I recently spent a week in atlantic city on vacation using my hard-earned comp dollars and free mid-week rooms stay for long overdue moderately priced vacation.

I met several characters while staying in the Showboat Hotel and Casino and the Resorts Hotel and Casino. The most interesting of which were 2 people I met while either eating or playing poker. I’m only going to talk about one, because people have short attention spans so I’ll keep it brief.

The first was a real gambler risking large stacks of chips on marginal hands in poker, but what is interesting about Mike is that he said ” I had just got laid off from my job and am taking a serious go at becoming a poker pro” this guy seemed supremely confident in his moves calling and raising and re-raising with ease until the third day of my trip. I witnessed Mike lose $1,800 in one hand against some real card sharks, as opposed to the wading pool I was playing in. When he got up from table after losing such a big bet all he could say was “I’m done” as if he had lost his last penny. All I could think was that this guy was chasing a dream he couldn’t catch and lost all his money in the process.

Moral of that little story is “don’t chase things you can’t catch; because you’ll end up risking what you can’t afford to lose”

and if your familiar with the movie rounders “you can’t lose what you don’t put in the middle.”

Peace &  Prosperity

Originally posted 12/7/2008