K
Kegremachryda
Rising Star
Bronze Level
One of the great medical benefits of Texas Hold 'Em is that it inures one against psychic injury. There are others. It sharpens the mind, improves hand-eye coordination (not a lot). But the inoculation poker provides against the howls and winds of outrageous fortune, which afflict us all in the real world, is an undisguised blessing. It's right out there. Survive a month at PokerStars, let alone a wilder site, and you have been so bludgeoned by improbable defeats that nothing the day will bring will faze you. Death, bankruptcy, divorce, of course they'll happen, and when they're least expected. How could it be otherwise in a world where aces lose to deuces and near certainties are blown out by the river. If you have any feeling before taking up Hold 'Em, it will be dead in you before play is done. It could not be otherwise or you'd be altogether dead. There are bad beats so cruel and twisted they can be cited analagously in conjunction with interrogation tactics at Guantanamo. Nor are they rare. If you don't experience a couple a night, you're not playing. The first few times it's hard to believe that things so nasty could actually happen. Then one becomes angry, frustrated, what are all the stages of grieving? Finally acceptance. You just accept the fact that shit happens and if it doesn't kill you, you get up and move on. It's a lesson well taught by Hold 'Em and it's invaluable for maintaining sanity in a time of subprime mortgages, Iraq, teenage pregnancies, Rwanda (remember), gated communities, rampant air and water pollution, not to mention the alcoholism, drugginess, illness, boredom, financial stress and sexual tension that afflict our own lives. Poker helps us through it all.