Even as a big-eared little doofus, I knew there was something wrong with that phrase. “Practice makes perfect!” Sister Mary Malcolm shouted when she cracked my hand with a ruler if one of my fingers hit a white key instead of a black one. I will say. Her aim was perfect. She always hit
What is tightness? And where did it come from? To find the answers, we have to travel back in time, to the birth of poker. I wasn’t actually there, but I can imagine how it happened… Fred and Barney were playing cards for the very first time. “Let’s make up a game,” Fred said. “I’ll
Dear reader: Alfonzo and Charlie are characters in my book, Painless Poker. This story is not from the book. It comes after. Alfonzo Calibri threw an aggressive question at Charlie. “What, precisely, is a bad beat?” Charlie replied in his usual non-combative tone. “A bad beat is when you lose with a hand that
Every year, on the Fourth of July, your friends and neighbors gather in your well-provisioned back yard to enjoy a warm afternoon of laughter and food. Unless, of course, the sky turns into water and falls, in which case your 40 guests hustle into the house and gaze through your windows at the downpour. Which
