Poker gems, #35

I hope at least a few readers have followed and enjoyed the extended excerpts from Shut Up and Deal. I loved the book. It's highly unlikely that I'll devote anywhere near as much space to snippets from other stuff, but at least now I will return to other sources for this series of posts, for those who didn't much care for May's work.


Jesse May, Shut Up and Deal, p. 201:

It ain’t like I’m getting up every five minutes to go to my [hotel] room. Some buy-ins last longer than others, and sometimes I double my stack through before I lose it and once I’m almost even for fifteen minutes or so. But there’s no doubt as the session wears on that I’m losing, and my cards are rather gruesome. There’s no flow. There’s no order. Sometimes I go for an hour without playing more than a few hands, and then all of the sudden I get about ten to play in a row and get brutalized and then it’s all over and I feel like a tornado went through my head and sucked up my chips and I’m just shell-shocked and thinking about all the hands while Louie and Porky are chortling. And then dry as a bone. Sit back and wait. And fume.

Sometimes I make a pledge like I’m gonna die right here in this seat rather than quit this game because it’s so good. And don’t it always seem to be that when you make the pledge, those are the days you really do sit there and just die in the seat. That’s what it feels like. Just sitting there and dying, man.