Gray-haired poker TRs: Living the WSOP dream

First off, rppoker I just want to say thank you for such a great and entertaining read. I'm one of many many lurkers on here who I know enjoyed the detailed recounting of your WSOP journey.

I finally just caught up to your whole trip report and post-mortem and glad to see you found success (and a bag!) in 2025.

I love that you're already thinking to 2026 -- and ways to better prepare for it. The circuit events are a great idea. Since you've been very open to unsolicited feedback, here's a couple of thoughts from me after getting through all of your 2025 efforts:

-- Consider playing some online. I know you've resisted this in the past. But it's the best way to get volume in, be able to really review your play, and you'll find some of the same players and kinds of play in the $11 tournaments as you will in the $500 WSOP events. You mention you have time from 10pm-2am each night. On two US-facing sweepstakes sites, Global Poker and Club WPT Gold, there are multiple turbos you could jump into from start to finish in that timeframe. Even if you did it just one day per week I think it'd be a huge help to get comfortable in those spots where you have 10bbs and what is your jamming range from LJ? Also the small field late-night turbos give you plenty of ICM practice for both the money bubble and final few tables.

-- Don't overthink having to "learn" playing 6-max. It's the same game — you just are always in late position. On a 6-max table when you're UTG it's the exact same thing as when you're in LJ on a 9-max table. As a result, you play more hands, yes, because you're never in those UTG positions where you have to be tightest. But you don't need a different strategy by itself when the table is 5- or 6-handed: As long as you know the HJ is opening offsuit Ts and suited 7s, you can play optimally UTG at a five-handed table, too.

-- I think you've hit the nail on the head on where you can focus your study to improve, particularly with big blind defense and being stickier. I think it's less about playing the big blind as it is defending against aggression after the flop. On pokercoaching, Matt Affleck has some really great videos on how to think about defending against cbets. One thing I noted in your hand histories was you often didn't note the size of the bets being made against you. This may have been just not taking the note after-the-fact, but there were several spots where you should have continued on the flop vs a small bet, and folding becomes more OK when it's bigger (one hand I remember was folding vs a cbet with two overs and a gutshot). The Affleck videos will be super helpful in getting better at thinking about where you are in your range and using that information on whether to bluff-catch/call vs barrels.

-- On bluffing, yes I'm sure you can be more aggressive, and I'm sure you will get a ton of credit for it with your image. But ... learning to play your value well is going to generate more ev than finding the right spots to bluff jam the river. In a couple hands, you flopped monsters but checked flop when you probably should have range bet -- I think you were playing your hand instead of your range. The deception can be good, but so is building a pot when you have super strong holdings.

Ok, that's enough nonsense from a fellow rec (but I hope it's helpful!). Please keep on posting your poker journey here -- you have a lot of fans following along, I promise.

Sorry if my flippant remark about seniors events offended. Wasn't my intent.

Without going back to see what I wrote, I think the point I was making was that if Hellmuth felt his age was a problem in the Main Event, then he should just play in Seniors Events. A more politically correct remark would have been if the Main Event was too taxing for Hellmuth then he should just stick to three day events instead.

As written, I was trying to be clever. Perhaps too clever. Although I have not played in one, seniors events are bracelet events and just like any other bracelet cash/win it is to be celebrated.

Hi pucks, thanks for the feedback. Yes, I am always receptive to unsolicited feedback.

As for playing online, online poker is illegal in my state. Are you saying I am able to play on Global Poker and Club WPT Gold?

My other concern is the whole online bot issue. Am I going to get crushed by bots, or is this concern overblown?

Oh, I see now. It's fake chips. I'll give it a shot, but my experience in the past is that play on fake chip sites saw me play against horrific players that you really can't learn anything useful from going up against them.

I live in IL too and have been playing on these sites this year, would highly recommend if you want to try honing your skills. While they do have fake chip games, there is real money as well. In the case of Global, you buy gold coins and are given "free" sweeps coins of equivalent value to your purchase, which can be redeemed for cash "prizes". It's called the sweepstakes model which is how they've been able to operate. Some states have either banned or have pending legislation to ban these types of sites, but it doesn't seem to be on the radar here yet. If such a thing occurs there is plenty of notice ahead of time to move all money off. Given the state's poor finances I'm a little surprised we haven't joined the others that have it actually regulated.

WPT Gold is easily the "softer" of the two but people play like monkeys there at the lowest stakes. Play is more conventional on Global (but still plenty of weak players) so I'd recommend there as a good starting point. You can deposit with a bank account (or even Google pay on WPT) and it is all seems to be pretty safe. Bots are of little to no concern from what I've seen compared to other offshore sites. Global even has chat still enabled and people talk frequently.

I joined Global in 2020 when the pandemic started and I hadn't played online since Black Friday. The sweeps coins model is under fire in some states and it may go away at some point, but for now these are the best real money sites for you. They're only Us/Canada, no huds and no need to use bitcoin to get money on there.

The way it works legally is you buy way $100 worth of gold coins, which are play money. But you get -- free of course -- a bonus of 100 sweeps coins, which it just so happens are worth exactly 1SC=$1.

I've cashed out straight to my bank account a half-dozen times with no issues.

The games you can reg at 10-11ET are a lot of turbos and small fields for you to get reps.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My apologies rppoker for not giving you a better primer on Global Poker's set up, though you mostly figured it out (and wrote an impressive amount about a few online tournaments!). Also impressive you got a 2nd in your first real-money bullet on there!

Ok, so, playing on gold coin is pointless, as you discovered.

Sweeps coins are playing for real money, even if it's a funny currency. I'll be honest I haven't played more than maybe 1-2 $1 tournaments on there, but if you move up to $5.50 or $11 tournaments you'll see play that more closely resembles what you'll see at low-buy in WSOP and circuit stops. There's open limping but also plenty of 3betting, rejamming etc.

The turbo/bounties are part of online schedules, so you won't be able to avoid them completely, but there are some straight "deep" and regular tournaments, too. Would still recommend the turbos as they'll help you get into short-stack spots (and the point of playing online is not to maximize ROI but improve your game).

One other note on why playing online is helpful for studying: There's a way to save hands when you're in a tricky spot or you feel like you don't know what to do. If you click and then copy this link, you can replay the hand to review, share with others, etc.

Thanks for the added info, pucks.

Yes, I will avoid gold coin play.

Yes, the 1 sweep coin tournaments seem very soft. I just finished another 80+ player tournament of this sort, and final tabled again before my full house lost to a better full house. I have now turned the free 5.0 sweep coins they gave me for joining the site into 18.86 sweep coins.

