Blog Number 179

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Well for the first time this week it was just the four of us around the dinner table.  Once dinner and baths were finished we sat down to play that all time family fun game - "Texas Hold 'Em."  You see there was a co-worker in the building this week who is based out of Houston.  She evidently was at some conference put on by our company and she made away with the leftover gifts and she was passing them out while she was at the office.  She stopped by my cubicle while I was on the phone and dropped off a small pouch that contained a deck of cards, lots of poker chips and a small instruction booklet.  Once the kids saw what I had, they demanded that I teach them.  The 5 year old really just wanted to play with the chips but my son thought that he wanted to give poker a try.  I walked him through what a "pair" means and a "straight" as well as the other hands and their relative strength.  He was just ready to play, period and was not interested any any more instructions from me.

We played the first game by playing in teams (the daughter and I vs. the son and the wife).  I tried to explain estimating the odds that your hand is better, tried to explain the finer points of bluffing (or pretending as I had to call it so he would understand) and tried to explain placing the proper wager.  In the end the daughter and I had all the chips.  We then played with the son and wife having their own chips and cards.  The wife was out very quickly (she is a terrible bluffer) but the son hung in there for quite a few more hands.  I got lucky on the turn card during the last hand and he got his first lesson in lady luck.  The daughter was just happy she had more poker chips to stack.  Given the amount of luck involved compared to chess, I think the son will stick to chess and the Texas Hold 'Em pouch has seen it's last use during family game time.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon