Master Yee, a local legend, taught me never to fight if you can run. His son once let me score two times on him before his three. Thank you.
I don’t want to reveal all of my secrets, but I’ve a bit of fear of missing out on coining my old technique before somebody else Doyle’s my backup patented pension plan.
I used to play poker with some real sharks. Some of them have sat down at pretty big tables thereafter and did well.
Sometimes, often, these up and coming poker stars even cheated. So if you can imagine, it was not really possible to win until we caught them with their pants down, late game.
I used to splash the pot with nickels and dimes so I could make blind after going bust on my $20 weekly. I didn’t play to win, I played to hang out with my “friends.” They thought this unacceptable, but given we caught the ring leader broadcasting and with an ace under his ass, I call it a wash. He’d been doin’ it a long time. Stole my confidence, that was the real thievin’.
Right before we caught him, I got pretty good also at silly games like drawing from the bottom and broadcasting. Patterning chips. That kind of thing. That’s how we caught them… there WEREN’T any aces on the board, and my buddy and I did the MATH when 2 + 2 didn’t equal four. This was 20 years ago, mind, we proved our point and we never came back to the tables. The age of innocence ended, we learned each of us our lessons, some of us never looked back, some maybe never stopped sitting next to high stakes losers.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure they grew up to be fine young men, my teenage friends. But there are six degrees of separation between each and every one of us, I am told, and for most who never stopped playing, the stakes never stopped raising, and gambling is very addicting if you don’t find a higher calling.
I don’t play anymore. I don’t like cheaters, either. Love them, but don’t like them, best I can anyways. God saves me, and He can save you too. Earn your money the hard way, or don’t bother. Cheaters never prosper. Duh.
And if I ever had a gentleman’s game again, I certainly wouldn’t even so much as splash the pot with those nickels. I would play for fun and I would choose good people over people of “skill” so as not to worry about the butt rocket broadcast.
One of my greatest teachers, a mathematician, taught me that poker is a game of deception. He preferred me focus on my studies, but being a great teacher, he let me play. He used to let his kids throw the football around in his 6th grade classroom. Don’t think there are many like him, tbh.
One time I briefly returned to some local high stakes tables with grown men. It was mostly to prove myself, but I still as yet enjoyed the social aspect. This was over ten years ago.
My patented technique is called quantum poker. Maybe somebody has enumerated before, I’m not sure. Works pretty good against cheaters too, as it turns out, and no it’s not cheating.
I developed the ability to forget my hand. You know, Hold ‘em.
I could remember if I was holding royals or maybe a 10 and I could remember if one the other or both were royals, but the rest would be forgotten.
A situational tactic which is particularly delightful to deploy at random so as to throw anyone who might be getting wise, though I’m not sure how. I remember I was told it was the greatest game a gentleman had ever played whom I sat down with. Thanks for the compliment. I wasn’t that good, but I was pretty good..
Now these skills don’t transfer to the real world all that well. Except I understand sniffing out aspects of the underworld which my oppressors don’t seem to realize. Thankfully I was never so much as asked to join them in their side hustles, but I became acutely aware that this is where the filth liked to stick. The more in the town of Cripple Creek, I can simply feel it, no more than a hunch at first, but I trust my gut through and through, don’t you?
I have empathy for them, being cornered by themselves without the nut each time the more cornered resulting from the last, but they don’t seem to realize - they never had the nut.
You see, quantum poker is called up when you need it and not all the time. You can switch to analytical any time the gut calls the draw. Quantum is GREAT for the river. You don’t know I have the nut, and I don’t either, but I do. Bluffing is a hoot, too.
Situational.
This isn’t a skill that was learned overnight. This is a skill that had been honed and re-applied, Lawfully, to other gifts of the empath, resulting only from abuse of the oppressors sans reciprocation. So those monitoring spirits are up shit creek. This is late game, and this and these gifts are for people who didn’t sell their soul long ago. Jesus saves, I am aware for them also. I’m not special, but I am honed.
In poker, I had leaned heavily upon my skills. In life, you see, I lean heavily upon God.
They never will have had the nut.
Crime doesn’t EVER pay. I have empathy for those enraptured in the underworld, but they don’t seem to know when it’s best to stop stuffing rockets under their ass at the expense of good people.
That is why they will soon pay if they don’t learn quickly when to fold and turn themselves in. The house always wins right up until the sting.
God bless ONLY the good fruit.
8 Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it?
9 And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost.
10 Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.
Lawfully.
Momento mori