I think I will play the 1 sweep coin tournaments for a little bit longer to build the sweep coin bankroll before I venture into the 5 sweep coin tournaments. I like the idea of trying to do this with Global Poker's money, which is why I will stick with 1 sweep coin tournaments for a little bit. Yes, this is nitty, but I like the idea of trying to build a bankroll without putting any of my money in.

What not to do playing online poker

You know the saying, "It's like riding a bike" in the context of doing something you haven't done in a long while?

Well, today I almost screwed that up. Today I almost fell off the bike. Today I almost rode my metaphorical bike off a cliff because I wasn't paying attention.

As you know if you've been reading along, at pucks32's suggestion, I have very recently started playing sweep coin NLHE on the Global Poker site with an eye on putting in reps to prepare for WSOP 2026. This intro to Global Poker marks the first time I have played online since Black Friday shut things down a long, long time ago.

Today I was playing in a 700+ person tournament. The top 50 got paid, and there were 60 players remaining when I danced with catastrophe. Not poker punt catastrophe. Technology catastrophe. It was at this moment that I realized I did not have my laptop plugged in. Worse yet, I looked at the top of my screen and saw that I was almost out of charge.

rppoker's return to online poker, it's like riding a bike. Unless you are a ninny like rppoker.

I bolted off the couch, took my laptop with me, continued playing poker on the move, raced to where my charging cord was, ran back to the couch, plugged in the charger and attached it to my laptop.

Phew! Crisis narrowly averted. On the plus side, this mad dash constituted the full extent of my exercise for the day.

I survived my stupidity. I survived the bubble. Getting low on chips I busted going all in with J-K off when I was first to act, I got called by two players, somehow I was ahead, but I got outflopped and lost. I finished in 38th place. Lesson learned. My OMC battle with technology remains an ongoing challenge.

Global Poker: Low stakes sweep coin early impressions

When I check the menu of available sweep coin tourneys during the times that work for me, what I see are ... turbo ... turbo ... turbo ... turbo ... oh wait, something different, hyper turbo.

This is good practice for playing a short stack, which is valuable to my learning curve. But it is not ideal for preparing for the WSOP's much deeper tournaments in terms of early and middle Day 1 stages.

When I check a level higher on Global Poker, it still seems to be slanted heavily toward turbos.

If I go one level higher than that on Global Poker, it seems like there are deeper structures, although I can't say for sure without actually playing one. The potential problem I have at this level is the entry fees seem to run 22 and 33 and 55 sweep coins to enter. It's a weird dynamic. I have no problem ponying up $500, $800, $1,500 entry fees for WSOP events, but that is because I do so over a very limited period of time. This means I can control my bankroll management so that worse case scenario I can only lose the preset amount I budget. But if I were to start playing $22 and $33 tournaments with the idea of seeking nightly volume to improve my play, then there is the potential to lose much more than I care to over the course of a year. Now, you may be thinking, "rppoker, that doesn't sound very confident for someone who ventures into the WSOP showing no fear."

That is a fair point. But the issue isn't confidence. If I were to play a 22 or 33 sweep coin tourney on Global Poker, I would not be the least bit intimidated. Intimidation is not the issue. Bank roll management is the issue. When I go to the WSOP I am not afraid, and I know I will not exceed my stop loss number. Not a problem. What would be stupid of me would be to go on the circuit year round. That would be terrible bankroll management in which I would be opening myself up to the very real possibility/probability that I would lose more money than is wise. That would be me playing way too high stakes for my skill set. I think the same might occur if I start playing multiple 22 and 33 sweep coin tourneys a night, 5-6 nights a week. That would likely mean I was playing too high. That would mean I have lost sight of proper bankroll management.

For now I will slowly, as in SLOWLY, work my way up in stakes, moving to higher stakes only once the lower stakes have become too easy to win against. It remains to be seen whether I get to high enough stakes on Global Poker to find the deeper structures I want.

Now, I have one other topic to write about from my early foray into Global Poker. Bad beats. I know, I know, you don't want to hear bad beat stories. But the bad beat isn't what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is my reaction to a bad beat. During my first WSOP in 2019 I was emotionally decimated by the massive bad beats I incurred. When I played in the last two WSOPs (2024 and especially 2025), I was unfazed by the times I got unlucky. I handled negative variance like a champ.

Tonight was a different story. Despite the fact that I have not been getting dealt much in the way of premium hands, I have been a cashing machine thus far playing on Global Poker. Tonight I got premiums, and I got pulverized. In my first tourney of the night, I had chipped up very nicely despite no premiums, the bubble was getting fairly close, and then when I was in the big blind I got dealt A-A. Several players limped. I put in a healthy raise, and I found one customer who had A-Q. The board run out was clean, and by the river I had my opponent all-in and drawing dead, giving me a bounty. The very next time I was in the big blind I was dealt A-A yet again. I thought this might be a glitch in The Matrix. The bubble was getting pretty close. It folded to the spewiest player at the table who had heaps of chips from frequently getting it in bad and then getting smacked by the deck. He bet. It folded to me. I raised 3x. He massively overbet and put me all in. Obviously, I snap-called. Captain Spewy turned over K-8 off suit. What the heck was he thinking? I guess he was thinking, "The deck will save me again." Which, alas, it did. The flop was K-K-2. You know the rest of the story. I was out of the tournament. This should not have been a big deal. It was a bad beat in a one sweep coin online tournament. I should not have cared. Yet, for some reason, I was really aggravated by the bad beat. I wasn't swearing. I wasn't throwing anything. But internally I was kind of mad. Those should have been my chips. I should have been one of the tournament chip leaders en route to yet another very deep run.

I have no idea why I felt victimized. I am better than that. At least I thought I was. I don't think this is anything I have to work on. I find my reaction to have been more bizarre than concerning. I'd like to think it was a one off. Is there something about online play that makes a bad beat feel worse than in a live setting? I wonder, does sitting in a room without human, face-to-face contact make the initial reaction to a bad beat worse than when you are at the table with other people present? I don't have the answers to these questions.

In any event, I quickly entered another turbo. Midway through the tourney with a little over half the field eliminated I had a very healthy chip stack, I was dealt A-Q suited, which I badly overplayed, and ran into the Q-Q of the table chip leader. Yes, it's a bit of a cooler, but I don't think I needed to go bust on that hand, which I did. I mean, yes it's a turbo so a certain amount of aggression was called for, but I did not need to get all my chips in the middle preflop. I could have played a medium sized hand, but instead I played for it all and lost. At that point I said to myself that I wasn't playing patiently enough, wasn't playing my "A" game, and I decided to call it a night as far as poker was concerned.

