By Grader6 on March 11th, 2008 (more posts by author)

Summer of 2003, I'm recently divorced, have a 7 yr old son and an 8 yr old daughter. Kids live here with me half the week. It's just after dinner and my son asks to watch Sports Center. I say, "ok" since I know Sports Center is safe tonight, even though Kobe' has been arrested for rape & they found some college basketball player dismembered in the desert. I don't need any trick questions from a 7 yr old boy tonight. I'm doing the dishes and whatever, and I forget what time it is and Sports Center ends. I'm still in oblivious single dad mode when I hear my son exclaim, "hey dad, come here, this is great!" I walk around the corner where the tv is and to my horror it's Chris Moneymaker at the FT of the WSOP & all the cash is on the table. My face is ashen and I'm I'm sure I've mouthed the words, "oh, sh**" My boy's next utterance is, "dad, how do they win?" He is totally geeked. I flash back to 4th or 5th grade and my dad is teaching my brother and I how to play 5 card draw with the family penny jar. We play 5 card draw a few times with dad, and one night get the brilliant idea, "hey dad, if we win can we keep the money?" Dad says, "sure, but if you lose you owe me the money you lose" My dad promptly wins a free summer's worth of grass cutting from me & my brother. So, I teach my kid how to play hold'em that night, but he's too young to cut the grass, so I can't even take him for a whole summer's worth of grass cuttings. +EV isn't everything.

The next summer. Hey, I'm going to send $100 to PokerStars. How do I do that? Hmm, Neteller, Bummer, this is gonna take almost two weeks. Well, I have a $25 Barnes & Noble gift card buring a hole in my pants, that my kids gave me for Christmas. Let's go buy a poker book. Hey, there's Super System in paperback. It's 30 bucks, I remember seeing that sucker in hard cover, when I was in college, it costs a hundred bucks back then, I thought, "nfw, for a poker book." I read the dust cover jacket, Doyle said he knew $100 was alot for a book, but buy the book & I'd get my money back in a couple of sessions. LOL, Doyle how am I gonna win a hundred bucks playing quarter/half 7 card stud? Plus, I don't even know if my friends will play poker twice in the next two years. Besides, I read an article in Sports Illustrated about the WSOP and thought what kind of lunatic would pony up $10k for poker. Plus, hold'em sounds stupid, I'd rather play stud This was in the day before fancy coffee cafe's in the bookstores and reading chairs. I thought of "steal reading" it while in the store, but I was afraid of being banned from my local Walden book store, back then. I promptly put that puppy back on the shelf. Ok, I got $25 gift certificate, here's a hold'em book by Ken Warren for $15 and look a nice Webster's College Dictionary for $10, the kids will need that dictionary, I thought. I buy the books, go home, read, study and make myself a starting hand "cheat sheet"

I'm a co-dependant, I go to Al-Anon. Early in 2004 I find a girlfriend at the Al-Anon meetings. She breaks up with me every 60 days, whether I need it or not. The meetings teach me to just let her break up with me, there's little I can do to change her mind, so I do little to change her mind. One time she, out of the blue, mentions she liked playing poker with her ex's family (pre-divorce) & they'd get mad at her because she always won & knew very little/nothing about poker (ex's family's opinion). I politely say, "really, I like poker too, the few times I played."

The big day arrives! The hundred bucks is finally in my PokerStars account, and g/f & I are "all broked up" My mindset is, if I lose this hundy, then the times I won in my youth were just luck & I probably should not waste my time playing poker. I do not want to lose a hundred bucks, and have to retire from recreational poker, either. It's off to nickel/dime limit, kids are on vacation with their mom & g/f is in break up mode. The perfect time to grind.