Live the GREAT Life Like a Poker Pro!
“You got to know when to hold’em, know when to fold’em, know when to walk away and know when to run…” – Kenny Rodgers
As a former consultant in the Casino Gaming Industry I learned a lot from the many gamblers, card players, hustlers, scam artists and cheaters that I worked around. One of the best lessons I learned was from watching and playing poker.
You will hear poker players say that any decent poker player can make money with a great hand by raising and winning the pot. A good poker player can make money with a bad hand by winning with a bluff… A great poker player can take a great hand and throw it away when the risk is not worth the reward (not an easy lesson to learn)…
Life is all about learning to play the hand your were dealt… Life can be a gamble, but I believe a GREAT life is learning to take calculated risks. Winning in poker and in life is not always based on the hand you were dealt but how well you play your hand.
In poker calculating risk and reward is very easy. In life, risk and reward are difficult to calculate. What’s the risk of chasing a dream? When do you let go of a dream like folding a bad hand? What does poker tell us about life? In my experience living life like the haphazard gambler may lead to poverty and often does, and a life lived too cautiously may result in great success but often doesn’t.
What I’ve come to know is that life, like in poker, is all about getting in the game. Sometimes we don’t have the luxury of waiting till the best hand comes along… We take calculated risks and play the hand we were dealt to the best of our ability. The point is, we can’t win in poker or in life by sitting and watching the game… You can’t win what we are not willing to risk.
One of the worst possible hand in poker is “10 and 2 with non matching suits” (also known as Ten-deuce off-suit). This hand was named after poker legend Doyle Brunson (by the way, calling Doyle a poker legend is an understatement). Why is one of the worst hands in poker is named after Doyle Brunson? Doyle won the world series of poker with it!
Play the hand you were dealt. Get into life and take calculated risks but don’t be too afraid to risk and never regret being too cautious but experiment! My formula for calculating risk in life is simple… To win love, honor, value, friendship and happiness I’ve learned to risk my ego and sometimes my heart, even when I’ve come up short, I’ve never lost. To those of you waiting to get in the game I wish you GREAT luck, the best of luck!
