people living in their cars outside of casinos all around America trying to make it as a pro poker player. It is a booming billion dollar industry(1) For all the flashing lights and fake smiles offered at a casino, the game of poker with its boring rooms and bland atmosphere offers the most skewed and unrealistic perception of reality.
In the Bellagio poker room in Las Vegas there are five players that sit and wait to play one-hundred-thousand dollar pots against anyone who thinks they have a chance. It's been these same five men for about ten years, and everyone else has just been passing through and dropping off money.
Just kidding. I saw someone do that a little while with one of their short stories. I actually wrote this for better or worse. It's an essay about society reacting to a setting or situation. Human's acting on an emotion. I picked poker. I started out with a story mostly to get the reader kind of into it, lay some background, and foreshadow my main themes. This is going to be a graded essay that will pretty much determine my grad in the class, so be blunt!
Note: This is just the beginning introduction, but most things after this are pretty cut and dried with less voice and opinion and more or less mechanical writing that can't really be critiqued without an extensive knowledge of the assignment.
Let the Best Man Win
It's eleven o'clock on a Saturday night and I'm checking into work. The lights are bright, the tables are active, there is a buzz in the air at the La Center casino tonight. The slot machines blink and beep their coaxing call. The dealers chat it up and dramatize the drop of each card at the blackjack tables. A crowd has gathered around a middle-aged woman who just hit the Jackpot in Texas Shootout. People start clapping. I walk over to the poker room. No lights, no shine. The only sound I hear is the monotonous click-clacking of poker chips. The dealers are bored at their best, angry at their worst. Smiles are rare to see at the poker table. All conversations are limited to a close whisper.
None of this matters. Anyone that wants to play blackjack or slots can have their choice of machine or dealer. The wait for a seat at the poker table is two hours. There are more people standing stiffly against the wall watching the poker tables than there are playing any of the table games or slots offered at the casino. For all the flash and flair offered at a casino, nothing can compete with poker for today's America.
I sit down at the table and plop my two white racks of one hundred one dollar chips on the table into neat stacks. Looking around the table tells me half the story. Who's leaning forward awaiting to get dealt their next hand? Who's hoping to get something good enough to play and good enough to win? These ones are here to gamble, to play a hand they can tell their friends about, how they beat the pros. These are the live ones, and they don't have a chance. The one's sitting back, sipping their, drink and waiting patiently. These are the ones I'm afraid of.
An hour passes by with me tossing every hand back to the dealer. The game is Texas Hold Em, the most simple poker game largely played. You get two cards down, five community cards are dealt up, and the best hand made from all seven cards wins. Texas Hold Em, (what they play at the World Series of Poker,) offers the most fortuitous ups and downs. Because of it's easy learning curve, and media exposure, it's the most popular game of poker right now.
All players fold in front of me and I look down to see two queens. I stack ten chips and slide them to the center silently. "Raise," announces the dealer, looking off into the distance. Everyone folds to the last guy with cards still in his hands. He trumpets "Re-raise" with authority, pushing in four of his own ten high stacks and delivering a penetrating glare at me. The rest of the table joins in staring at me. I give a sort of shrug and smirk for show, looking back at my memorized cards for a whole minute to add effect. I'm just killing time.
I push the rest of my chips in the middle, (as I knew I would the moment my opponent re-raised,) and point my eyes toward the felt table, trying my hardest to look nervous. I wish I could say that this was a tense moment for me, but I'd be lying. This is the battle between the gambler and the player. The gambler stares at me for a full five minutes, believing somehow he can find out my holding by seeing into my soul. He's operating on a feeling, he's emotionally committed to this hand. Everyone is watching and awaiting his next move. The gambler is now, for this moment, the center of attention. This is the allure of poker.
"Call," the gambler announces. He turns his two cards over for everyone to see and stands up from his chair. Others at the table stand up in excitement. A pair of blackjack players leave their table to come watch. The dealer hits the felt where I am so intently focused. I lift my head up.
"Oh sorry," I sheepishly reply and turn my cards over. I glance over and see my opponents hand, an ace and a jack. For the player, the hand is already over. The money is in the middle, and it's just percentages. This is game of math, a game of patterns, strategy and skill. The cards that come don't really matter.
"Give me that lucky ace dealer!" the gambler begs loudly. The gambler is different, the cards hold him close, they make him or break him.
The two queens will win exactly seventy-two percent of the time. The player knows that there is no luck involved in this game, only percentages. The better player almost always has the two queens, but the better player doesn't always win.
The 'lucky' ace falls on the fourth community card and the gambler pumps his fist in victory. His friends pat him on the back, congratulations come from all around the table, and a four-hundred dollar mountain is sent his way.
I reach into my pocket and pull out two hundred bills from my full wallet. Another two racks are set in front of me. I lost the hand and all my money, but I couldn't be happier. Two new players are now leaning forward, waiting for their moment to shine.
To the gambler, he plays the game for one moment, to be excited in a not-so exciting life. The gambler thinks of this more than a game, it is an outlet, a time for him to be anything but himself. The player plays in respect to the ruthless meritocracy that poker represents. It's about money, it's just a game and percentages.
The seventy two percents add up, and the player will always win. Maybe not this hand, maybe not this night, but he will win. There lies the nature of poker. It is a game of contradictions.
Poker is a game where anyone can beat anyone at any time. The game where Chris Moneymaker can be anointed champion of the world in his very first tournament. It's a game that glorifies lawyers, accountants and retired police officers on ESPN. It turns nobody's into somebody's, and that hits us deep, embodying the American dream and creating starry eyed gamblers flocking to casinos and home games to see if they can be champion for one day; or at least taste what it feels like.
For all the drama and unpredictability of poker, it is short-lived. It's the same game of poker that in the end, only one out of ten people win, and one out of fifty win enough to survive on. For every Chris Moneymaker, there are thousands of dads, moms and teenage sons pumping their life savings into an online poker account in hopes of getting that ultimate thrill. There are people living in their cars outside of casinos all around America trying to make it as a pro poker player. It is a booming billion dollar industry(1) For all the flashing lights and fake smiles offered at a casino, the game of poker with its boring rooms and bland atmosphere offers the most skewed and unrealistic perception of reality.
In the Bellagio poker room in Las Vegas there are five players that sit and wait to play one-hundred-thousand dollar pots against anyone who thinks they have a chance. It's been these same five men for about ten years, and everyone else has just been passing through and dropping off money.