Thrilling confessions of an ex-poker player

If you never plan on playing, watching or learning poker, you probably want to stop reading at… If you never plan on playing, watching or learning poker, you probably want to stop reading at this point. If you like poker, enjoy watching “Rounders” and sleep with a copy of poker legend Doyle Brunson’s book under your pillow at night, you would do better to set down this column and go back to daydreaming about royal flushes and chip tricks.

If you are a fellow ex-poker player with a history of online gambling and chronic frustration with the game, then you might find yourself agreeing with this, my confession.

Like so many other young men, my obsession began after seeing the poker movie “Rounders.” Seeing Matt Damon win at cards and hearing him talk about suckers made me feel I too could spot suckers and take their money.

After my first game, I knew that I needed to watch the movie a few more times for the knowledge to sink in correctly. While I was at it, I could also catch the six dozen reruns of the World Series of Poker that appear on ESPN each day.

The craze continued, and soon I decked my rising-poker-star self out with all the poker goodies. I bought three poker books and read online articles about cards. My friend and I went in together on a set of chips from eBay. I even bought reflective sunglasses.

I was set.

My travels brought me to shady rooms with players who took my money before it was out of my wallet. I played at games where everyone wore sunglasses, had an unlit cigarette in his mouth, as is the habit of star Sammy Farha, or had a lucky orange, the trademark of poker legend Johnny Chan. The older the orange was, the luckier it had to be.

After a bit, I decided to test my luck at an online site, which I’m still not quite sure was legal. But it was operated out of the Caribbean, so who cares?

I bought in for $50 and by the end of the semester was up to $350, a pretty terrible return considering how many hours I played. I would have made more money breaking into people’s houses and raiding their couches for change. At the time, though, I was ready to become a professional gambler.

By end of that semester, I lacked real people to play with. I played more online until I finally decided to quit my small-limit games and play some no-limit games where I had seen people make $100 in just one hand.

At first, I won a few times. And then, in just three hands, I busted out.

I won’t go into the specific hands — actually I will anytime anyone wants, just not here, because everyone has his own traumatic bad beat stories. But mine are far worse.

By the beginning of this year, I was jaded with the online experience — seeing such incredible luck and knowing statistically what the odds against making such hands were. I vowed not to play again where I couldn’t see people’s faces.

Sadly, even real games were not as much fun as they had been. Everyone suddenly seemed to be as good as I was, even though I seriously doubted they paid the money I had to be a proud owner of “Caro’s Book of Poker Tells.”

The new World Series of Poker, an event I had eagerly awaited for months, was pretty terrible. All of my favorite players from the previous year were eliminated remarkably early. Rather than focusing on one man’s journey to the top as it did in previous years, it focused on how many newcomers there were.

Here was a violation of my sport on a massive scale. All these new players arrived, contaminating the field with such surprisingly stupid playing and even more surprising lucky victories.

One night on ESPN2, I saw a new dramatic miniseries — a dressed-up name for a male soap opera — called “Tilt.” I knew that any sort of coolness that had ever been associated with poker was now over.

It seemed that I could no longer watch TV or talk to any male between the ages of 6 and 90 without hearing about poker. I joined the ranks of people who hopped on the bandwagon before something made it big and then jumped right off once they saw where it was going.

Instead of being the epic battle between competing strategies and knowledge, it suddenly was just a game of luck, one that I didn’t ever seem to win big at.

I didn’t like that it was a fad all of a sudden — even though I’m sure in retrospect that it was already a fad when I started playing. But who wants to admit to being a bandwagon-jumper?

I still play now and again, but it’s with my good friends. I don’t live for those games with eight strangers. Online poker now seems frustrating and hollow. I don’t have a problem with the game if it’s played socially, but it starts to lose me when players wear the sunglasses, recite lines from “Rounders” and tell me how great “Tilt” is.

E-mail feedback to smorey88@hotmail.com.