Oct 13 2009
What Poker Can Teach Us!
I saw this article on someone’s facebook page. I thought it was such a great read that I wanted to post it hear. I particularly enjoyed reading about how so many of our politicians played poker while in office. Can you image being invited for a “Home Game” at the White House? Go figure, yet it is nearly impossible to not think that current regulations, laws and general feelings align against playing poker on the internet. I don’t get it yet.
Dec 03, 2009 @ 19:00:08
Scott — Always enjoy your blog, and appreciated the link — the “poker” topic was interesting, after having been one of Nevada’s film commissioners headquartered in Las Vegas for a decade. Plus, I have many poker players among my family members and friends. I learned long ago that Poker, like most card games (and perhaps many games of “chance”), builds strategic thinking, risk-taking tolerance, self-reliance on one’s own judgment and intuition, boldness as well as calculated caution, and many other decisive personality traits. Like anything of course, taken to an extreme or letting it consume your reason and rationale leads to disaster. But as a pastime, it’s proven its enduring appeal to a surprisingly broad spectrum of people. My mother went into labor with me at 1:30 AM during a roaring poker game where she was winning and hated to leave the table. My grandmother taught me “penny-ante” poker when I was six. A brilliant screenwriter, John Hill (“Quigley Down Under,” “Little Nikita”, etc) dealt cards at one of my New Year’s Eve parties. Poker can, indeed, teach us quite a few eye-opening lessons. Not least of which perhaps, to quote Kenny Rogers and which applies to life in general), is: you gotta know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em…