It's a bit of a high-wire act playing in online turbos. You have to play wider quicker. I think I have been picking my spots really well before tonight. I have been manufacturing chips when I don't have it much more than I did at the WSOP. I am punishing limpers, I am bluffing players off hands pre and post flop who I have identified as weak when faced with aggression (my favorite hand tonight was when I was in the big blind and a late-position player who I viewed as weak against aggression opened the betting, it folded to me, I had 4-7 suited, and I raised, leading to villain folding his hand). I think this is important growth. But sometimes, even in a turbo, you need to occasionally pump the breaks. It's a tricky part of the learning curve.

I am trying to find a happy medium between the patient game I am comfortable playing and the need to get creative in more spots where I can put my table image (tight aggressive OMC) to good use. I am leaving my comfort zone to try to get better. It doesn't feel good. It does feel necessary.

No offense was taken, rp! I was just observing that from an endurance/fatigue factor, these events are no different than other WSOP 3- or 4-day tournaments. Now, from a level of competition that one faces, that's another story! Heck, in the lead-up to this year's inaugural Battle of the Ages, they were stopping people for "man in the street (or hallway)" interviews, and asking which age group would win, and why. I think I surprised the young, attractive interviewer when I went against my tribe and said that it would probably be someone younger than 50 (or was it over/under 40?) that won. When she asked the follow-up of why I thought this, I said because they're better at GTO. (Who won this, anyway? I have no idea!)

rp, thanks for taking us along on your journey. I'm finally current with this thread, and what a ride! I'm so happy for you that you cashed (you did mention that, didn't you?), and believe that it made a successful journey all the more successful.

I've also gotten caught up on a variety of other WSOP threads, so would like to also thank TJ, POG, and TonySoprano. Each of you captured your experiences so well as well. All of these were different, with different motivations/goals/outcomes, and yet each of them were fantastic in both capturing your experiences, and giving your readers an eye into them.

I see a downside to Global Poker, so I give ClubWPT Gold a shot

The one downside to Global Poker that I have noticed is there do not seem to be a lot of players on the site. The result is that for sweep coin tournaments you can have a decent wait before the next tournament kicks off.

Tonight I went on Global Poker at the wrong time, and it was going to be too long a wait (almost an hour) to keep me around. I believe I am extremely patient at the poker table, but in the rest of my life I am one of the most impatient people I know. No way I was going to wait almost 60 minutes. I hate waiting.

Out of curiosity I went to ClubWPT Gold and signed up, which earned me a couple of sweep coins and enough gold coins for someone to splash around.

I decided to play a gold coin freeroll to just to get the lay of the land. I had no expectations as to quality game play, which was fine since this was simply an information gathering expedition. The wait for this tournament to start was less than two minutes. Now that's my kind of wait. I think there were a bit under 200 runners. Surprisingly, the play was not horrible. It wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible. Early on, I absolutely ran over my tables for the first eight levels or so. When I was bluffing, they folded. When I had the goods, they called. It was kind of fun. It felt like their cards were face up. Then I suffered a bad beat (my A-K lost to A-J), which prevented me from being second in chips, but I still had a top 10 chip stack. I continued building, then another bad beat. As the blinds skyrocketed, I was down to eight big blinds, and I got knocked out when I went all-in with 9-9 and ran into J-J. It was a deep run. I'm haven't gone into any great detail because it was a gold coin tournament. Going into great detail about a freeroll gold coin tournament is about as annoying for people to endure as it is to have to listen to someone go into excruciating detail about their fantasy football team. No one wants to hear it. I figure one paragraph of hand history is the outer limit of what you can be expected to tolerate.

I think I will play some sweep coin tourneys on this site, because the ClubWTP Gold site seems to be spreading tons more games than is the case on Global Poker. At least that is what my cursory view looked like. The only reason I didn't jump into a sweep coin tournament tonight on ClubWTP Gold is you need to provide a copy of your ID, and I was too lazy to do so. That said, at some point I will jump through the necessary hoops, and then I'll have two sites to be able to play on.

I am also still watching youtube videos of tournaments where there is a featured table in which you can see everyone's cards on every hand. I find this to be a good learning tool. At the moment I am working my way through the WSOP Main Event's various Day 1 flights. I am done with 1A and 1B and have just begun 1C. I have a ton of content identified of this kind to watch.

At some point I will jump back into my pokercoaching.com studies, but that is much more difficult work than what I am currently doing, and early post WSOP I want to keep it fun for a bit so I don't burn out. Matt Affleck and Jonathan Little videos await, but I'm not motivated yet to do the deep dives some of these videos require. I'll get to it, just not right away.

A book that speaks to my WSOP experiences

I was at Barnes & Noble today looking to buy some books. I came across the book “The Imagination Muscle: Where Good Ideas Come From (And How to Have More of Them) by Albert Read. After reading the back cover and the list of chapters, I had a sense that this book was speaking to my poker journey. I read the book tonight. To be clear, the book is not specifically about poker. And yet, I feel like numerous sections of the book get what I am doing, explain what I am doing, celebrate what I am doing at the WSOP.

This post will be long. If you demand short and pithy, my suggestion is that you simply skip to the next post. If you want insight into the soul of “Gray-haired poker TRs: Living the WSOP Dream” then read on.

…..

The Imagination Muscle, page 87:

“Adopting the Beginner’s Mindset: To further harness the potential for our imaginations, we can also foster the beginner’s mindset. In such a mind, as the Zen Buddhist saying goes, ‘there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.’ The beginner can be an outsider with the ability to see things for the first time.

“The very practical advantage of youth is that we have started out with the beginner’s mindset. In our first two decades, we are finding our way into life. We live with an intensity born of the vigor and thrust of existence, but also with a tender, childish sensitivity; where the tastes, smells, feelings and perceptions of our early years will echo through the later ones in looping montages of memory.”

Application to “Gray-haired poker TRs: Living the WSOP Dream:

When I left sports writing, I did so as a writer who had mastered his craft. What 10 years earlier would have taken great effort, time and non-stop rewriting to complete now was simple, quick and unchallenging to accomplish. Now that I have been in real estate and investing for more than 20 years, the process has become simple to effectively accomplish. My dad’s best friend was a hugely successful union lawyer and when he was in his 50s he said to me, “I spent 20 years learning my craft, and it was exciting. Now I’ve mastered my craft, and it’s kind of boring.” That is why my WSOP journey, while perhaps folly given my very late starting age, is so exciting. Everything I see is new and thrilling. Every tiny success is worthy of celebration. I’m seeing things for the first time, which is a gift at my age.

The book talks about the intense memories that accompany life in the first 20 years of one’s life. And it’s true. I can’t remember what I did last weekend, but my memories from high school and college are vivid and as fresh today as they were when they first took place 40+ years ago. That is what playing in the WSOP feels like. I can remember hands from my maiden 2019 WSOP experience with the intense feeling and laser-focused memory of something that just happened five minutes ago. This is a gift that I am getting late in life that I think more people in their 60s should have the courage to try in the venue of their choice and interest.

