The only difference between all other forms of gambling revolves around a sort of triangle made up of: acceptable risk, potential wins or losses, and the amount of pleasure derived from gambling. Some people only require need a bug crossing the floor and they have everything they need to gamble with. For others gambling may be much more complicated, such as the stock market, or a speculative business venture.

For everyone who gambles decisions within the process of gambling can be made to be very be complex but the possible outcomes are simple.

Over ones lifetime one wins more than they lost.

Over ones lifetime one wins more than they won.

Over ones lifetime one comes out even, neither winning nor losing.

Looked at from these three conditions there is not a lot of difference between gambling and life, except adding more gambling in ones life adds the possibility of losing or winning more.

In life enjoying a successful retirement means having a long series of wins. A long series of wins may have meant: Getting the right education for the job opportunities that are likely to be in demand over ones lifetime; finding the right job(s) that turn themselves into successful lifelong careers; making investments that make money; avoiding the traps and pitfalls that other people fall into and never recover from.

Struggling in retirement, or not being able to have a retirement means none, or few of the choices of success came to pass. Not always the fault of the individual, but rather due to a series of events beyond ones control. An individual may have tried to do everything right, and everything turned sour. It happens often. The recent series of hurricanes, floods, and fires for example….

Most of us over the span of our lifetime come out even. We make some decisions that some may see as brilliant and do well for us. We have other situations that may leave us wondering what we could possibly have been thinking about when we made them. Most of our decisions though end up somewhere in between. We made good decisions that did not reach the stars, and poor decisions that did not destroy us. We also made some decisions that were okay.

Over the course of our lives we all gamble. Over the course of our lifetimes we all experience the same outcomes as an active gambler.

Of course we are not starting equally from the same mark in the race towards the end. Rather we are randomly placed on a starting line we can not see, gambling with our lives with the hope we make more good decisions than poor ones.

The other day was in between hot and not so good. I went down almost eight big bets and there I stayed. Up a few big bets, down a few big bets. This went on for a little over two hours, and I decided had enough Holdem for the day. Some days it seems I am not destined to win no matter how hard I try.

As I was walking out I passed a Craps table. There were about eight people at the Craps table and they were having a lot of fun. They were happy, laughing and talking. Craps is quite a contrast to the Holdem table where you try to not let too much emotion show through, happy or otherwise.

I had been reading about craps and played a few days before and understood the basics. I played a day later but I did not do well. I was not sure I would enjoy the game. I took out the forty remaining dollars of my original hundred dollar bill, added five to it. I thought I would try Craps one more time. I traded my cash for chips, and placed a red five dollar chip on the pass line (sort of like your entry fee in a round of dice throwing). The shooter (the person who throws the dice for the round) threw a seven and the dealer dropped a red chip next to mine. I had won already!

I picked up one red chip and let my five dollar chip sit on the pass line and the shooter threw a good number, a six I think, and off to the races we went. To make a long story short, I made back my losses for the day plus a few dollars more. Maybe Craps is not such a bad game after all… I understand it is streaky like cards, so some the same rules apply.

I found Craps is an easy game to play. If you ever played street Craps, or Yatzee, you have a general idea of how it is played. You throw the dice for a number that is allowed, and try to throw that same number again before you throw a seven. If you do, you are a winner and if you do not you lose. There are a lot of other bets but I won’t go into them because what I write may be wrong. Don’t let all the table markings fool you, you don’t need to know what most of them are for to play.

All in all if you are a Holdem player, and find Holdem is not working for you one day, you may want to learn Craps – if you have a game where you live. The odds of winning are almost even on some bets, and other bets are more of a long shot. Just like pocket Aces verses draws in Holdem. The game I played in, I found it hard to believe the house was making any money, but I was assured they make a lot of money.

As when playing Holdem, you have to be cautious. Trying to push things gets you broke quickly. Slow and cautious seems to work the best for me as a beginner. I did see one man take $200.00 up to $2,900.00 in less than two hours. He played an aggressive make it very quick or go home fast style. He has more gamble in him than I do right now, I suppose.

If you have some extra money and want to have some fun, I recommend you give Craps a try. It is an easy game to start playing, pays better than slot machines, and includes a lot of funny betting terms like Hopping Buffalo, Whirl, Yo, Horn, Hard Way, and other terms I have forgotten.

I think you can’t help but have fun if you try Craps. As with any gambling, be responsible with your money, and your time.

The better poker players are chameleons. They will try to represent any type of personality necessary to help separate you from your money. They know why they are sitting there, poker is their livelihood and knowing that is part of what they need to maintain their lifestyle.

