While driving to work this morning my mind somehow shifted from the primordial question “What is life about?” to the poker game I have scheduled for tonight and suddenly some dots connected in an interesting way:

The Pre-Flop:

When you first start to play (at birth) you are dealt some cards, these cards represent your parents, your environment, your financial situation, your health and everything else that you have no control over. You are new to the game, you don’t really know what to do with these cards, how to play them, you try to understand them, to weigh them. You play them and lose some, you play them and win some…

There are some different rules in this specific game, what you are dealt at pre-flop does not improve until you learn how to win with what you have got! Your pocket cards improve every time you win and they never deteriorate unless you don’t understand your mistakes when you lose. Because losing is some times more valuable then winning as the amount of information you can gather from such a hand is priceless.  So the luck factor for this stage of the game is only valid when your very first hand is dealt.

Maybe you are lucky, maybe you are not. The beauty and agony of the pre-flop is that at the early stages of the game there is not really much you can do but to try and understand the environment, the other players, the rules and the game. Some will do so by check/folding for a while, some will bet to test the table and some will go all in no matter what…

Have you ever watched a toddler go all in pre-flop? It is such an inspiring sight! Equally scary too…

There are times when the blinds are raised and your bankroll is short, there are times when you are the chip leader and wanna play it slow. There are times when you are steaming and times when you try to bluff but bluffing at this stage almost never works, yes, you might steal the blinds I guess; that’s not my kind of play.

There are also some cheaters but the pit boss is all mighty, he eventually catches everybody and getting caught ain’t pretty!

The more you play, the more you get a hang of it. It is when you really understand that life is really won or lost at pre-flop that you have mastered the game.
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