There are those unique moments when you wake up and a song is already playing in your head. I thought I'd share one with my faithfuls today and hope they can sing along to..."You gotta know when to hold em' , know when to fold em', know when to walk away, know when to run....." It is a song I felt tackled gambling in its entirety, not anymore though, otherwise my article would be pointless.
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling. This is because I have come to the realization that almost everything in life is a gamble.....heck! Even life itself is a gamble.
I have discovered that in every business, bet or game of chance, there is always a fool and a thief.
The fool is ironically characterized by wise intuitions that gambling is but buying hope on credit. Life is about hope and without it, we might as well be sitting on a rocking chair in our youth waiting to die. For a hundred shillings you pick on the floor is more enthralling than the thousand you have had to toil for. In his justification, why not gamble whereas he/she might be walking around lucky everyday and never know it.
Some of these stiff necked fools are actually intrinsically analytical and have learned the art of preparation. As Kenny Rodgers wisely put it, "....made a life outta readin' peoples' faces, knowing what their cards read by the way they held their eyes." The thing is, until you learn how your adversaries think as well as when and how they are vulnerable are you really better equiped to beat them.
The problem with this style of gambling is that luck never gives, it only lends and as sure as the sun rises and sets so too is your luck poised to run out. Gambling is a matter of probabilities, which is a word which even the dictionary is not sure of its meaning (pun intended).
To the fool, gambling lies in the bet.....the game itself where until one wins or looses, he/she is momentarily trapped in a thrilling state of expectation. Gambling to them is like a prostitute who screws you out of your moneůy and sends you home with an idiotic smile on your face. In my opinion, they do not gamble to win, they gamble so that they can gamble the next day. The harsh reality is that the fool knows not the difference between having fun and being smart.
The thief, however is like a shrewd businessman. The con-artist is a confident person who believes so much in his abilities that it intimidates your average Joe at the table. The "con (fidence) -man" is that who unusually wins when all the odds are stacked against him/her. Oddly, he who has the least expectations (not to be confused with confidence) wins all the time while the one blinded by hope and sentiments loses. Coincidence, I think not.
It is said that a great liar is a better magician. How can you expect to gamble and win whereas you have no edge over your competitors? Until you discover how to cheat or manipulate others will you also learn to manipulate your own luck. Personally, I am inherently unlucky and jinxed but my sophisticated art of deception has managed to contort some lucky charm and voila!
By now, you have probably branded me a chronic gambler, but it is never a gamble if you never lose, is it?
Forget the analysis of the game, the magnitude of the bet or even the size of the odds. To consistently prevail, you must learn how not to fail. You must find a way around it and cheat without being discovered. And if the bet has no way around it, you are better off leaving the table for the loser who brings with him his lucky stars. You cannot expect odds to be unlucky and whoever tells you otherwise is less of a fool than you are if you are so gullible as to believe it.
For even the Bible's most philosophical book of Ecclesiastes in Chapter 9 verse 11 recognizes the propounding that, "I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food cometh to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favour to the learned; but time and chance happeneth to them all." C'est la vie.
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