The End Of The Road

Well, we made it. There were a few times when I thought of throwing the towel in or jumping off the cart for sure but that would have been the easy route innit? Certainly not the spirit of the determined poker player who wants to keep the fire burning... and I'm very glad I've not let myself down too. The results may not have been great but, hey, that's all part of the development. As my tagline states, the hope was to bring something different to the table and I've always tried to achieve just that. I also hope to have shown, to all types of people, not only what a year is like for the amateur poker player but the sort of agonies and ecstasies that are experienced along the way - and how long they can last for. It can be intense at times (if you let it) and you really do sometimes forget that it's only just a game where the money is pretty negligible in the wider scheme of things. 

To any sceptical non-poker players out there I hope to have shown that by studying the game and by attempting to become at least half-decent - you really DON'T end up being a degenerate gambler who loses his life-savings as some scaremongers might have you believe. To any beginners out there, I hope to have shown that poker is nothing to do with short-term results but everything to do with the long-term. You get the hard knocks early on but if you perservere, it's the long haul and how you approach it that really defines you as a player.

To all those amateur players out there - from long-term losers, to break-even players right up to the big winners - I hope you've been entertained and informed. I know I go on, I really do, but if you've looked at the game from a different angle as a result of reading the odd post then I guess I've done my job. For the crushers and the pros, the material may not have given insight into strategy but it may have given you an insight into how a lot of us humble amateurs think about the game. (Just remember though, we do evolve and I, for one, expect to be a more developed and complete player when I get to sit at your table.)

Finally, I'd like to thank my followers (including those who have kept themselves hidden) for keeping me company throughout this here journey of mine but also everyone who has visited my blog and contributed to my total pageviews count. Special mention has to go to some of the regulars at PKR like Rhymenoceros and WongaMan who joined me on this journey right at the very beginning and whose mere presence alone has given me the encouragement to crack on with the blog in those trickier early days.  

Although the blog ends, my journey as a poker player has reached a new chapter. I know I'll be tempted to post again at this url address but I really will have to resist. It has to be about breaking free, starting a clean sheet and flying away now. If I do get the urge to blog again, it will have to be as another fresh start somewhere else.

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Wittgenstein once said that whatever is worth talking about is always left unsaid. (Maybe that's why poker - a game where you hardly ever have to speak - is such a great game.) So I am going to be a bit cheesy and have my parting piece be a bit of music which, for me, has such a strong and emotive connection with the great game that it's the only appropriate thing to end with.

It's a piece that's included as part of the soundtrack for Sergio Leone's masterpiece "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly"; the best western film ever brought to the big screen. It occurs in the concluding moments of the film when the character Tuco ("the ugly") has, like myself, come to the end of the road. He has stumbled upon a graveyard with thousands of gravestones. One of them has the buried treasure beneath it but he doesn't know which one. In his greed, desire and passion to find the elusive gravestone, he runs around frantically trying to search for it while this piece of music plays in the background.

To a large degree, poker is a bit like Tuco desperately searching for the treasure - we're all like him really, full of hope and desperately searching for something that we often feel like we're never going to find and which always seems so tantalizingly close. There is definitely an element of greed to it (whether we like to admit it or not) and we all think we are the ones who deserve to find the rewards and to possess it for ourselves more than others. It can only be the beauty and power that is:

Ecstacy of Gold