The home game ended this morning right around 4:00am. I made it to bed in time to credibly tell myself that I really wasn’t seeing a faint light in the East. Cards had gone in the air pretty close to 7:00pm, which, as somebody pointed out toward the end of the “evening,” meant that many of us had been playing poker for nine hours straight.
Occasionally, our significant others will ask, “How is it that you can sit there and play a card game for that long?” I have actually given that some thought because, well, I wonder the same thing myself. What is it that allows us to continue doing essentially the same action over and over for longer than a normal workday? Without coffee or lunch breaks.
Interestingly, I have another hobby that has many features similar to playing poker – I’m a bluegrass musician. Amateur musicians of every stripe are famous for gatherings at which they’ll play all night. Bluegrass may be a poster child for this behavior; bluegrass festivals are (in)famous for informal “jams” that begin in the late afternoon and then continue well into the wee hours.
A banjo-playing friend of mine says, “If you hear birds chirping when you crawl into your tent, you know you’re screwed.” And I have certainly been in my share of jams that ended only because the pickers could no longer feel their fingers in the pre-dawn cold. The jams start in the early afternoon only because that’s when the musicians crawl out of their tents.
Comparing these two pursuits and noticing the similarities, I think the answer is found both in the activities themselves and what you hear when you’re away from them.
Consider the poker game: every new hand offers the potential for drama, excitement, and a big shift in the evening’s fortunes. And at the bluegrass jam, every time a new song starts up, it may be the one that truly puts the evening over the top. When everything clicks, the vocals align perfectly, the solos sparkle, and the rhythm section keeps the whole thing going like a diesel locomotive. Everybody involved – players and listeners – know they’re in the presence of magic.
But the recipe for the excitement of poker and the magic of music is simple: do it again. Move the button, put up the blinds, deal the cards. Settle on a tune, adjust the capos, and somebody kick it off. If we don’t deal the next hand or don’t pick the next tune, we won’t know if that was the one we’ll talk about for weeks. So, we do it again and the hours evaporate.
Here’s the other side of the coin. Before the game starts and during the week between games, I chat with my fellow poker players. Obviously, they suffer the same concerns and ills that all mortals bear. One buddy tells me about his sister dealing with depression. One of our regulars is a doctor and must work with patients (and their families) who are facing life-threatening illnesses.
The poker game and the bluegrass jam offer the perfect escapes from those harsh realities. They capture our minds and leave no room for the worries and fears that plague our daily existence. Recently at a bluegrass jam in a local pub, we played a version of “Old Dangerfield” that left the crowd screaming and the musicians breathless. “That’s enough to make me forget that I’m unemployed,” said a mandolin player. Just so.
When the last song is played and the final river card is dealt, the spell is broken. We return to our regular existence, whatever it is. I am inexcusably fortunate that my “regular existence” is a fine and wonderful place and I wish that everybody were as lucky as I am. But I am just as easily seduced by the mantras of “Blinds up” or “What tune you got?” In that cocoon, I don’t know what will happen next – just how to find out.
Then it’s almost dawn and the birds are, indeed, chirping.
Lee Jones has been in the poker business since the late 1980s and an executive in the online poker world since 2003. He is also the author of “Winning Low Limit Hold’em,” which is still in print over 15 years after its initial publication.