Not the Game for Me

7 October 2021

By Royal Flushes

CINDY: It is rare that we do this but today we are going to tackle the game we each hate. You have yours and I have mine. We take one each and see what we see.

ABBY: This isn’t hard for me at all.

CINDY: I know that! But I go first. I hate poker. I mean the real, casino poker-room poker. When I used to play…

ABBY: And you played all the time.

CINDY: All the time. I ultimately got fed up with some of the poker players. These players acted as if they were acting in a movie. The were caricatures as opposed to real people. Their acting was anti-academy award level.

Some were thoroughly obnoxious. They thought if they made fun of the other players those players would lose their cool and lose their money. I rarely saw that happen at the stakes I played at. The decent, non-acting players, would usually play a pretty tight game but the anti-academy-award folks just made the game stink, at least for me. Even their bluffing was overly dramatic.

One day I was eating at the café, waiting for you by the way, and I said to myself, “Cindy, if you don’t like the game why are you playing it? Some of those players disgust you. Why give them any more of your time? In my playing career I was ahead by about fifty dollars. Was playing really worth a win of fifty dollars over a few years? I wasn’t going to become a world champ or anything.”

ABBY: It was goodbye to casino poker!

CINDY: Goodbye and farewell. Now, it is your turn my dear sister.

ABBY: I love horses. I love everything about them. I used to own a horse, remember?

CINDY: Who could forget? You used to smell something like a horse.

ABBY: A very pleasing smell.

CINDY: If you say so.

ABBY: I say. Here it comes.

CINDY: Let’s have it.

ABBY: I hate horse racing. I really do. Let me make this really clear: I hate betting on horse racing. I love watching the horses run; they are so tremendously beautiful. The race horse looks almost like an ancient divinity. From Mount Olympus. But betting? No more. No, no more.

I used to go to the track and I always thought, “Well, I guess I have to select a horse to bet on.” Why did I have to do that?

At a race that I bet on, I always watched my horse in the race and basically ignored looking at the other horses because I was cheering for mine. Look at all the beauty I missed by just focusing on my one horse. I was not a winning horse bettor. I had no idea of how to handicap a race. Why bet then?

There was no point in betting. I’ll keep my betting to casino games.

CINDY: But please no casino poker!

ABBY: Not interested in that. I’d rather play blackjack or craps or roulette than to bet on horses. I’ll enjoy slots more than horse racing.

CINDY: But you still go to the track.

ABBY: And I enjoy watching these beautiful animals run.

CINDY: It is poker, then, and horse racing.

ABBY: Yes, ma’am.