Perchance to dream (non-grumpy content)

I suppose it's inevitable that if one spends a good portion of each day playing, reading about, and thinking about poker, at night one will sometimes dream about it, too. And as with most dream subjects, the result is often weirdly distorted.

Last night I dreamed that I was in a hand with two cards, marked "6" and "12." I was having some difficulty figuring out whether I won or lost to a guy who was holding a 6 and a king.

But even with extra cards, that was a simple game, compared to another one that played out in my addled brain one night. I found myself in a game in which one had to bet on the number of vowels and consonants that would appear in the cards. For example, "eight of hearts" has five vowels and eight consonants. The winner was the one who had most accurately predicted the total number of vowels and consonants in his final five-card hand. It was terribly complicated.

I find that I much prefer a 52-card deck, with pairs and straights and flushes determining the winner. As baffling and frustrating as the game seems at times, it's far simpler than the mutant versions that my twisted subconscious invents in the dead of night.