Truth be told, I am one of the unluckiest lucky persons I know. My mother and my wife will attest to this.
Ever since I was a kid, I've been involved in numerous situations where I have had some kind of misfortune dealt to me.
When I was 8, I had to have stitches sewn above my left eye. This was the result of a misguided game where numerous kids in my neighborhood were kicking around this open can of sardines with razor sharp edges and I was the unlucky recipient of the can's trajectory. A few inches more and I would be blind in one eye.
When I was 10, I slipped and fell down this long flight of concrete stairs and broke my nose. My mom was saying she thought I broke my neck as I was not moving when I finally stopped on the bottom landing and copious amounts of blood was gushing out my nose.
During my college years, I was waiting for the light to change in a street corner when this deranged man came out of nowhere and stabbed me in the chest with a freaking kitchen knife. This is a whole story by itself which I will blog about in the future. But rest assured that I had no idea who this man was and I was not even getting robbed. It was just me being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He could have stabbed anybody who was standing there beside me but noooo .... obviously my powers were too much for him to resist. I almost died then and there and had to stay in the hospital for close to 2 months to recover.
My girlfriend (who is my wife now) and I were on a date and visited a friend's house to pick up something. The friend had a huge chow chow dog tied near their door. When we passed by the dog, the dog just lunged up for no apparent reason and chomped down on my left arm. Seriously man, I did not provoke that dog in any way. I was just walking by minding my own business.
I attended a wedding reception once and I developed a very severe case of food poisoning immediately after. I had to be hospitalized for 2 days. Oh and guess what. It was a buffet but nobody else got food poisoning. It was just me. Think of that weird possibility for a bit so you can appreciate the way fate always smiles on me.
My wife fondly calls me a walking human disaster just waiting to happen. There are various more cases that have happened through the years. Too many to mention but I assure you that everything I have stated is true. No exaggeration or made up stories here. I think I must be secreting some kind of pheromone which attracts the worst kind of misfortunes. Or the goddess of luck was feeling frisky one day and just decided that I should be his boy toy .
With all these seemingly unlucky things happening to me, there is one thing that I do know. I know that I am a winning online poker player. I may not have won anything really really big but I consistently make money playing poker year after year. My stats are all in the black from every site that I play in. I do not confess to be a great poker player. But I am a student of the game and play with the correct math and the concepts that I have learned through the years.
And this is your incontrovertible proof that poker is not all about luck. If it is, and knowing my special kind of luck, then I should be bleeding money and bitching about how I always get drawn out or sucked out. And how I can never seem to catch a break.
But I don't. And that is why it is easy for me to believe that if you work on your game and play correctly, you will make money. Because poker is really more about learned skill than luck.
Of course, the next time I play, the LCD screen might suddenly explode in my face for no apparent reason just when I was about to win the Sunday Million by calling with Aces when my heads up opponent pushed all in with crap. When that happens, then we can talk again.
Ever since I was a kid, I've been involved in numerous situations where I have had some kind of misfortune dealt to me.
When I was 8, I had to have stitches sewn above my left eye. This was the result of a misguided game where numerous kids in my neighborhood were kicking around this open can of sardines with razor sharp edges and I was the unlucky recipient of the can's trajectory. A few inches more and I would be blind in one eye.
When I was 10, I slipped and fell down this long flight of concrete stairs and broke my nose. My mom was saying she thought I broke my neck as I was not moving when I finally stopped on the bottom landing and copious amounts of blood was gushing out my nose.
During my college years, I was waiting for the light to change in a street corner when this deranged man came out of nowhere and stabbed me in the chest with a freaking kitchen knife. This is a whole story by itself which I will blog about in the future. But rest assured that I had no idea who this man was and I was not even getting robbed. It was just me being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He could have stabbed anybody who was standing there beside me but noooo .... obviously my powers were too much for him to resist. I almost died then and there and had to stay in the hospital for close to 2 months to recover.
My girlfriend (who is my wife now) and I were on a date and visited a friend's house to pick up something. The friend had a huge chow chow dog tied near their door. When we passed by the dog, the dog just lunged up for no apparent reason and chomped down on my left arm. Seriously man, I did not provoke that dog in any way. I was just walking by minding my own business.
I attended a wedding reception once and I developed a very severe case of food poisoning immediately after. I had to be hospitalized for 2 days. Oh and guess what. It was a buffet but nobody else got food poisoning. It was just me. Think of that weird possibility for a bit so you can appreciate the way fate always smiles on me.
My wife fondly calls me a walking human disaster just waiting to happen. There are various more cases that have happened through the years. Too many to mention but I assure you that everything I have stated is true. No exaggeration or made up stories here. I think I must be secreting some kind of pheromone which attracts the worst kind of misfortunes. Or the goddess of luck was feeling frisky one day and just decided that I should be his boy toy .
With all these seemingly unlucky things happening to me, there is one thing that I do know. I know that I am a winning online poker player. I may not have won anything really really big but I consistently make money playing poker year after year. My stats are all in the black from every site that I play in. I do not confess to be a great poker player. But I am a student of the game and play with the correct math and the concepts that I have learned through the years.
And this is your incontrovertible proof that poker is not all about luck. If it is, and knowing my special kind of luck, then I should be bleeding money and bitching about how I always get drawn out or sucked out. And how I can never seem to catch a break.
But I don't. And that is why it is easy for me to believe that if you work on your game and play correctly, you will make money. Because poker is really more about learned skill than luck.
Of course, the next time I play, the LCD screen might suddenly explode in my face for no apparent reason just when I was about to win the Sunday Million by calling with Aces when my heads up opponent pushed all in with crap. When that happens, then we can talk again.
