Poker Face

Some of my favorite memories are of my family and I gathered around my grandpa’s big
kitchen table playing my favorite card game, poker. Sometimes I can still hear the faint chuckles
that everyone made when they had a good hand but didn’t want to show it. My grandpa was
especially good at tricking my sister and I, granted we were only in elementary school.
I come from a large, loud, Italian family. Poker, although is a stereotype given to Italian
families or “East coast” families, is something I grew up around my whole life. I can’t remember
the first time my grandpa taught me the strategies and rules to all the different games in poker,
but I think that is because I was so young at the time. Growing up with my grandpa was a life
full of hard questions and loads of love. He truly did love me and my sister to pieces, we were
the youngest of his grandchildren, but he definitely knew how to grill us. He was a teacher and a
construction worker all his life, so he knew hard work and he wanted us to know it just as well. I
give him all the credit for how well I have done in school and how dedicated I am in my studies.
He taught me that hard work in school was the most important quality to have, of course after
having a good poker face.
There are so many things, looking back now, that poker stands for in my life. It stands for
something I thoroughly enjoy, it stands for something I struggled with at first, it stands as
something to remind me of my grandpa. Holding a hand of three aces and two kings taught me
how to control my excitement, it taught me to be humble when I did win the massive pot of chips
and maybe a couple of real dollars, it taught me that good things come when you have a good
strategy and put the work in. Having a hand of two threes, one ten, one four, and one king, also
known as absolutely nothing, taught me to think critically, it taught me to be patient because the
next hand could be a royal flush, it taught me to be a good loser, because you always lose in
some way at some point. Blackjack taught me that as much as you hope for a card to flip up, just
hoping isn’t good enough. Just like in life, you can hope and hope for something, but until you
put the work in, hope is all you have. Follow the queen, a game like Texas hold ‘em, where when
a queen pops up the next card is a wild, taught me things can change so fast, because if another
queen pops up the wild card changes. It taught me to use the resources I have, but don’t count on
anything staying the same, always have a plan B.
 Poker is something I want to teach my kids at a young age. There are life lessons that can
be taught, that I can never thank my grandpa for enough for exposing me to such an exciting
game. Poker teaches you strategy, how to take calculated risks, and what you should go all in on
in life. It may have taken me multiple lost dollars in hands my grandpa totally crushed me in, but
the knowledge I have learned from poker is something that is absolutely priceless, and something
I will teach my kids so they can learn as well, from the lessons, not gambling of course. It’s
crazy to think that if I never learned poker, would I really be the same person I am today?