Why I Play

“It’s not gambling if you never lose.”

That’s my standard line when I am asked about whether I worry about losing money playing cards.  It usually gets a laugh, but only after a moment passes in which the person I am talking to peers at me to see if I actually believe this.  

That moment always happens when I say that - every single time - because everyone knows a problem gambler and they know the rationalizations problem gamblers make to justify their behavior and they know the damage problem gambling does, like anything a person does to excess.

So they try hard to see if there is something else going on in my eyes when I tell them I never lose.  Because in asking me about it, they are already worrying.

I worry too.  

I spent the first five months of this year working on an unexpectedly difficult case, losing sleep, doing what lawyers do, gaming out the worst case scenarios, trying to anticipate all the possibilities.  When it was over - at least for now - I remembered why I retired in 2021: I personalize the cases I handle, soak them in bone-deep, think about them to the exclusion of everything else until there’s nothing left to think about. And then I worry about not knowing what I don’t know.

The stress from these cases take days or months off the end of my life, I worry. And aside from the feeling of fulfillment for having done a good job, my reward for this work is just money. And not as much as you’d think: I represent government employees and offices, not high dollar clients, and after the IRS takes its cut, you get what you get.

So you’d think I would value that hard-earned money enough not to give it to whatever multiconglomerate that currently owns Caesars or the MGM or whatever other casinos we visit.

And I do value the money. Deeply. But the gambling bug is strong, and I want to play the games and see what happens.

I play cards for the same reason I play Texas 42 dominoes (the greatest game ever devised): not really for the money, but for the competition and for the friendships. And I play in the World Series of Poker not really for the money but instead for some kind of validation that I can play well against good players.

They are all there.  I have been at tables with professional poker players, men and women whose job is to separate me from my money, and I have played against deep pocket amateurs who want to watch me slink away from a table, my pockets turned inside out and empty.  I think I have held my own against these sharks, making the money in tournaments several times, and not losing often in the cash games.  But I never forget that I can lose, sometimes with a vengeance.

So my other truism is that I never play with money that I cannot afford to lose. So far, that red line has held.  But my friends and family still search my face every time I tell them I never lose, looking for that tell, the giveaway that I will start to chase my losses, dip into my security, my future.

I am carrying an envelope from the bank that contains my budget for this year.  It’s a wheelbarrow full of cheeseburgers, a bathtub full of basketball shoes, about a year of guitar lessons and personal training.  I maintain my red line by remembering what the money means in the real world.  

I am my father’s son, a man who was the son of a dairy farmer and experienced true poverty before lifting himself and his family up.  I ate bean sandwiches as a boy, mac and cheese as a student, and discount meat as a young lawyer before lifting myself up ever higher.  I don’t forget how lucky I am to have money and security in these difficult times.

So, don’t worry - I am not a degenerate gambler in training.

(Unless, of course, I start drinking double cranberry and vodkas.  Then all bets are off.)

Just landed in LV.  The adventure begins!