Quest of a Closet Poker Player

It is the shortest of months, and after another dreadful session my February ended with a thud.

This includes the following hands from last night:

That would be quads #1, limping UTG then flopping quad jacks and getting paid off.

That would be quads #2, flopping a set of 7’s then getting it all in vs kings, grabbing the case seven on the river for good measure.

The bad? First, a bad -$450 session of $8/16 LHE where literally nothing came through. Then moving to NLHE ranging from $0.50/1 to $2/4. A few draws not getting there, some weak/tight play, some big hands that–no need to type any more of this. It was a mix of playing poorly and running bad, combined with a nice dose of malaise and/or tilt (if there is any difference). That puts February down -$1,215, which puts 2007 -$600. Thanks for playing, sir.

Which brings us to my big question from yesterday that I want to explore: Am I Better Because of Poker? We’ll use a combination of subjective and objective criteria in looking at this. Poker is a life variable for me that is significant for me. The specific things that I will include in Poker are this blog, using the internet to read about poker (news and 2+2), reading other blogs about poker, writing articles about poker for PokerWorks, playing poker, and thinking about poker. I’ll try to be as specific as possible while I work through this as my quick thought is that poker is a combination of catalyst, symptom, and metaphor for the challenges of my life.

The criteria I will use in looking at this question include all parts of my life:

• Spiritual
• Financial
• Career
• Physical Fitness
• Marital Relationship
• Parent
• Intellectual
• Friendship
• Psychological

I may add to this list, but this seems fairly complete as a list of categories or criteria of one’s life. Let me look at the first of these today, then I’ll examine the others through the next several days.

Spiritual

As some of you may know, I am a believing Christian. Being a Christian is both a destination and a journey, as coming to a conversion decision is both a specific event and the beginning of a relationship and a maturity of one’s understanding and the doing of one’s faith. This won’t be an analysis of organized religion, of the Christian-right, none of that. Here, I’m simply speaking about me and where I am.

Simply put, I’m not in a good place with my faith. I’ve written about the struggles I have with our mega-church, struggles I have connecting vs. problems with this specific church. This is only one part of the faith equation for me. It isn’t about having all the answers, being the most knowledgeable Christian around, being in leadership at the church. No, this is about some simple questions with bad answers:

• Am I close to God?
• Am I learning more about Him?
• Am I using my talents to serve others?
• Am I spending time with other Christians?

My prayer life is a mess in some ways yet acceptable in other ways. My prayers aren’t beautifully articulate in my mind, they aren’t structured correctly as I learned the proper way to pray growing up. My prayers are what you would term pleas or pleading, crying out for broad, simple requests. Help me. Show me the way. Forgive me for being so far from where You want me. The wonderful thing about this God that I worship is that He doesn’t force rank His followers. There is no pecking order, and no amount of goodness can bring us closer to Him. He loves me in spite of my shortcomings rather than because of my achievements, and this mess with my faith while an embarrassment to me isn’t too important to Him.

All of this seemingly has little to do with poker, yet in some ways it does. As we’ll see when I look at these other parts of my life, poker takes a good bit of my time, my motivation, my mind, my resources. I don’t want to get too focused on cause and effect in this self analysis. I don’t think poker is a sin, and I don’t think poker has caused my spiritual health to degrade. Poker does impact all parts of my life though. And does poker have a positive impact on my faith, a benign impact, or a negative impact? At the least, it is hard to find a meaningful way that it has a positive impact on my faith. I occasionally receive an email of thanks for being so raw with who I am and all of these life struggles that I have. I’ll receive a thank you for speaking about my faith in the context of poker from time to time. I don’t believe I’m motivated by this; i.e., I’m not laying all of this out so I can get pats on the head. I put all this out because others may have struggles like me.

The slope of my faith looks alot like someone in a tourney just being blinded off. I haven’t experienced catastrophic declines caused by some horrific moral decision; rather, it has been a slow decay through stagnation. I put this first in the criteria because I would like to think that God is first in my life. He is not, and I am neither in a good place nor on a good path. I don’t think that poker has caused this, but I do spend more time on 2+2 each week than I do serving others. I do spend more time writing this blog than I spend in prayer. I spend more time reading and chatting with my online poker friends than I spend with my children reading the Bible and talking about their own faith.

I haven’t un-become a Christian, but I am not very healthy right now. I don’t think poker has a huge impact on this, but it is a part of this.

I’ll look at my financial health tomorrow, then continue down this road over the next couple weeks as I look hard at my life and the impact poker has had on it. After this self examination, we’ll see what it all means and what I should do about it. Hope to see you tonight at CC’s Thursday Bash (9:30 EST on Stars, password pokerworks). Thanks for stopping by, and you can leave a comment or email me at csquard@gmail.com if you have any thoughts on this.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 10:02 am and is filed under Uncategorized.