Feb. 28, 2004

"You can't deal me the aces and think I wouldn't play." (Suzy Bogguss)

The phone rings. Because I'm in a good mood, I answer.

"So when you gonna write a book?" This was the voice of an old friend who skips such pleasantries as hello and how are you.

"Excuse me?"

"When you gonna write a book? Poker's hot right now. Everybody wants to watch it and everybody whose watching it wants to know how to play. Plus, a lot of people are writing books on it now so you should jump in there."

I know he couldn't see me face.

"What are you smiling about?"

(Or could he?)

He was right. It's getting tough to flip through the cable channels without zooming by some poker show. Hardly a week passes that I don't see another book about poker hit the shelves. And just in case anybody doubts this is a craze of sorts, I recommend counting the poker titles and rack up the numbers then compare them to this time 18 months ago. Hold'em poker tops the charts and crowds general poker themes down to the bottom to be practically unnoticeable. Hold'em is the game of the moment.

Old-line publishers have picked up on the fad. New publishers have appeared. Writers try to include the word hold'em in their title. Long-out-of-print texts are resurfacing. Poker, it seems, once languishing in the casinos of Las Vegas, is replacing blackjack as the game of choice, especially for young, hip, dot.com types who are the gamblers of the future.

"You play poker and you're a decent writer, so why doncha?"

"Yes, and I ride a bicycle too but that doesn't make expert enough to write a 'decent' how-to book about riding bicycles. I grow great plants inside the south-facing window at home but that doesn't make me expert enough to write a 'decent' how-to-book on indoor horticulture." (Note the sarcastic use the word decent.) I can show someone how to write html code, to design a book or a magazine from cover to cover on a computer. Until they built that suburban maze called Summerlin, I could direct you to all the shortcut routes around Las Vegas."

I'm thinking to myself the obvious.

"You think everything that has to be said about poker has been said?"

I'm smiling again. Maybe he can figure out my facial expressions but he can't read my mind! So much for his tells observations.

What I'm actually thinking is that poker -- and therefore mastering poker (or writing the definitive book about it) -- is infinite and even if I knew twice as much as I know now, I don't think it would be enough to warrant a book, other than a beginner's guide.

"What if I pay you to write one?"

Once, while playing in a tournament, I was dealt aces. I was in perfect position to raise but I had just read something about slow-playing this pair to get maximum payoff. So I called. I'll skip the details and get right to the sad point. Had I raised I probably would have forced the player to my left to fold his K-4 off-suit. But I didn't raise and he didn't fold and by the river I still had those two aces and he had a king-high flush! I played the hand exactly as instructed and was more than halfway to the buffet as a result.

The next time (not the same tournament) I had pocket rockets (not the same two) in an almost identical position, I raised. Just as before, the player to my left (not the same guy) stayed in with 7-8 suited and guess what? I never improved but he did -- to a flush on the river!

"I'm still too busy learning about poker to write a book about it."

I can wax indefinitely on poker esotericism. I can have opinions, thoughts, viewpoints. I can draw from experience -- my own and others -- and I can put information out to the universe based on poker events. But unless publishing my poker diary is worth the money you want to give me, I think I'll just stick to playing for a little while.