…..

The Imagination Muscle, pages 90, 92:

“Instead, the older mind might try and recall the nervous energy of their younger days; the mind that observes minutely for the purpose of its own future, promoting a ‘why not’ and a ‘what if’ train of thought. Youth is an age when the new tools and the fresh canvases of modern light come naturally. There is no silt in the grooves of enquiry; little at stake except the gradual formation of one’s own identity. It is this openness that has historically lent itself best to imaginative achievement, and it is this beginner’s mindset that we might try to preserve. To do so requires a careful blend of skepticism and naivety: skepticism to challenge traditional thought and naivety to ponder seeming outlandish theories.”

Application to “Gray-haired poker TRs: Living the WSOP Dream:

I love so much about this passage. When people first heard that I was going to play in the WSOP, their frequent question was, “Why?” My answer always was, “Why not.” I also love the part about skepticism and naivety. I have been skeptical that my lack of poker experience should stop me from entering the WSOP arena. I have obviously been unquestionably naïve to think I could compete at this level, and yet that naivety is what has allowed me to cash in consecutive WSOPs.

…..

The Imagination Muscle, pages 93-94:

“How do we sustain a beginner’s mindset through our later lives? By having the courage to, quite literally, be a beginner: by taking up a musical instrument; by reading widely from different and difficult fields; by receiving and absorbing criticism; by being attentive to the voices of youth and feeling unthreatened in doing so; by traveling and studying different cultures; by being unafraid to question for oneself; and by making the conscious effort to the world around us.”

Application to “Gray-haired poker TRs: Living the WSOP Dream:

Everything in this paragraph feels like it applies to me in a poker context. While I am not yet a winning player at the WSOP, I feel like I am winning at life by playing at the WSOP. I feel like playing in the WSOP makes me feel young even though I know I am a gray-haired OMC. My previous dog Hershey was a sheltie. He was a little dog who looked in the mirror and saw a lion. When airplanes flew overhead our backyard, Hershey chased after them. Hershey never caught one, but he never gave up on the quest. That’s kind of like what I see in the mirror. I see a lion, same as Hershey did. Maybe not the King of the Jungle, but I definitely see a young lion. And I definitely am willing to battle the young lions. When I am at the WSOP, I don’t see an old man looking back at me in the mirror.

…..

The Imagination Muscle, pages 98, 99, 100 and 101

“Perhaps ‘failure’ is not even the right word, with its connotations of negativity and finality. We might reframe it in more uplifting terms, calling it instead, ‘imaginative risk.’ For the American inventor Thomas Edison, imaginative risk was a way of life …

“But viewed from a different perspective, Edison’s life could be described as a long string of failures. … He performed more than fifty thousand experiments to invent the alkaline storage battery and nine thousand to perfect the lightbulb.

“Toward the end of his life, he told the following story about one such experiment: ‘I never allow myself to become discouraged under any circumstances. I recall that after we had conducted thousands of experiments on a certain project without solving the problem, one of my associates, after we had conducted the crowning experiment and it had proved to be a failure, expressed discouragement and disgust over having failed ‘to find anything.’ I cheerily assured him that we had learned something. For we had learned for a certainty that the thing couldn’t be done that way and that we would have to try some other way …”

“Edison new in his bones that a fear of failure brought paralysis; that in the pursuit of one thing, you stumbled on another; that the important task for the imagination was to embark on that ‘one thing’ without quite knowing where it would lead.

“But at least he would have embarked on the journey.”

Application to “Gray-haired poker TRs: Living the WSOP Dream:

So much to appreciate from this section. Imaginative risk sounds so much better than failure. I don’t get discouraged when I get knocked out of a WSOP tournament. I’m not happy to have been eliminated, but I am happy to have competed. I view every tournament as one more step toward getting better as a poker player. Maybe it’s a really, really small step, but it’s a step. I am all about the journey, without any concern about where the final destination may lead me. I love the above quote, “But at least he would have embarked on the journey.”

I think the passage about a fear of failure bringing paralysis is a very important point. I do not fear failure at the poker table even though I understand that failure at some point is bound to occur. I don’t know why failure does not scare me at all at the WSOP. It just doesn’t happen to me.

But as the book says, a fear of failure can cause paralysis. I know this to be true from my much, much younger days. From ages 10-15, I was a top tennis player for my age. When it came to tournaments, I tended to underperform, however, because I feared losing. The truth was I feared losing way more than I enjoyed winning. I remember one tournament I lost in the semifinals to someone who should have had no realistic chance of beating me. It wasn’t that he elevated his game. I let nerves lower my game. I can remember another tournament that I won. On the way home, my parents were very happy. I was not. I won somewhat convincingly, but I knew the truth, which was the match was closer than it needed to be. I had once again played nervous tennis, but I won because I was so much better than my opponent. One last story. During the summer after my freshman year in high school, I was playing in the finals of a tennis tournament against a player I was a slight favorite to beat. I played terrible. My opponent was up 6-3, 5-1 when we had to stop for darkness. A friend of mine who was watching the match told me I was playing too tight, too afraid, too conservative. He said I should just go for it, let ‘er rip and what happened would happen. I took his advice and I did not play scared when the match resumed, because, what did I have to lose as far behind as I was. I roared back and won the second set 7-5. I blew my opponent off the court in the third set, winning 6-1. To this day he is still mad that he lost and constantly jokes that he wants a rematch. He never got that rematch. That was the last tournament tennis match I ever played. Despite the massive comeback, I knew that nerves were not something I could control in tennis. I called it quits and decided to run cross country and track year-round the next school year. I wasn’t as good of a distance runner as I was a tennis player, but I enjoyed being a distance runner. I was not paralyzed by fear as a runner. My private tennis coach was incredulous that I was hanging up my tennis racket (he was a big part of the problem), but I did not budge from my decision. I chose being a distance runner in large part because my high school running coach was awesome, inspiring and made me feel great about myself.

I can’t explain why I am not intimidated at the WSOP. I am a way bigger underdog at the WSOP than I ever was as a tennis player, but I am a much more confident adult than I was as a teenager, and that seems to be the big difference for me at the poker tables. A lot of that confidence can be traced to all of the positive life lessons I learned from my high school cross country and track coach.

…..

The Imagination Muscle, page 102

“The peculiar aspect of imaginative achievement is its inconsistency and unpredictability. We are conditioned to expect a narrative of ‘failure to success,’ with setbacks all the way to a triumphant liftoff. In truth, failure can often lie midway down the runway, with successes behind it, in front of it – or nowhere to be seen. Success if it comes is not cumulative nor is it a formula that once cracked, can always be repeated. It is, rather, slippery and elusive.”

