LIFE IS A GAME OF POKER

Yes I play poker. Zynga poker. Texas holdem'. Been playing for a couple of months. The same way I used to play Civilization and Myst and Suduko. What's the attraction. Well there is the sense of achievement trying to build up how many chips you have. I've been up over a million and a half chips.....and then back down to 365. But I continue to go up and down. The top player at the moment is Oliver. He has 74.2 billion chips. Maybe he is good, maybe he is lucky or maybe he just needs to get a life. But I'm gaining on him. At the moment I have just over 400,000.

The other nice thing is that there are millions of people all over the world playing this game. At any one time there seems to be two and a half million players on line. But you get to play at a table with eight other players and while you are playing you can chat with the people you are playing with.....well texting. It is fascinating. When I first started most of the players were from Asia. But now its from everywhere. USA, Canada, UK, Africa, South America and all over Europe. Mostly the chat is in english but not always.

Just the other day I was chatting to Boryslav who was a young bloke working in a travel agency in Serbia. He had just started work and was online playing cards. I asked him if he was worried the boss would catch him. He replied that the boss was away sick that day.

Tonight I was chatting with a couple in Athens. It is interesting to compare the difference in time and weather. These are usually the opening questions before you move on to 'what do you do for a living?' I have talked to US exchange students doing volunteer work in Chile, school cleaners in the UK, photographers in France, kindergarten teachers in Western Australia and housewives and office workers everywhere.

I only play 'Stop n Go'. This is where you get a 1000 chips and play until you are eliminated. The last three eliminated win a percentage of the chips that everyone paid to get into that particular game. I'm not too bad when I concentrate and am patient. Yes, sometimes I have been chatting and lost a game. And usually I am not very patient (or I'd be challenging Oliver). Trouble is I think every hand is a possible winner if only I'm lucky.....but I'm not always lucky.

When I am patient I fold and watch the hand play out. Often I'll see that my cards could have won ....if only I'd stayed in. Of course this is a deadly trap because next time you are tempted ....and yes the cards don't fall. It certainly is a game of 'what ifs'. Which reminds me of a story I read somewhere.

There were these two people, Jim and Gloria, who used to be high school sweethearts. They both ended up marrying someone different. But they met accidently after not seeing each other for nearly 40 years. They decided to share a cup of coffee and they recalled old times. During the conversation Jim said to Gloria: "Do you ever wonder what life would be like if the two of us had got married".

He was surprised and a bit disappointed when she said "no".

He tried again "You mean you never ever just close your eyes and wonder: what would life be like now if I had married Jim. Where would I live, what would I be doing. Just hypothetically."

Again she replied "no".

He was a little crest-fallen.

"No" she said "See there is always the fire to consider".

"What fire?" he said

""The house fire" she replied "Shortly after we got married the house burnt down and when you tried to rescue me we were both caught in the fire and died. So see I was better off not marrying you."

"But there was no fire, you can't base everything on that" said Jim indignantly.

"Well" said Gloria "If we were only imagining us two getting married than we can also imagine the fire.

Poker is like this. If you can imagine every hand a winner then you have to keep sight of every hand also being a loser. Isn't life like this also. You can imagine all you like but when it comes down to it you have to play the cards you are dealt.