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January 22, 2004
Poker and Friends
One of the best things about playing poker all around the world is the vast number of people I have met. It is interesting to get so many perspectives on life. I have met businessman, bookies, drug dealers, housewives, and just about everything in between. I have made numerous friends at the poker table, and continue to do so to this day.
One of the many friends I have met is named George. He is a young guy, a little older than me, and lives in Atlantic City now. He started playing around the Vegas Nights a couple years after I did and now plays for a living. He was a fast learner and I like to think that I helped him learn to beat the games, as I had a little more experience than he did. He and I used to hit all the house games around Akron and Cleveland together before he moved to Atlantic City back in the days when playing $10/20 was a thrill. I was working at Sam's Club back then (and going to school) and usually playing $3/6 or $5/10 and had been beating the games at that level for a year or two. I never really had saved up enough money that I felt comfortable taking a shot at the bigger games (I like to buy toys quite a bit) so when I wanted to play higher limits I would sell some of my action to people who knew I was a winner. The 3 people who always wanted to buy half of my action were Pat, Charlie, and George. I will talk about Charlie extensively in a later post.
Selling action is rather simple, someone agrees to pay you any agreed upon percentage (usually half) of whatever you lose if you lose and you agree to give them the same percentage of whatever you win if you win. Thus if the person who's action you buy is a winning player you are effectively making money. It is a VERY high risk form of investing but one that can pay off well. Just ask George.
I would sell half of my action to George (and sometimes another 1/4 to my friend John) and we would go to some of the wildest games around, usually $10/20 games. In the few weeks before he moved out of town the first time (he came back then moved back to Atlantic City) I probably won somewhere around 5,000. That is a very large sum for $10/20 in 2 or 3 weeks. So George had a little moving cash and I finally had a bankroll that would allow me to play a little higher limits. At least until I lost it, but more on that later. More important than the bank roll though was what I had learned. I learned that players at the $10/20 games, while willing to play for much more money than the $3/6 players I was used to, were not necessarily any better. I also learned much about the game talking to George on the car rides home. Talking over hands played with other competent players and getting as many viewpoints on how it should have been played is a great way to improve your game, and something I wish I had more opportunity to do these days.
So in a way poker is good for friendships and friends are good for your poker. Those days of running around North East Ohio with George were sort of my formative years of poker. They gave me the confidence I needed to play the bigger limits (or at least what I though were bigger limits back then) and a new friend to travel with. And a small financial boost, which never hurts.
Posted by themaroon at January 22, 2004 6:22 AM
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