Application to “Gray-haired poker TRs: Living the WSOP Dream:

This is important for me to remember. I have cashed in consecutive WSOPs. This is no guarantee that I will do so again in the 2026 WSOP. Maybe I have peaked as much as I can, maybe it is just the start of better things to come. If I get shut out in 2026, I hope I can nonetheless continue to enjoy the experience and the process. This is especially true in tournament poker where negative variance can crush even elite players in the small sample size that I play at the WSOP each year.

…..

The Imagination Muscle, page 103

Steve Jobs, of Apple fame, is quoted as saying, “I watched Bob Dylan as I was growing up, and I watched him never stand still. … If you look at true artists, if they get really good at something, it occurs to them that they can do this for the rest of their lives, and they can be really successful at it to the outside world, but not really successful to themselves. That’s the moment that an artist really decides who he or she is. If they keep on risking failure they’re still artists. Dylan and Picasso were always risking failure.”

Application to “Gray-haired poker TRs: Living the WSOP Dream:

I’ve cashed in two consecutive WSOPs. While that probably (and by probably I mean definitely) does not qualify as me being “really good at something,” I need you to go along with me here. The point is, I’m not resting on my laurels (limited to you, thrilling to me). I’m continuing to study. I’m planning to play in some Circuit events. I’m definitely going to play in WSOP 2026. In other words, I will continue to risk failure. What that means, if you were paying attention to the above Jobs quote, is that I am …

… wait for it …

… a poker artist.

I like the way that sounds. I like it a lot.

rppoker, poker artist.

…..

The Imagination Muscle, page 283

“A fantasy about my final day.

“I am a hundred years old.

“In the embers of a sunlit evening, the turning wheels of my mind slow and I retreat to my daybed in my library. Sensing my end, the family gather around me. I hear soft crying, but there is also a tenderness, a love and a gratitude. The seven-year-old (my favorite) kisses my old craggy face and puts her ear to my mouth, understanding that I wish to tell her something.

“She leans in closer, and I grip her arm tightly. I point upward with the other hand, a quivering finger in the air. I whisper to her, with my dying breath: ‘I have an idea.’ “

Application to “Gray-haired poker TRs: Living the WSOP Dream:

That’s how I’d like to go out as a poker player someday, age 100, still feisty, determined and loving everything about the WSOP:

“She leans in closer, and I grip her arm tightly. I point upward with the other hand, a quivering finger in the air. I whisper to her, with my dying breath: ‘I have a new idea I want to try out at the upcoming WSOP.’ “

I am working on some poker mindset 2026 WSOP prep work which I will post in the near future, and I came across a quote on thepokermindset.com web site that very much is about someone like me:

“Don’t look down on recreational players. Not only they are the reason we can make a living playing poker, but often they are very successful in other areas of life. Not everyone plays the game for the same reasons.”

To be clear, I am the rec player (not the pro) in this particular quote.

Home game mini TR

I thought I’d share my home game from last night.

First, a short history of the game. It started 20+ years ago. We all have daughters the same age is the key demographic as to the origin of the game, plus we’ve lost and added a couple players over the years. Typically, we have eight or nine players. The game used to meet once a month at someone’s house.

I say “used to,” because COVID pretty much killed the game. When COVID went away some of the players bought second homes in warm climates. That combination resulted in the game not getting restarted. A year ago, someone held a one off.

Last night we played again.

Although the players are all well off financially (lawyers, real estate guys, a doctor, a veterinarian, a corporate guy) we keep the stakes extremely low to keep the game friendly. Bets are 50 cents or a dollar, except for the final round of betting which can be two dollars. A bet and a maximum of three raises each betting round is how it is capped. No one wins a ton, no one loses too much. It’s a friendly, social, no one gets hurt game.

It's also kind of a wacky game. It’s dealer’s choice with a lot of silly, mostly unserious games.

There is the standard, occasional PLO and seven-card stud game called.

But the most popular game called is Stubby Chubby, a high-low game with 13 community cards. This leads to variations of Stubby such as short Stubby (9 community cards) and massive Stubby (15 community cards). Other games called were Follow the Queen, Mariah, Elevator, Elbow, a game whose name I forget where there is no betting but you buy all of your cards from a choice of three cards when it is your turn, Seven Card Stud with 6s wild, and card games named after players in the home game who introduced a unique game in the first place (i.e. Smith), which leads to modified Smith when a variation on the original zany game was created.

No one ever calls Texas Hold ‘em. Even I don’t deal hold’em. The reason is that the stakes are so low that you can’t bluff your way to victory. Plus, most people fold pretty quickly. It is a no action game since it is a high hand only game, compared to most of the other games we play that are usually high-low which guarantees betting action.

For the most part, the games are not like anything you’d see on the schedule at the WSOP. Certainly nothing that helps me prepare for WSOP 2026.

But we all caught up on each other’s lives, and everyone had fun.

I lost a whopping $8. I think my poker bankroll can handle that. A lot of value for a mere eight bucks.

When I got home from the game, I put in two hours of NLHE studying.

In my opinion I have gotten much better at dealing with the aftermath of a bad beat, negative variance and a failure to win a coin flip in a key spot. I thought I had become immune to letting run bad make me play bad.

That’s why I was very surprised when I recently suffered a bad beat on the Global Poker web site and I felt slightly angry, slightly sorry for myself. In the big scheme of things, it was an inconsequential hand on an inconsequential web site for an inconsequential sum that we were battling for. I didn’t go on tilt. Not even close. But I was quite annoyed. Apparently I am not completely immune to letting a bad beat get under my skin.

And while it didn’t matter this time around, there is no place for that kind of reaction when I play in WSOP 2026. That means there was just one thing to do …

… Time to spend a little time on mindset.

I can’t really practice dealing with a bad beat. No way to know when negative variance is coming. The solution for me is to stockpile a bunch of quotes that apply to running bd. Stockpile them and then stick them in my back pocket in a manner of speaking. And if I fail to absorb a future bad beat with a calm and cool reaction, I can take a look at my army of quotes in order to talk myself off the ledge.

To the Internet!

Here is what I came up with.

You just have to deal with it, variance happens

Fedor Holz: “Accept the variance and love the process.”

Ante Up magazine: “Treat each bad beat as tuition in the university of variance.”

