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This is the story of a player we’ll call “the dreamer.” He tells me he’s been playing some form of poker for many years, but since last summer he’s focused entirely on getting better at Texas Hold ‘Em.

As we sat side by side in a recent home game, betting a dollar or two each time, I remarked that I had just finished reading a classic of poker literature, The Biggest Game in Town by A. Alvarez.1 This excellent portrait of high stakes Las Vegas poker is the story of one man’s visit to the World Series of Poker at Binion’s in 1981.

The dreamer announced, “I hit town in 1981,” meaning that he arrived in Sin City at that time as a 30-year-old, single vagabond, ready to work a little and play a lot. He worked at various jobs, such as delivering pizza, during the late afternoon and early evening, but spent a lot of time in the casinos, trying his hand at a game he didn’t recognize.

“They were playing Hold “Em, and I said to myself, ‘What the hell is this?’ I didn’t know the game. Back home we always played five card or seven-card stud, maybe draw. I had to watch for a while to get the basics. But the more I played, the more I understood and liked the game.”

The years flew by for the dreamer, 25 years to be exact. He worked a few odd jobs, played some cards, met some women, lost his parents and eventually returned home. He now lives in the family house, comfortable with the resources his folks left him. In 2006, he sits down at a small stakes game, dressed in black, with flashy rings on each finger and a huge wad of bills wrapped in rubber bands in his pocket.

To his credit, the dreamer doesn’t often dip into this stack. He can buy $20 or $40 worth of chips and play a kitchen-table game for a few hours, then leave with about $20 of someone else’s money. And, during the time that he is patiently winning selected hands, he is visiting, joking and being his mildly rude self.

For those of us who play poker with him, and see him in his natural setting, it doesn’t seem that he wants to be anywhere but here. So why do I call him a dreamer? Are we calling him this because it’s the opposite of what he really is, as we jokingly call the slowest runner “speedy?”

At first I thought he was completely satisfied with his place in life and had no need to dream. He does, after all, own a new truck, as well as a Corvette and acres of farmland. He has no major debts and isn’t sad about not having a wife or steady girlfriend. That I know. He can do just about anything he wants, when he wants.

So, why the nickname?

I believe that, behind the joking, devil-may-care exterior, beneath the all-black clothes and glitz of diamond rings, there is still some part of the young man who landed in the desert in 1981 with thoughts of wine, women and winning at poker. Oh, I’m sure our dreamer is closer than most of us to knowing exactly who he is. He probably doesn’t struggle much with what the late, great Puggy Pearson called “mistaken identity.”

But do we ever really leave those youthful dreams behind. If we are playing the same games at 56 that we played at 16 or 26, aren’t we still dreaming, at least a bit?

I’m not saying it’s wrong to hold on to our dreams. In this mixed up, violent world, this may be one of the few signs of sanity. But we have to be sure that these visions, these dreams of winning a big tournament, are positive motivations. As the legend writes in Poker Wisdom of a Champion, you have to leave your personal woes at home. “When a man’s got something heavy on his mind besides poker, he’s got no business playing.2
Doyle Brunson was writing about things like real financial problems and fights with the wife. But sometimes trying to live our youth again, or continuing to live our youth long after it’s gone – these can be just as heavy as other problems we might bring to the felt.

I think one of the most important factors in poker playing success is motivation, which may be part of what Pearson called “mistaken identity.” I don’t really know if my poker pal is a dreamer. Maybe I’m the one who is mistaken. We might all be better off if we knew more about that.

1A. Alvarez, The Biggest Game in Town, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1983.
2Doyle Brunson, Poker Wisdom of a Champion, Cardoza Publishing   2003.