I like playing online poker. I got into it a few years ago, broke even, got my money back, and recently put some more money into it and I’m breaking even again. So apparently I’m not an idiot, but I’m not especially good.
I like poker because it’s a game of skill. Yes, the cards are dealt by chance, but the game is so simple and repetitive that over time the braks even out, and the people who win money are invariably the skilled ones, and the people who lose money are the stupid ones. Since poker – contrary to what you see in the movies – in largely a game of calculating odds, playing probabilities and unfolding strategies, it’s something I can learn, and I enjoy doing things I can learn to be better at.
My basic strategy right now is to sit for awhile in the ten cent bet limit room and only call when I have a really, really good hand. In poker terms I’m tighter than Scrooge. Since in the low limit rooms you’re playing the worst players on the site (I play Poker Stars) you win through this method, albeit slowly. After awhile I’ve won a buck or two, enough to enter a tournament. Then I lose, because the touraments are all no limit and just sitting around waiting for unbeatable hands doesn’t work for long in a tournament. (If you don’t know how to play poker and don’t understand this, don’t worry about it, I’ll soon be done talking about poker.)
Part of the reason I almost never win anything in tournaments is that I such at remembering people. Apparently, the really good players can see who they’re playing against and remember their strategies. So these people see “RickJay1971″ and know I hardly ever bluff and so bail out faster than an Iraqi fighter pilot once I raise. So I never win any big pots and then when something goes wrong I’m toast.
This amazes me because I can’t remember names for shit. Not just on Poker Stars, where the names are all things like - well, I’m playing a sit ‘n go right now and am presently fighting with Mas1 Rayanp, nygaard85, and sahan11yu, among others. You can’t expect me to remember such nonsensical names, but I can’t remember REAL names for anyone I know well. This is problematic in my job because I meet people all the time but only once a year. They usually remember my name, because my arrival is something of an event, but to me it’s always “middle aged white guy who works in production or something.” I’m becoming fond of people who keep little holders full of their business cards on their desks, because I can pick up and study the card and pretend to care about keeping it when in fact I’m just reminding myself what the person’s name is.
The card itself will end up in my laundry room. I’m forever collecting business cards. Wherever I go people hand ‘em over. I always make a point of taking them, inspecting them carefully, and then putting them in my shirt pocket. I will then forget they’re there and, at the end of the day, I toss my shirt into the laundry room, where the cards fall out. They then spend weeks, even months scattered about my laundry room floor. I have no use for them because all the people I meet are in my company’s contact management software. Now, to me, the software is useless because it’s full of names and, as I’ve explained, I don’t remember their names anyway. The software, and the cards tell me the name and company, but I don’t know who’s who and when I get there I still don’t know who they are.
I did once have a customer who had business cards with people’s photos on them. I liked them.
I’m no better at this in personal life. I met this once person at the Switham’s wedding and MBW said something about her as if I’d met her. Well, as it turned out, I HAD met her. And had absolutely no recollection of her at all. Then when MBW explained, with her infinite patience, where and how I’d met this person, I was like, well of course – now I remember her. So why hadn’t I remembered before? No name to put to the face, that’s why.
If you can unravel how human memory works you’ll make a billion hillion dollars. Why can I remember all the World Series MVPs but not people I meet or where I leave my keys?