“In the long run there’s no luck in poker, but the short run is longer than most people know.” ~ Rick Bennet

“Poker is a combination of luck and skill. People think mastering the skill part is hard, but they’re wrong. The trick to poker is mastering the luck.” -- Jesse May

Everybody will eventually run worse than they thought was possible. The difference between a winner and a loser is that the latter thinks they do not deserve it." – Craig Hartman

“Being unbothered after a poker loss is a superpower.” – Author unknown

“You will play thousands of hands over the year. And now you’re upset because you lost the last one? Come on! Keep calm. Focus. Next hand…” – Author unknown

“You need to accept that variance doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t care how many hours you study. Sometimes the lazy ones win in the short term. It does not seem fair. So why put in the work if winning is not promised? Well, if you don’t, then losing is guaranteed.” -- Bencb

“When I run bad, I simply imagine some pokergods sitting somewhere in the universe, drunk or stoned, randomly distributing stupid coolers and laughing about me. And the more serious I take it the more they are laughing about me. Always makes me smile a little bit and stay cool.” – Bencb

“Only losers and amateurs blame the cards. After all, cards don’t care; they don’t take sides, and they have no memory. They are blind justice holding her scales, and in the long run they’ll tip evenly for the novice and the skilled alike.” – Lou Krieger

“A poker player who gets upset at losses is like a surgeon who faints at the sight of blood.” – Author unknown

“The difference between a great player and a mediocre one is how they deal with bad runs.” – Author unknown

“Poker doesn’t care what you think is fair.” Author unknown

You actually want the occasional bad beat, because that means you are getting your money in good

“If you always start with the worse hand, you never have a bad beat story to tell.” -- Chuck Thompson

“Most of the money you’ll win at poker comes not from the brilliance of your own play, but from the ineptitude of your opponents.” -- Lou Krieger

“Don’t challenge strong players, challenge weak ones. That’s what they’re there for.” -- John Vorhaus

“Life is too long to play bad cards.” ~ Frank DiElsi

“If you are making fewer mistakes than your opponents at the poker table, then you are making money, regardless of whether or not you actually win the hand.” -- Matthew Hilger

“When you lose because of the run of the cards, that feels fine. It’s not a big deal. It’s much more painful if you lose because you made a bad decision or a mistake.” -- Erik Seidel

The type of players you want to face (even though they occasionally get lucky at your expense)

“There are two types of poker players: Those that are disciplined, patient, and skilled. And those that make them rich.” – Author unknown

“I put three kids through college playing poker. Unfortunately, they weren’t my kids.” – Max Shapiro

“If there is one thing about poker that strikes me as odd, it is this. Poker is the only profession in the world where it pays to surround yourself with the biggest morons you can find.” – Phil Gordon

Re: home game. Best game known to man or beast: Lowmaha

Omaha 8/B, but the board stops only when there's a possible low. If the flop is all low cards, we're done. If all high, keep going.

For maximum pain, we used to play it with a 7 qualifier for low. I think our record was 14 board cards, as high cards and pairing the board kept coming.

I played in a Global Poker sweep coin tournament today. There were 112 entrants. I got to head's up with a very, very big chip lead. I was reading my opponent like a book. When I was bluffing, he was folding. When I was way ahead, he was calling my bets. On four separate occasions post flop I had my opponent all-in when he was drawing dead to a two-, three-, or four-outer. Every time he hit his miracle card on the turn (once) or river (three times). Finally, I was the one who was all-in, although still from way ahead pre flop, and the deck hit him again. A silver medal once again for me. I don't think at any point in the tournament I was behind big time and hit a miracle card. Variance.

Time to turn to my recently completed bad beat quote list. I select the following:

“Treat each bad beat as tuition in the University of Variance.”

Well, I sure paid a ton of tuition to the University of Variance today. As in the Harvard University of Variance.

I am fine with it.

On the positive side, out of the four Global Poker sweep coin NLHE Bounty tournaments that I have played in (100+ entrants each time) since recently joining the site, I have come in second place twice. I have taken the five sweep coins the site gives you for signing up and turned them into 26.73 sweep coins.

I have not received any additional freebie sweep coins from the site for the simple reason that I have been too lazy to go through the verification process necessary to qualify for more freebies. I'll do it at some point. Although maybe I won't so that my sweep coin total is pure as part of my journey to getting better as a player.

For the moment, I am going to stick to the most basic sweep coin low entry fee level I am playing so that I can build up a big enough treasure chest of sweep coins to justify playing in bigger entry fee tournaments. I already feel like I can jump up in stakes, but I am treating this as a process, so I will do so in a disciplined manner.

In my WSOP 2026 preparation, I am currently watching all of the Day 1 coverage of the 2025 WSOP Main Event. I especially like watching the Day 1 coverage since Day 1 makes up so much of my own WSOP experiences. I have finished the Day 1A, 1B and 1C coverage, and I am now working my way through Day 1D. I am watching to see everything people at these tables are doing, but my emphasis is on interesting/creative/effective bluffs to put opponents in uncomfortable spots.

In Day 1D action, watching Eric Afriat (who made a deeeeep run) provide a masterclass in doing just that, but there is a hand I'd like to share from two other players. I'm not going to regurgitate many hands from the Main Event coverage, but I may do so if I see something really, really interesting. I'd say innovative, but it's obviously been done before. But it is innovative to me, and I think it is something for me to store away to maybe try some time.

The hand involves Ben Lamb and Darren Elias. The blinds are 300/500/500. Lamb opens for 1,200 with 9s-10s. He has 36,900 behind. Another player who ultimately will not be important to the hand calls with 7h-7c. Elias, with a stack of 77,200 chips, squeezes to 5,500 with As-10d (I'm not sure I'd find this 3-bet with four players still to act, so I file this away in my creative aggression file in the back of my mind).

Clayton Fletcher is in the broadcast booth, and after seeing this 3-bet, he says, "Darren Elias, I heard him on a podcast once where he said, 'Your job is to make your opponent's life hard.' And you can see that in his playing style. Just constantly putting everybody around him to tough decisions."

Now, right about now you are thinking, this is ambitious, but it's not that incredibly creative. You are right. This is not the part of the hand that causes me to sit up and take notice.

Lamb calls as does the guy with 7-7. There are now 17,800 chips in the middle, and they go to a flop. The dealer turns over 9h-Kd-2c.

Elias has Ace high. Lamb has middle pair mediocre kicker. The guy with 7-7 has third pair.

Lamb checks. 7-7 guy checks. Elias, who showed the most aggression pre flop, bets 5,000. Lamb calls. 7-7 guy folds. Nothing earth shattering on this round of betting.

Lamb is ahead with middle pair, but Elias is certainly selling the fact that he has a King.

The turn is Kh. The board now reads 9h-Kd-2c-Kh.

Fletcher from the booth says, "A terrible card for Darren. It's really hard to represent it (a king) when that other one comes out."

At this point the pot has 27,800 chips. Lamb only has 26,400 remaining while Elias has 66,700. Lamb is out of position, and now is when the hand gets interesting to me.

