Last night at work, this customer came in. He comes in fairly often. He’s probably my age or a little older. I’ve noticed before that he drives a Porsche, and that he’ll come in even when we’re charging our highest rates, rack up huge bills, and never seem phased by them.<\/p>\n
I always wondered what was up. He seemed like a nice guy, so I figured he wasn’t a drug dealer or hit man. But he seemed too young to have made millions. Maybe he was just from a rich family?<\/p>\n
Last night he brought his laptop with him. And after a while we got to talking. He was playing online poker. (I should note that there is definitely not WiFi in our center. He has a cellular modem.) That’s where the Porsche came from. And he and his friends suggested that the Porsche was just a fraction of what he’s made.<\/p>\n
Of course, I thought online poker had been outlawed. I looked into it a bit online last night out of curiosity, and it seems that, even after Bush signed the bill, it still exists in a gray area. (But many people are trying to pass bills allowing it. And from all over the political spectrum: a Republican from Florida, a Republican from one of the Dakotas, and a Democrat from Massachusetts have each introduced bills to permit it.)<\/p>\n
I’m now intrigued. I’ve wanted to learn poker for a long time, just because a lot of people play it and seem to enjoy it. And while I know I’ll probably never get a Porsche out of it (I’d get either a BMW or Lexus first anyway), it’s sort of like playing the lottery: I know I probably<\/em> won’t win a dime, but that remote possibility that I’ll come out ahead is thrilling and makes it worth playing once a month or so. It does seem to be a game with a high risk of addiction, but if you’re careful to just play for fun, I think it could be, well, fun. And if it ends up paying out, even better.<\/p>\n Of course, first I have to learn how to play poker. The good news is that, in addition to lots of tutorials online, a lot of poker sites have free, no-money versions specifically to let people practice.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last night at work, this customer came in. He comes in fairly often. He’s probably my age or a little older. I’ve noticed before that he drives a Porsche, and that he’ll come in even when we’re charging our highest … Continue reading