VIDEO POKER

How Does It Make You Feel?

At this point, all of a sudden with no warning at all, the machine turns ice cold. You get an occasional high pair or two, but nothing higher. In fifteen minutes all of the credits have disappeared into Never-Never-Land. Sigh. Welcome to Real World 101.

Anyone who has played much video poker has had this exact situation happen all too often. This is no fun at all. Every person has a slightly different way of dealing with it. Ask yourself which of the following is closer to the way you feel at these times:

a) This is a disaster. If you had just left ten minutes ago, life would be a lot better. You're an idiot for not being able to see this happening and quitting before it got this bad.

b) This is not a big deal. It happens. All you can do is to choose a good game, play each hand perfectly, and take what you get. Streaks go both ways.

My feelings are pretty well described by b) above. I would never presume to tell you how you must feel in a particular situation, but I suggest that if a) describes the way you react to this all-too-familiar situation, then perhaps you need to consider doing something else with your life rather than gambling at video poker.

An American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, composed what is known as the Serenity Prayer: "God, grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." The current situation involves "serenity" and "wisdom."

Insofar as helping you gain "wisdom," I can tell you that this situation happens to everybody. I can tell you that if you watch a computer play every hand perfectly, every so often it has streaks exactly like what I described here. Whether you are playing every hand correctly or every hand poorly may well affect HOW OFTEN you have such streaks, but not the fact that you will have them. I can assure you that NOBODY can accurately predict the next 200 hands. There are other streaks that start out the same as the one described above, but when you get down to 20 credits, everything turns around again and you get several good hands in a row. Maybe even a royal flush. And there is no way to tell whether this is the time that the streak will turn around or this is the time it won't until you actually go ahead and play the hands.

I don't know how to help you obtain "serenity." But I do believe it to be important. For many readers of this column, the hours you spend playing video poker represent a major part of what you do in life. Thinking that what you do is a "disaster" is not a healthy way to lead your life. This is a rather elementary concept. Turning around the way you feel is something quite a bit less elementary.