Please Elaborate

Do you like surprises?

I don’t think this is a good question. I mean, who’s asking? If Publishers Clearing House is knocking at my door then yes, I would like a million surprises. If I’m speaking to my physician then I’m much more inclined to state that I would prefer that nothing too out of the ordinary occurs.

In short, I like good surprises. But who am I to say that surprises are good? At that, how can anybody say that any type of thing is necessarily good or bad? It might make life easier to use shortcuts like this, but I’m much more interested in establishing context than generalities.

I killed a lot of time playing Texas hold ’em online last semester. It all started one weekend when I discovered just how much professional poker is available on cable television. I could watch professional poker for hours. I find most poker players to be annoying, but a few of them to be extremely entertaining. It’s always interesting to see different approaches to a competition that is perhaps equal parts statistics and psychology.

A couple of my roommates got in on the craze as well. I don’t know that they appreciated the game as much as I did, but they seemed to at least be wasting as much time on it. One of my roommates would ask me questions that probably seemed reasonable to him, but that I didn’t believe I could provide a good answer for. Questions like, “Should I go all-in on aces?” By the time that I could ask him everything I would need to know to even consider that decision it would be well past his time limit for him to make it. Pocket aces? Off the flop? Turn? River? What’s your other card? Is it suited? How many players are in the hand? What kinds of hands have they been playing? Who paid the blinds? What has been bet this hand and at which junctures? What else is in the community? The bottom line is that there aren’t good hands in the abstract. There are certainly situations where you can be certain that you statistically have the best possible hand but that doesn’t happen the majority of the time. You shouldn’t look for good hands- you should wait for good opportunities. 

I know a lot of people that have “dream cars”. I don’t get that either. What car I want to drive is secondary to what life I want to live. Sure, I like the idea of owning a fast, expensive car, but I currently live in Minnesota. If I choose to live here the rest of my life then my “dream car” is simply going to be something dependable that I can actually drive in the winter. But what if I find myself living in Germany? I’d be remiss not to run with something that allowed me to take full advantage of the Autobahn.

Sometimes people get annoyed when I respond to hypotheticals by asking questions. It’s almost as if they’re not looking for a good answer. Or maybe they just think that any answer would be good… Who knows. I suppose it depends who’s asking.