I had read an interesting book over a decade ago, by an author named Chin-Ning Chu. In her book, Ms. Chu makes an interesting case about an aspect of business that most of us never think about. Ms. Chu suggests that your business must rate at the top in your life. Once you understand this, and other concepts she suggests, you know what you need to do to excel in business.

Professional poker players understand this concept perfectly. If you sit down to play poker, it is their responsibility to do their best to take your money. Anything less than their best effort is a waste of their time, a flaw on their character, a threat to their livelihood, and an insult to you. Everything they do is focused on their ability to win money. That is the career they have chosen for themselves, and they do their utmost to be better at it than anyone else.

Thanks to Ms. Chu, I understood this idea when I started playing poker, I was not aware it applied to gambling. There was a poker game where a regular player was terminally ill. I came to learn that a few regular poker players at the poker room had wagers on when the man would die! I was appalled at the time to think that I was sitting down, next to people who would bet money on when a person would die from their illness.

A few weeks ago, Ms. Chu’s thinking made perfect sense to me, as this betting on death memory popped into my thoughts. In a flash I understood there was nothing appalling about those players! These were businessmen who correctly placed profit above everything else in their life. These people are a shining example of the American Dream for business! Admittedly, in many other cultures, particularly Ms. Chu’s, their action would not rate a second thought.

I have mentioned in a previous post that many business owners will not do whatever needs to be done to maximize profit. These players acting correctly as businessmen, attempted to maximize their profit. There is a lot to learn from this example, as distasteful as you may find it.

Like it or not, we are running our own business. When we are out in public, be it a social event, workplace, or somewhere else, we are selling ourselves, whether we are conscious of it or not. We belong in the business of self management in our daily lives.

People we come into contact with rate us, evaluate us, and put us on some scale of their own making. The question I have for both of us, is what do we do about it? We can’t ignore what is. We rate other people on our list, moving them up or down as we think they fit in our lives, and now we know they do too. Knowing this our options come down to one simple question. What are we willing to do to excel at our own lives and maximize ourselves?

Once in a while I would go into the poker room, and watch people play cards for money. The game in vogue at that time was Seven Card Stud. I had played stud at the kitchen table just like many other people, so I thought it would be an easy transition. The upside would be more money, and less risk to what money I cared to risk each session of poker. It was a much harder game than I had thought, and stud ate up most of my little four hundred dollar bankroll before I started breaking even, and eventually winning more than I lost.

I learned to be a good stud player, very good in fact. I was showing a small but steady profit at one to five dollar spread limit stud which was the only stud game going. It was a far cry from the kitchen table games, and I had to buy a book or two and think about what I read, and how I played, but I was winning a few dollars over the month so I was happy.

At this time Texas Hold’em was getting popular, and not too many people played it, but those that did, and seemed to know what they were doing would make more from one pot of hold’em than I would in five or six hours of stud. So I did the reasonable thing and taught myself how to play hold’em. Of course my risk payed off, and I was making pocket change from playing hold’em. Never enough to really do anything with, but enough that I played for almost five years on other people’s money.

This year it dawned on me, that what had happened to stud was now happening to hold’em. The money was getting harder to win because the players were getting better. Even the worst player at the local hold’em game today is as good or better than the better players from five or six years ago. I understood then that stud had gone the same way when I made the switch to hold’em. When I switched from stud to hold’em, the usual stud suspects consisted of mostly the same players every night. What this meant for myself was those of us at the table were fighting over the same slice of pie, and most nights breaking even was a good night.

After the last holdem game I played this summer, I looked around the poker room to see how many new faces were playing, and found there weren’t any. I realized then that the days of just going to a poker room for a few hours and winning a bit were gone. From now on as long the economy keeps getting tighter, the remaining poker players will get better, or slow down as I have. Those people who used to go out occasionally and play a few hours of poker on a Friday night are going away quickly, as they can no longer afford poker because they find themselves losing consistently.

This is the current state of my own, and other’s poker playing. I always played poker for fun first, and money second. But just like the stud game of old, the fun times and the easy money are all gone. All that is left for me at the poker table is a lot of hard work for very little money. I work hard enough at my regular job, and I do not care to work hard at the poker table, where is the fun in that? I met some great people playing poker and learned an awful lot about myself, and real life. I think everyone should give poker a try, or try something similar, like golf, tennis for example. Any game that partially plays in your head is a good game to try. There are a lot of life lessons to be learned if one puts forth the effort in these type of endeavors. Myself, I am, looking for another challenge.

I heard blogging takes you to the same places, so I think I may give it a try….

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