From First Principles

When I heard my parish was holding a Texas Hold 'Em tournament as part of their annual Casino night fund-raiser in February, my interest was piqued. Prior to this point, I had not played poker, as far as I can recall. I was vaguely familiar with the rules of 5-card draw, but didn't understand what Hold 'Em was about at all. Coincidentally, during a Christmas time visit, a friend from the Pittsburgh area had clued me into the recent popularity of poker on television (!?!?!).

We don't have cable or satellite TV at home (I listen to the NFL on Sirius and purchase Battlestar Galactica from the iTMS), so I was reduced to watching a few episodes of the Travel Channel's World Poker Tour or Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown while on business trips. This kept my interest high, so I decided to learn a bit more about it so that I could play in the fund-raiser tournament.

I purchased books on poker. I purchased software for the Mac so that I could play against my computer. I even got the client from Full Tilt Poker so that I could play in play-money games on-line without having to run Virtual PC or purchase a WinTel machine.

I played in the church fund-raiser and had a good time. This was my first live poker game against real opponents and I had no idea what to expect. It went a lot slower and nowhere nearly as smooth as an on-line tournament, due to issues like mis-deals, split pots, all-in bets, etc. However, I had a great time. I ultimately finished out in 3rd place.

Since that time, I have spent more time reading about poker and playing on-line play-money games. It is a very entertaining past time. However, as convenient and entertaining as on-line poker is, it's a very different experience. I have probably played hundreds of on-line tournaments at this point, yet I doubt I have faced the same opponents in a tournament more than two or three times.

Tonight I played in my second live fund-raiser tournament. Again I had an amazingly fun time. I was done after only two hours, but stayed another 3 hours to see the final hand. I met a lot of people who live relatively near me, but whom I would probably otherwise never have met. I also ran into a guy from the final table at the previous tournament.

I have to say that working from home and engaging in mostly computer-related past-times keeps me pretty isolated from interacting face to face with other people, which is something I typically prefer. However, I find playing poker in a live tournament to be such a great change of pace that I wish it were possible to do it far more often than it is.

It was also interesting to reflect on the wide diversity of people that were present. Although I didn't get to talk to nearly everyone, it did seem to represent a very large cross-section of the local community. Some people seemed like business professionals, while others seemed like farm hands. Lots of people didn't give off very much indication as to what they did, but there were a few guys who looked like they were probably in college. A small number of gentlemen appeared to be retired.

I felt very much part of a larger community tonight. And that is a far more important benefit than the sheer enjoyment I get out of watching the way the hands unfold.

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