The Blind Assassin

I've played a few games of poker recently. And I've been doing bloody well.

That's because I have a special gift that none of the other guys I'm playing against have.

I'm rubbish.

If you'll pardon the card-game-related pun, I'm crap.

I genuinely do not know what I'm doing. I have almost no clue what's going on. Obviously I have some idea - I know a pair is good; and three of the same is better. But now we're pretty much at the limit of my knowledge already.

Therefore I'm not encumbered* by being able to calculate that the cards that I've been dealt give me, say, a 17% chance of making a straight or that I have odds of 1-in-however many of making a full house.

I'm having a GREAT time!

I've played half a dozen games against people who would call themselves "Poker Players". (Think about it - you can probably play football... but you're unlikely to call yourself a "Footballer" unless you're of a certain standard)

But every single time, I've wiped nearly all of them out.

They've even nicknamed me "The Assassin". And they're properly scared.

And so they should be. An analogy is how you would feel if you handed a monkey a loaded gun. The monkey doesn't know what it's doing, but it could still quite easily kill you.

I think part of the problem is that I'm not really in it for the cards. I like to sit there piling my chips up neatly according to colour in nice piles or 8 or 10.

Maybe I have an element of autism.

The pressure can get quite heavy. These guys take their poker very seriously. They are really good. They tend to find it off-putting, waiting for me to do something with my cards when I'm giggling like a small child distracted by playing with the stacks & stacks of chips in front of me. One guy keeps losing to me solely because he's really stressed about losing to me again.

I'm not quite sure how I do so well. My naivety of what's good & what's bad certainly help me along no end. But there must be a massive element of luck. There just has to be. I could do with channelling that luck elsewhere in my life...

I've been up against some very good players. They can be seriously intimidating & there are times when I really don't want to play 'cos of the glares I'm getting. It can all get so much that sometimes I just play whatever my cards are just to get the other guy off my case. But then I go & win & he gets more wound up.

I usually play with a friend of mine who is properly poker-mad - I'm convinced he will give his first-born a name like Jack or Ace. He gets a little upset when I knock him out (usually by accident) - and then later on in the game, if I play a hand at random, and the other players are saying something like "interesting, good call" or whatever, he's jumping up and down going "No! No! He doesn't know what he's doing!".

But it's a good thing we don't play for money. I never win. Last week there were 33 of us playing; it ended up with just me versus one other guy on the top table head to head, hundreds of chips piled up in front of each of us. I tried to build a small fortress. Four hands later, all the chips were in front of him. Ho hum.


Funny thing is though when I played at New Year against some school friends - who are as bad as I am - I lost every time, very very quickly. Ironic

Or perhaps not. Maybe we're all monkeys with guns...


*If you're wondering where you've heard the word "encumber" before, it's in the lyrics to "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother".

You're welcome.