jennings rampage

Red is my color, too.

All sports have their apocryphal legends and their cautionary tales. And if you want to assume for a moment that poker is a sport, then let me tell you the story of the man who wanted to fold pocket aces before the flop.

You see, in Texas Holdem, you’re dealt two cards face down before you place your first bet. The best possible hole cards you could have are two aces – aces in the hole, pocket rockets, bullets, the list of colorful nicknames goes on. The betting starts to the left of the dealer and goes around the table clockwise, so the dealer acts last and has the benefit of seeing how the other players acted before he has to decide whether to bet or fold.

But Holdem poker is a seven card game – three cards will be turned face up on the table that everyone can use, then a fourth, and finally a fifth. You make your best five card poker hand from your two hole cards and your five community cards. A hand that looked great before the flop can easily turn into complete shit, and it’s not uncommon to lose all your chips by refusing to let go of strong hole cards when you’ve obviously been beaten.

And just like any sport with apocryphal legends and cautionary tales, poker is a lot like life. There’s a lot of grinding it out, waiting for your moments and making the most of them, being patient and perceptive and not losing your cool. Because if you’re dealt pocket rockets and you end up losing the hand to some Reno who was playing two-four offsuit and caught a runner-runner straight, it’s easy to lose your cool. At some point, everyone is going to catch a bad run of cards, everyone is going to do everything they should and still lose the hand, and everyone will question their ability to play the game.

And so, you find yourself on the dealer button, the cards are out, and the action is insane. The blinds have been raised, reraised, and capped before it even gets to you, and everyone’s in. You don’t even want to look at your cards; with the stakes this high and your luck this bad, you already know you have no chance. But you do take a peek just to give yourself something to lament, and there they are: two sexy red aces.

This is the best starting hand in poker, and you want no part of it. The hand will be too difficult to play, it’ll be too easy to miss the flop and lose your initial bet, or worse, you’ll catch a piece of the flop and find yourself stuck for all your money when you can’t put the other guy on a miracle hand and get out of the pot. You’re so frustrated that you actually consider folding your hand and letting the other jackals tear each other apart. You know that pocket aces – the best starting hand in poker – will win only 36% of the time against nine opponents, so there are no guarantees. You’re an underdog to the field; the smart money is you won’t win this hand. So you want to get out now.

Still, you’re not sitting at the table to not play poker. When you have the cards, you have to take the risks. You’re an underdog to the field, but with those cards, you’ll win much more often than random chance will dictate. When these opportunities come by, you can’t pass them up just because the odds aren’t perfect and nothing can possibly go wrong – if nothing could possibly go wrong, it wouldn’t be poker. If you don’t want to catch bad beats, play chess. Without the variance, the sucker would never sit down.

The other players at the table are trying to tell you that you can’t win the hand. They want you to give up now. They have their reasons, in the form of the cards they’re hiding from you and hinting at through their betting, but you know their reasons can’t be better than yours – you’ve got the aces. You’ve got to pay to see the flop, otherwise you’re a shitty poker player.

I’m a tired man who’s had a bad year or two at the tables. I’ve sat through a lot of improbable luck, I’ve grown impatient, and I’ve tried to force my way when I didn’t have the cards to back it up. I’ve questioned my luck, my skill, and my lot in life, and the players around me have done the same. If I lose this hand, they’ll all be there to chime in: there was a flush on the board, there was a straight on the board, there’s no way your aces were good. But I can’t get ahead of myself: you’re my pair of aces, and I’m not letting you go.