Lee Davy takes a trip down his windy memory lane to recollect what he has learned since falling head over heels in love with poker.
The uneducated believe poker is just like American politics. It’s nothing but a game of luck where the biggest bluffer ends up winning. But when you get into Madonna’s groove, you find out that poker is not a game based on luck where the biggest bluffer wins.
It’s not even a game.
It’s a lesson in life.
Here is what I learned when I found poker.
It taught me the true meaning of community
Only I wasn’t 100% Donald Trump white in school. I hated being different. So I did everything I could to fit into the tribe.
As a consequence of this hive mind mentality, I created a social hierarchy in my soul and placed people like me near the apex. I looked down at a lot of types of different people. I was a Valley Boy, pure and simple.
Then I found poker.
Suddenly, I was spending my time with part time drugs dealers, sanitation workers, widowers, people who I could barely understand, gipsies, lonely old men, bookmakers and grandmothers.
I had found a new tribe, more eclectic than ever before, but with a deeper sense of community. It was poker that welded us all together. I would have done anything for my poker tribe.
I understood them.
They understood me.
Misfits in a world that likes to all buzz the same buzz.
It taught me to broaden my horizons
I used to be a scaredy-cat.
Living in a valley of 3,000 people does that to you. My travels abroad always included some crappy hotel complex offering an all-inclusive deal including cheap booze and heart attack inducing food.
I would never leave the complex.
I would wake up in the morning, run down to the pool, grab the loungers before the Germans, lie in them all day catching skin cancer, drink like an idiot, watch some crappy entertainment and then rinse and repeat.
Then I found poker.
I didn’t realise the world was so full of curiosity.
A man in Morocco threw a monkey on my head and asked me to pay him. I watched Dynamo performing magic tricks in a house in Venice. I stood in the basin of the Grand Canyon and cried at the sheer magnificence. I climbed out of a cold plunge pool in a naked coed spa in Berlin and didn’t care that my penis looked like a mushroom.
I saw the sites; I experienced the experiences, but most of all I grew up. I stopped thinking the Middle Eastern man riding the tube with me was about to blow me up.
I ceased being that scaredy-cat.
It taught me to respect women
I had three sisters. My father was never around. My mother was my guide. I have more estrogen than testosterone (hence the mushroom thing), and yet there was a part of my operating system that was sexist.
I was programmed to believe that men were better than women in almost every department. I added the kitchen cliches to my joke book. I was vulgar and treated women as sex objects.
Then I found poker.
I listened to strong female role models talk about their struggles at the poker table. I looked down, and I was holding the knife; blood dripping on the floor. I looked away from the table and saw women struggling to find acceptance everywhere I turned.
I saw my mother; a life in ruins; all self-esteem removed as each child fled the nest leaving her in the company of a man who had no intention of discovering who she was. Left to rot on the couch of convenience.
I watched the ladies wander into the poker room and wondered what it must feel like to know that over 300 people had a few pieces of DNA code preventing them from trying to mount them. The stare, the lewd smile and the adjustment of the ball sac – I have no idea why they haven’t all run to the proverbials hills.
It taught me about freedom
Elon Musk likes to think there is a possibility that we are nothing but Sims in a computer simulation controlled by teenage Gods with spots. I believe he is onto something. For over 30-years of my life, I believed in the notion of free will. I thought that I chose the set of circumstances that moved me from one place on the chess board of life to the next.
I would wake up in the morning, kiss my wife and tell her I loved her, do the same with my son, put on my shirt and tie, jump into my crappy old minivan, wonder how on earth I got to work and then spend the next 12-hours dealing with a bunch of zombies.
Next, I would come home, refuse to play with my son because I was too tired, watch the X-Factor, ask the wife for sex, wait for her to say no, and then spend the night tossing and turning because I was too frightened to go to sleep knowing I would have to wake up and do it all again.
And then I found poker.
Poker gave me a reason to believe there was something better in the world. Poker gave me the courage to quit my job and run away from the zombies.
There is no boss in poker. The alarm clock develops sinus trouble. The blindfold is off. The strongbox opens. You can wake up when you want, play when you want and do what you want.
Each day when I wake up, I write in my gratitude journal.
Some people say they are grateful for three things; others say 10. I say only one.
I am grateful that I am free.
It taught me about class
When I was younger, I would close my eyes and pray to a God that I knew didn’t exist. I would ask for Manchester United to win the league, to have round eyes and to be a millionaire.
I used to watch Only Fools and Horses, and when Del Boy uttered those immortal words, I used to silently mouth them back.
This time next year we’ll be millionaires.
I used to wonder what millionaires would look like?
Then I found poker.
He looked like a Dad. He wore old brown shoes, cream coloured chinos and a plain purple top. He wore a cheap pair of specs, an average looking watch and texted me on a crappy old phone.
I asked him questions, and he batted them away. His only interest was with me. He fired questions with the ferociousness of Zulus throwing spears at Michael Caine.
He had so much money his only problem was figuring out how best to give it away, and yet his kids still didn’t own an iPhone. He lived in a typical house, drove an average car, and he only stayed in the top suites because the hotel chains gave them to him for free.
He was generous, warm and kind, and he made me realise that I was right all along to want to be a millionaire. Not for the money, but to show the world that you don’t need money to have class.
Now, what did you learn when you found poker?
