The chips are here!!

Well, okay. They've actually been here for awhile. And I still have to send the check to my friend, Jason, who was kind enough to act as a reshipper for me since the place I got the chips from didn't ship to APO addresses.

Now, of course, as I'm sure it is with many of your lives, nothing in mine can go exactly as planned. Or even anywhere near it. My new chip problem is that they have defects. And not just one or two. Oh no. Of the 150 white chips, I counted out over 80 that I didn't like. Some had obvious manufacturing defects. Some were just dirty, but the dirt was embedded. The red ones had problems. The blue ones-- the blue ones had the most cracked chips out of all the colors. That's right, cracked! Okay, these are clay chips, after all. But still! Does no one check for quality anymore?!

So I got that to deal with.

Then there's the problem of me wanting to play poker online. For money. Yeah, yeah, I can hear some of you saying, "Online poker for money?! Are you crazy?!" Whatever. I don't need it from you. I get enough of that from my wife. Besides, I'm good at it. I aught to be. I play enough. Plus I'm signed up at this online poker school and I'm taking classes. That's right! Classes in how to play poker. It's not like playing craps or roulette, you know. You don't just stand there with a couple of six-sided random number generators (dice), hoping you make your numbers. Frankly, if that's your idea of a good investment, I've got land and stocks I'd like to sell you.

No, poker is different. I get to choose which cards I play, and which I get to throw away. And when to throw them away. And! if I want, I don't even have to play those cards. I could just play you. And make you think I played the right cards. I can't make you think I rolled the right number or the ball landed in the right box when it didn't. I can't make the slot machine believe that it hit three cherries and that it should pay me the jackpot.

But I can make you think that. ;~)

And that's one of the beauties of poker. That's what makes the game much less of a gamble than those other casino games. Sure, I can't always make you believe I have the best hand. Maybe you have the best hand and I'm making the stupidest bluff ever. But I can control that too. In poker, I control the money. Not the other way around. With craps and other casino games, the money's the thing. And it wraps itself around a man's (or a woman's) brain and takes over. The only thing that matters is making the big score. Take the long odds, it pays more. Didn't hit? Hock the wife's jewelry, she'll never know, because you'll hit it the next time.

Not so with poker. The money is simply a tool. A tool to control the other players. Into doing what, you ask? Well, giving you their money, of course! But it's the hunt that's drives the poker player, not just the clinking of the coins.

So, all that being said, instead of just going ahead and doing it, taking the plunge, and depositing money into an online account at some poker site, I thought I would do the honest thing first. (What an idiot!) But I was thinking that since all of our family's income was now coming from one source, and that source not being me, I thought it only right to try to negotiate out a deal with the wife for some money to start playing with. It didn't get that far.

More on this next time (I promise I will get to it quicker this time), because I have to go.

Until then, go about your daily, dreary lives! Thanks.