Lamb reaches for chips. Surprising but not earth-moving. What is interesting/creative to me is the size of the bet. He bets a mere 3,200 chips. Just a smidge more than 10% pot. It is a sizing that says, "I have it, and I want to keep my opponent on the hook."

Fletcher from the booth says, "Teeny weeny from Ben just betting about 10% of the pot. And if you are Darren Elias, what are you supposed to do with this? So you might think the only way to make your opponent's life hard is to just bet really big and put them to these huge decisions, but what are you supposed to do here with A-10? I don't know. Do I fold getting 10-to-1? Do I shove?"

Elias folds. Fletcher says, "Just throw it away. Yeah. Nice play by Benba. (Elias) was getting the right price to call if he knew what Ben had, which I'm guessing he didn't."

I find the extremely small bet size to be really intriguing. It takes the betting initiative. It screams strength, and yet if the opponent shoves you probably get away from the hand.

Note to self: Keep this in the back of my poker mind to possibly try out if the right scenario plays out for me someday.

If you are not aware, Clayton Fletcher is longtime host of the 'Tournament Poker Edge' podcast, where he goes through a lot of his own tournament hands, as well as analyzing hands he have seen on previous Main Event broadcasts etc. He also run the most interesting hands through GTO Wizard later to see if the play was GTO approved or not.

Definitely worth a listen, especially as most episodes are only between 20-30 minutes long. So you don't need to set aside too much extra time in your day to listen.

The first training site I ever used (during the year leading up to WSOP 2019) was Tournament Poker Edge. Clayton is a solid listen.

It's time to get serious

I just finished watching the last of the Day 1 coverage of the 2025 Main Event. While I learned a few things, I would describe it as 10% learning and 90% entertainment. That said, I needed something light post 2025 WSOP in order to avoid burnout.

Now I will take a break from the WSOP coverage, and get serious about studying. Serious as a heart attack. Next up for me is a return to my poker training site pokercoaching.com, and my need to work on probably (and by probably I mean definitely) my biggest leak ... big blind defense. I have identified a seven-part series by Matt Affleck on big blind strategy as how I will spend my poker evenings for the foreseeable future.

I would not say this is something I am looking forward to doing for a couple of reasons: 1) This is going to be a grind, and 2) It's not fun to work on something you know you are not good at.

It may not be fun, but it is necessary, it is important, and it is a critical step if I want to get better.

It's time for me to put in the work. In some small way, this makes me think back to my high school days when I ran cross country and track for my school. One day I was talking to a friend of mine who was on the tennis team, and he was complaining that the first week of practice for them consisted of two-a-days. Running in the morning before classes started and tennis drills after school ended for the day. "We call it hell week," he said proudly. Later I told my distance running teammates about this and we all had a good laugh. After all, as distance runners we had two-a-day practices EVERY SINGLE DAY of the school year. Somewhere along the way, I read a magazine article about distance runners. There was a quote in the article that I cut out and saved way back when. To this day I still have that cut out quote on a bookshelf in my home office, which states ...

... "The world, they loved to say, is divided between distance runners and candy-asses."

It's time I stop being such a candy-ass and start channeling the old distance runner in me. It's time to immerse myself in the poker lab. EVERY SINGLE NIGHT.

A fork in the road that eventually returns to a single lane

With this post I go off on a tangent.

Well, sort of a tangent. Eventually it ties in to poker. It has to do with my thinking about picking up the game of golf after a long hiatus. Back when I was in my 20s and early 30s, I used to play golf two or three times a week. I shot in the upper 80s and lower 90s. I was solid but far from great. On a typical suburban public golf course, I fit right in. But I wasn’t going to play for any club championships.

When my first daughter was born, I retired my golf clubs. I recognized that 5-6 hours to play 18 holes on the weekend was family unfriendly, so I gave up the game of golf.

My kids are now grown up, and I have been kicking around the idea of playing golf again. After all, with Mrs. rppoker in the early stages of wanting to spend winter months somewhere warm, I figure we may be a few years away from her making a decision about where she’d like that to be. Mrs. rppoker takes forever to make decisions. She has a difficult time deciding what to order at a restaurant, so I figure the purchase of a second home is going to take a few years to happen. It took her years to finally pull the trigger on re-doing our kitchen which is now finally happening. The house will seem empty without all of the floor samples that have been taking up space for the last 3-4 years.

But with our thinking trending in the direction of a retirement community for a portion of the year, and with me selling off the local office buildings that take up too much of my time (for those keeping score, three have been sold and the last one seems close to a sale), I have been giving some thought to what I will do with my time. I will not retire as there are still various asset types that need to be monitored, but I think I will not have as much on my plate.

Golf and poker seem like a good tag team in my battle to stay busy down the road. Poker is already a given. Golf has been a very slow work in progress.

Two years ago, I talked to a couple of my doctors to see what they think about me playing golf. I have a torn labrum from a dozen years ago that no longer hurts, but I never got the surgery to repair it because the rehab is supposed to be awful, and the older you get the less effective the surgery is supposed to be. Both doctors said golf would not cause the torn labrum to be a problem.

Thus, two years ago I bought a single 9-iron and went to the driving range once a week during the summer. My shoulder did not explode, so that was a good start. I hit the ball OK, but my swing needed a lot of work.

During the next winter I bought a set of golf clubs. The plan was to try out all of the clubs at the driving range after my WSOP trip was completed. The problem was, I was having pain in my right leg and heel throughout the WSOP. When I returned home, it took quite a while for me to get the pain to go away. Initially I went to my pain doctor, and she had me try kind of a physical therapy pilates studio, which was a disaster and made the pain worse. Then I went to my long-time sports medicine doctor/chiropractor who is a wizard and he fixed me up, although it took a while. By the time I was back to 100% it was getting somewhat late in the golf season. I went to the driving range with my new set of golf clubs, and I could not hit the ball. It was as if I’d never played the game before. An avalanche of poorly hit golf balls. I didn’t dare venture onto a golf course, since I was a menace hitting the ball. After several weeks of horrendous displays at the driving range, I had to make the dispiriting decision to give up until the following year. My game plan was I needed to take golf lessons.

So that brings us to the year 2025. I decided I would wait until my WSOP trip was over to take lessons. My sports medicine doctor/chiropractor is an avid golfer, and he told me about a group that offers lessons in our town. I went on their web site and saw that the least experienced instructor was $100/hour, while the most expensive golf pro was $250/hour. The price for the most expensive instructors seemed excessive for my needs. I didn’t like the idea of choosing the very least expensive instructors. My thought was, go with the instructor that is one price point above the bargain basement. This instructor charges $120/hour. As the father of two daughters I liked the idea of giving a woman instructor a shot. I called up, asked if she was taking on new clients, and I was told she was available, and they’d have her call me to set up a time for a first lesson. Four days passed, she never called. I called back on a Friday morning and said I had not heard back from her, and I asked if one of the $100/hour instructors would be a better choice. They said no, they would have the woman instructor call me that day. Crickets. No call. The following week, three days passed without a call. To heck with that, I would look elsewhere.

