I am no stranger to casinos. I have a love of human misery and buffets. This being said gambling is not my particular vice. Avarice, booze, and general skirt chasing are more my wheelhouse. Now I’ve noticed my friends who love to gamble and I’ve never made that connection. While adapting Dostoevsky’s The Gambler for a screenplay it occurred to me that I was far too pragmatic to engage in such risky behavior as gambling. As Fyodor noted, some folks risk so many other aspects of their lives that to gamble their finances on unpredictable outcomes seems beyond comprehension. For myself, slot machines are pointless. Roulette is not worth mentioning, blackjack passé. But poker… intriguing.
I was introduced to Texas Hold’em some years ago as I was part of the charter members of The Glendale Gentleman’s Poker League, or GGP. At first it appeared your cards determined the outcome. It didn’t click for many games the old adage, “You play the people not the cards”.
After studying my countless evenings with the GGP, I realized two very important things. Poker is all about lying, and I am in fact an incredible liar. A gigantic dick waving contest, and he with the most showmanship wins.
Now I fully understand that it is gambling. I understand that there is an unpredictable nature and you may be up against the suck-out king of Los Feliz. There are bad breaks, miscalculations, or just generally shitty luck. But like golf, it’s the hits not the misses that keep you coming back. When you swing that driver and that little fucker comes flying off the tee and sounds like its not going to stop until it hits the moon, yeah. That’s why you keep coming back.
After years of martial arts, fencing, hockey, and fist fighting you become accustomed to things most people never understand. It’s a beautiful nexus of training, practice, and experience. When in the course of combat there is that split second if shining glory. When everything you have done has been executed flawlessly. When there is that very specific look in another man’s eye when he knows, deep in his soul, that whatever he holds holy has betrayed him and he is in fact……fucked.
I’ve never experienced that from a slot machine. No bingo parlor has brought me the visceral feeling of raw man dominance as a dojo. But poker has. I have watched a grown man lose his fucking mind when my pair of deuces destroyed his impressive attempt to buy the pot. I have witnessed the gnashing of teeth when after bluffing another man to fold out of a hundred dollar pot, I refused to show my hand because he didn’t, “pay to see them”.
So if there was a point to make, I’ve forgotten it. I don’t enjoy beating a machine, but I do enjoy beating the happiness out of another human being. Repeatedly.
Ceterum censeo Hollywood esse delendam.
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