Poker gems, #23

Jesse May, Shut Up and Deal, p. 16-17:

Ever since I started playing poker it seems like it’s always been the same. Win a little. Lose a little. Stay in action, afford the buy-in, keep my head above water and keep moving, always moving. And watch people go broke. Watch 'em fold up and go broke.

Then I go on a losing streak. Or have one bad night, or whatever. Just something that makes me question everything I know about poker—no, everything I believe—and consider giving up and be scared to go in the card room and not know when to fold or when to raise or when to play or when to stop.

And then it turns around. Pop. Just like that it turns around and I start winning and don’t stop winning and start playing higher and faster, and then the cycle starts again. Over the last six years this cycle has been perpetual, and always vicious, and always of lunar-type proportions. And these cycles have been punctuated by leaves of absence, lots of them, because basically I can’t deal, I’m dysfunctional, I need to reorient myself, my place in space, my poker philosophy…. And every time I’m away, I’m away from the table, but the game is right there next to me, it’s living with me as I replay hands and people and conversations and games and days and plays and angles. And every time I come back, I break through, my thoughts are different, my understanding feels deeper. And here’s the funny part. I always think I understand. And everybody else doesn’t. And they’re all thinking the same thing.