poker for life

When we were teens the nuns taught us to play poker. We adored it as much as they did. Whether we won or whether we lost wasn't the deal because all the pot went to charity. What mattered was the surprising things we learned about ourselves and one another. I became a fanatic. The nuns told us that the way you play your cards reveals the person you really are to yourself and to others. You expose yourself through "tells". But another thing about poker is that you come face to face with what you really want and what you've really got. Poker's about measuring outcomes and managing luck.
The stakes we played for weren't fantastically high, but the conversation - usually about what makes boys tick (the nuns had a great deal to say about boys and their "zone of need" but that's for anther blog). We soon saw that poker strategy could easily help us in that jous de jous; love. Cosmo had nothing on Texas Hold'Em. So we started off a set of poker rules for measuring outcomes with boys:
1)No more pathetic hoping we could change a boy (the cards). We'd fold on losers and wait for better cards (boys). 2) No more pining away helplessly for lack of a boy who refused to acknowledge we even existed. The modern equivalent would be to know when to txt a boy, and know when to press REFUSE as his name cames up on the mobile screen.
So anyway, this was our summer of strategy: the summer of reading naked bluffs, making muscle bluffs and analysing predictive tells of the heart. We would know when to go “all in” and know when to fold.
Sometimes I got it wrong and sometimes I got it right. Overall I still think my poker strategy to love helped me fare better in affaires de coeur than the girls who simply followed their heart. My biggest strength was being really honest about what it was my heart really wanted and what my chances of getting it were. My biggest prob was I could never bring myself to fold before the flop. Which is probably why I landed myself in so much emotional debt. But then when you're young there's always another game, another boy, life is full of possible outcomes. While other girls would spot a madly fit boy and say, "he's mine!" - or "ooh-la-la" for us our battle cry was "shuffle up and deal!"
My belief in poker strategy as a guide to living has held strong. Good poker players have to study more than their cards - they have to be honest about how they feel about their cards. Knowing why you play the way you play, is both revealing and empowering. And then there's the play of others. Unless we're in a showdown we rarely get to understand why people played their cards the way they did and life's like that.

Playing your cards close to your chest remains a good adage for life. Let them think you're a fool, the nuns would say. Better a boy underestimates you and he comes undone than you underestimate life's possibilities and you come undone.

I do miss The Wisdom of Nuns - and they were sooo right about boys and their zone of need! Enter it at your peril!