by Tim Sun
“Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!” You are probably familiar with this line from the movie 21, in which a blackjack player shouts these words after winning a big bet. As an experienced poker player, I cannot think of anything quite like the rush of excitement when winning a large sum of money from gambling. Who says there is no such thing as a free lunch? In many international poker tournaments, professional gamblers happily pay the USD 1,000 entry fee and walk away with millions in their pockets along with other sponsorship deals. Nevertheless, people don’t know about all the money that is lost prior to these moments of euphoria, nor do they realize that among the 15,000 players who join a tournament only one of them really gets a chicken dinner. There are many latent and detrimental effects to poker. For instance, I won a pot of NTD 5,000 only once in my eight years of poker experience. If we take into account how rarely this happens, and that the chances of losing are much higher than winning, we can see how lucky we would be just to break even, let alone win a large fortune. People who believe that they can calculate the percentage of a particular card to show up, or how to read the cards of other players by their faces, or how to play in such a way as to improve their odds are just dreaming. These fallacies not only caused me to go home empty handed, but also continually lured me back in the hopes of winning a big pot again. In the long run a pattern began to emerge, and before I knew it I was addicted to gambling. An addicted gambler never fails to find excuses for gambling, and fabricating their own versions of how they managed to lose. To a compulsive gambler losing money is never his fault, it is usually the dealer, the feng shui of the place, the luck of that particular day, or my favorite, “someone cheated and changed the cards.” You would be surprised to learn how far a gambler can go when it comes to poker. I once knew a mechanical engineering major who called the police on a dealer for cheating, although everyone else in the room knew that it was just because he was down NTD 20,000. To be in a state of denial is not uncommon among poker players, because it is their mentality to think that it’s an easy way to make money. I like to call it the hypnotic trance of poker, during which you focus all your attention on one trivial thing while everything else in life comes to a standstill and is completely neglected. The last poker game I played was a wakeup call; it was the time when I was finally resuscitated from the trance. It was one Sunday afternoon when my classmate called me up for a poker game at a place nearby. Without much hesitation I mounted my scooter and arrived at the rendezvous as soon as I could. The game began with six other players whom I had never met. Throughout the game I had the feeling that something was out of place, because everyone in the room so relaxed, as if their money was not at stake. Before nightfall I lost every penny I had and did not know how I was going to pay my expenses for the remainder of the month. On my way home I saw the light flashing on my scooter because I was running out of gas. I pulled over and sat down next to it in deep meditation. It was then that it came to me that I had been conned, and that that the game in which I had lost all my money was a setup. I told myself that it was time to cut my losses, for poker had not only caused me to lose money but also friendship, time, and everything else I had invested. I had played poker for eight years, constantly making excuses about why I should continue to play the game. As I was aiming to win that free chicken dinner, many breakfasts and lunches were sacrificed along the way. Poker did not teach me how to become a better person, student, son, or friend, instead it trapped me inside of my own greed like a lethal drug gradually draining the life out of my body. And now that I have overcome my addiction to poker, I hope never to feel compelled to play it again.
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May 2024
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