Skill Not Luck

BY: Randy Sowers

So like every red blooded American maleand every other guy out there, I have fallen prey to the Texas Holdem craze that has happened over the past few years. Too bad for Rounders would have been the biggest movie since Spiderman had it come out just a few years later!

Last night got into a poker game with a bunch of guys I did not knowhowever there was one very common theme. All the guys with the BIG stacks were with guys I never hung out with growing up. Do not get me wrong, these are good guys; they were just not the ones I knew. I learned that night something I always new, that Poker all be it a game of luck is a lot about math and analytical thinking. I played ball all my life. Some would say I was the prototypical jock. Now I had friends that played in the band and were on the debate team but the majority of my time was spent on some type of court. Little did I know that my lackadaisical math effort would come back to haunt me now that my knees are gone and jump shot is more a set shot and what I find entertaining now is sitting around with a bunch of valedictorians who can calculate percentages in their heads of what the next card is going to be.

Now I was hanging in there well. Winning a few pots here and there. Looking at the guy next to me who was about 23 and skinny and with thick horn rimmed glasses, to which everyone at the table called "the shark". In this room he was a goda poker version of Michael Jordan. Outside of that room I am sure that he did not have a lot of luck with the ladies and probably hated his computer processing job. But, in here for a couple hours a week he was the man.! He was quiet and I did not know if I was in total awe or just hated the way he talked under his breath down to me the whole night. Maybe he was trying to get in my head maybe he really thought I was just some idiot who knows. Now understand as anyone who has played sports for as long as I have will have at one time or another been put in high pressure situation and have failed and succeeded many times in this role. So playing for a few dollars should have been nothing!

We went back and forth the whole night. I sometimes thought I was not even a person in the eyes of this guy more like a science experience gone way wrong. One of those athlete guys who would just never get it!

He played like a highly skilled surgeon. Every move he made was precise, every move was thought about carefully and skill was his name not luck.

So I get dealt pocket aces. I am feeling really good! This game was about skill right, and when you have the brawns to go with the skill you cannot lose. It was no longer about luck or hope it was about me crushing the next Nobel Prize winner in to a million pieces. I bet, he bets, I raise, he raises.then we both put all our chips in.

We turn over our two cards and I can see the defeat in his face when the bullets I am holding completely annihilate his little pair of queens. They might as well have been two bullets from an assassins riffle in a Royal Cue, which were the first steps in a revolution, "the death of the queens!"

This game is about skill right. The ones who do this for a living know what they are doing. Luck has nothing to do with anything. So imagine how I felt when my cue attempt failed as my bullets fired and missed the lovely ladies when two more queens popped up on the flop.

MAN I LOVE THIS GAME!!!!!!!!