That brings me to today. I did not have a busy day. Mid afternoon I drove to my accountant’s office to pick up several entity tax returns. With the rest of my calendar empty, I made the decision to knock off early and hit the driving range. It was a blistering hot day, but I figured I could handle it. I figured sort of wrong (and by sort of wrong I mean completely and unequivocally wrong).

I got to the driving range wearing long, khaki pants. Everyone else had shorts on. I got to the shack where you get golf balls, and the woman close to my age who seemed like she has been there for years, took one look at me, sized me up, considered the time of day, and asked, “You retired.”

I responded, “I’m working toward being semi-retired.”

I remembered that the first time I went to the driving range a year ago I got a large bucket of balls, and was exhausted before I even got half way through. Thus, I made the veteran decision to get a small bucket of balls. I asked the woman who was helping me if the driving range had a pro who gives lessons. She said yes. I asked how much. She said $60 for a half hour. That sounded much more my speed. She gave me the instructor’s card, and I’ll call him tomorrow.

I chose to hit balls off the grass portion of the driving range and not the mat section. Grass is a more realistic way to practice. One thing I forgot to mention. Earlier in the day I went online and did a search for something like “golf tips for beginners.” I found a short video and watched. There was a tip about one of the mechanics of a golf swing that I had forgotten a year ago when I mucked it up at the driving range.

I get to the grass section of the driving range and pick a spot. Man, it’s hot. I remind myself to follow the tip from the video I watched. I pull out a 9-iron. Let’s start with something easy. I hit some shots and I am making better contact than a year ago. This is promising. I’m not saying I was hitting the ball pure, but it was much better than last year. I would describe my shot making as somewhere between barely adequate- to poor+.

The optimism of some good shots doesn’t last forever. Pretty quickly I start hitting the ball unimpressively. Man, it’s hot. It’s 93 degrees. I am out of breath and I am making the golf Gods shield their eyes from what they are seeing. I decide to take a break and walk to a nearby bench and take a seat. I can’t believe how tired I feel already.

I catch a second wind and go back to where my clubs are. I pull out my 5-iron. Let’s try something a tiny bit more difficult. I hit the club OK. I am making contact. It’s often not straight, it’s not always sweet contact, but it is contact. Fairly quickly I get tired again. Man, it’s hot. My swing worsens. Feeling out breath. So, I head back to my spot on the nearby bench and rest.

Eventually I try it again. I hit the 5-iron OK for a bit, then I’m tired and my swing falters. Back to the bench. Rinse, lather, repeat.

At this point I have not even hit half of the small bucket of balls. I decide to make my last stand. I march back to my golf bag, and I decide to break out one of the woods. Initially I pull out the driver by mistake. No way I’m hitting that club. Back when I was respectable 30+ years ago, I could not hit my driver. I was awful with that club. Never even the occasional successful swing. I’d try at the driving range, fail and then refuse to use it on the course. When I bought my current clubs, I went so far as to ask if I could get the set of clubs without a driver and instead have it replaced by an easier wood instead (the answer was no). So, I put the driver back in my bag, and I pull out a 5-wood. By my current pathetic standards, this is me saying Go Big or Go Home.

I know I am only going to have so many swings before I run out of gas for good. My first attempt is good contact but it has a big slice. My second attempt, there is contact but it is not great contact. Running out of chances.

Then it happens. I absolutely crush the ball. I hit the sweet spot of the club. The ball rockets off the club. It soars through the air. It is long. And it is straight. Definitely over 200 yards, although I’m not sure of the distances that the various pins in the ground represent, so I can’t say for sure how far the ball went. Doesn’t matter. What matters is this is easily the best shot I have hit all day. No other shot even came close. I put my club back in the bag. I am done for the day. Always end on a good one.

I tell the young guy next to me in his late 20s or earlier 30s that I am out of gas and he can have my unused golf balls. I head back to my spot on the bench. Man, it’s hot. I feel like I have run a marathon. One golfer finishes up at the range, and, as he passes me by, he asks if I’m all right. I say I may have bitten off more than I can chew. He asks if I want a Gatorade from his cooler. I say thanks, but I am OK. After he leaves the thought running through my mind is, “I should have accepted the Gatorade.” Stupid pride.

I continue to rest on the bench. My thoughts go back to my final shot. The glorious majesty of my final shot soaring through the air. This is what makes golf so great. Even when you haven’t played your best, if you hit that one perfect shot you forget all about the duffs and miscues of the day and you are eager to tee it up again the next time out.

Yep, I want golf to ride shot gun alongside poker in my golden years. I need a lot of work on my golf swing, but I suspect a few lessons will fix the obvious flaws in my rusty swing. Won’t make me great, but I think it will make my swing playable. So now I have two pursuits in which I need to work on improvement, but poker will get way more of my efforts than golf.

I get to my car, put my golf bag in the trunk and I’m too tired to change out of my golf shoes. I crank the air conditioning, and I drive home. It’s less than a five-minute ride. I park in the garage, and I have one thought on my mind: I need ice water. I walk in the door and Mrs. rppoker is carrying a huge, full garbage bag and she asks me desperately to open the door to the garage. I say I can’t because I need water.

I get my water and sit down at the kitchen table. Mrs. rppoker comes over and asks what is going on. I tell her what I have done.

She is incredulous, and says in a disapproving wife tone, “You hit golf balls when it’s 93 degrees out?” (Translation: How could you be so stupid?)

I answer, “Yes. It wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had.”

And yet, I survived (Translation: Totally worth it) and I now have a game plan percolating in my head …

… poker … golf … semi-retirement … growing old(er) with Mrs. rppoker. There are no grandkids yet, but eventually/hopefully that figures to enter into the equation.

I doubt I’ll ever be able to fully retire (well, at least not until the point where I lose my business/mental fastball and hopefully have the wisdom to recognize that). But I am on the precipice of being able to have more free time than I’ve had in decades. My kids are grown up. I’m selling off the office buildings that take up way too much of my time in relation to the overall portfolio. Monitoring the remaining investments (I make the decisions but I have wealth managers at two separate well-known firms to provide expertise when I request it) and out-of-town real estate assets (that have a management company to deal with the day-to-day stuff, so I just have to manage the manager) will allow me to take it easier, will allow me to have more free time to do the things I love.

I can see my future coming into focus. I like what I see.