Quest of a Closet Poker Player

I’ve been working pretty hard and haven’t had quality time to devote to the series.

This is the fifth part of a series where I am examining all parts of my life and how poker has impacted it. 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

As some of you may know, I wrote a series of posts on Children and Poker prior to coming to PokerWorks (Preface, Findings (research I did), One Theory, Joe Sebok’s view (top pro, son of Barry Greenstein), Wolverine (son of Shep, G-Vegas teen player), Wrap-Up, and My Thoughts)

I’d like to be very tactical about what poker means regarding my children.  I asked the Big Guy what he thought about me and poker.  “Well, you play alot,” he said.  The times I normally play poker include after dinner, before dinner, late night, and less frequently during the day.  I rarely if ever play on weekends (and all of this means online as I rarely play live).  Relatively, I don’t play very much poker, imo.  The perception of the boys is that I play alot.  They know what poker means and know how to play hold-em.  Because of working out of the home, I am able to be with the boys significantly more than I was five or ten years ago.  I used to travel 60-80% of the time, now I’m around all the time.  I have the luxury of being a father who doesn’t commute, meaning I’m around for not only the big things in their lives but the small things and the invisible things.  We are blessed because Sweeties can stay home with them, and we’re now blessed and cursed that I’m around so much.

I think I’m correct that poker isn’t impacting my parenting.  I’ll add to this if the boys have any thoughts later.  Could I be a better father?  Well, it hasn’t been too tough yet (famous last words…).  The Big Guy is eleven, All-In is nine, the Little Guy is almost three.  The Big Guy did get sick last night (out of both ends if you must know), and I was four-tabling on Stars until I fell asleep on the couch.  Does that make me a bad father?  I don’t think so.  Does it make me a bad husband?  I did get Sweetie three bunches of irises at Kroger, but 300 irises probably wouldn’t pay her back for what she went through.

I can say that if I was playing at night and traveling or commuting, then I think poker would conflict with being a father.  Parenting is about investment more than about discipline or instruction.  It is about all of the invisible information that  is gathered by offspring.  It is about muscle memory.  In our society, we think it’s about giving them a better life than our parents had when they were kids, about providing every resource they need.  The goal of any parent should be to create an adult with values that you share and the capability and opportunity to become anyone he or she wants to.

I’ve been called up for Bear Soup (more on that later).  I’ll add some wisdom later.  Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll talk to you later.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 5:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.