NOTES FROM THE NERVOUS BREAKDOWN LANE

by John 
Vorhaus

POKER CONSCIOUSNESS

Myself I've been playing poker since I was eight years old. My family used to play a game called "up and down the river" around the dining room table some evenings after supper. I don't recall a thing about the game except that I regularly lost my entire stack of plastic chips with interlocking ridges to my older sister who I suspect to this day engaged in some sort of primordial card manipulation.

She'd point at the ceiling and yell, "Look!" And after I looked, she'd have four of a kind to beat my full house. I got payback on her a few years later by playing heads-up against her boyfriend till all hours when she'd rather they be off necking instead. (Personally, I never would have chosen poker over necking - not then, not now, not ever!) She tried to buy me off with movie money, but I was playing a game called revenge and would not be dealt out of the hand. 

In high school, our gang played a variation of seven-card stud in which, if memory serves, everything except fives was wild, and seven aces was a righteous lock. We used clay chips, perfectly smooth in their muted colors: red, blue and ivory. Some nights when I lie awake brooding about my last bad beat, I can still hear the dry white clack of those chips hitting the pot; I can still smell them on my fingers. 

Our college games were always well lubricated with heroic amounts of alcohol, usually mixed in a lethal concoction called Tequila Braindeath, the formula for which, thankfully, has been lost to the sands of time. Those were loud, rowdy nights of buddy bonding, blue humor and about three actual hands of poker per hour. The game lasted until dawn or a police warning, whichever occurred first. 

Myself I've been playing poker all my life, but I didn't acquire poker consciousness until late last year.

It happened in Las Vegas, when I peeled myself away from two-dollar blackjack and finally found the guts to sit down at a scary felt-topped table and play real casino poker against real live opponents. They turned out to be regular joes, friendly, warm and helpful. 

They took all my money, of course. 

But in my second session I found my feet and broke even. In my third session I actually came away with a few more beans than I brought. I also came away with the awareness that my adversaries were no different from me. They were sharper, sure, bolder, quicker, sneakier, flashier, but essentially the same stuff: Flesh and blood and billfold. I knew I could run with these dogs. Poker consciousness had arrived. 

Poker consciousness is that certain something which separates a card player from a guy who just plays cards. (It also frequently separates the latter from his money, but that's a different story.) It's the knack for scanning a table and identifying the fish just by the way they throw their money in the pot. It's not spotting tells so much as knowing that such a thing as tells even exists. Poker consciousness is knowing, when you get beat, why you get beat. Small solace, that, but there it is. 

You get poker consciousness largely through reading: reading books; reading cards; reading people; reading the look on your spouse's face when you try to convince him or her that poker is a game of skill, honestly! When poker consciousness arrives, you lose forever your innocent faith in inside straights and the naïve belief that luck has anything to do with the game. On the other hand, poker consciousness bestows great gains in term of understanding, insight and (one hopes) cash. Best of all, poker consciousness is forever. It's like falling off a bike... once you learn, you never forget how.

Do you have poker consciousness? Probably. The mere fact that you're avid enough to read this magazine sets you apart from the unwashed masses who think a rock is something you throw into a pond to make it go sploosh. Here in this column we'll explore the subject in some depth: What is poker consciousness? Where do you find it? How do you get more? Till next time, then, play tough, stay sane and I'll see you in the nervous breakdown lane.