My Loser Poker Skills
By: Valerie Tay
Tags: Life, Life Lessons, Teens

After some 5, maybe 6 times playing poker with my family, I realized that I am really, really terrible at it. But I had always thought it was simply chance that I kept losing, or maybe it was karma that was messing with me and sending all my chips to my younger stepsister, as though in a taunting manner. The shifting of the chips across the table in the direction opposite me sounded the utter defeat, embarrassment and sadness which I suffered. Every. Single. Time. Karma really is a bitch. I thought this all the way up until the twentieth time I played this godforsaken game when I lost once more and understood what was the problem. It was me, and it had always been me.

I was raised to be a competitive person, and this behaviour was not only reinforced by my entry to the Enhanced program, in which everyone was competitive with each other, but also by my involvement in competitive taekwondo. I hated losing. I am what they call a sore loser. I can be a gracious one, but only from the outside, because on the inside, I collapse in on myself and wait for the ground to swallow me. Perhaps it was the embarrassment that came hand in hand with losing or the thought that I could have done it better if only I tried harder. Either way, every time I lost, I was angry and upset. Deeply, but I did my best not to show it.

This is why I hate playing poker. I consider myself a smart person, but sometimes my competitiveness gets in the way of my possibly intelligent plays. Glancing at my cards, I calmly place them down and repeat the numbers in my head. My turn and I match whatever is on the table. Or I raise. Or I check. But I never fold, for some crazy reason, even if my cards are terrible. The final cards are opened, and once again, I have lost. What seems like a hundred chips slide across the table, to join my opponent’s ever-growing pile. I smile or laugh. Maybe I’ll say a joke or two to ease my discomfort. Inside my head, I think again. What am I doing? Why am I sabotaging myself?

I don’t really know of a way to fix my poker problem. I guess I just don’t like to lose and that’s a problem that I will never learn how to fix. But I have to bring up the fact that even if I consider my competitiveness a weakness during poker, I do not consider it so in any other situation. To me, it’s an asset.

Being an Enhanced student, I grew up in an environment full of people that competed literally every chance they got. It helped me learn how to study and work hard. I wanted to be the best. I wanted to get the best grades, have the teacher’s approval, be called on constantly because I would be the one to know the answer. I also wanted to be the best for myself. I wanted to learn. I wanted to develop a thirst for knowledge and study. Which I did.

And I plan on never letting anyone tell me that my competitiveness is a bad thing.

I might never get better at playing poker. Honestly, I’m fine playing poker only on special occasions; I can only take so many gut punches before I call it quits. But having this sort of competitiveness in my life has done a lot for me. I’m proud of myself no matter what.

Even if I have a 3 and a 9 and I jokingly go all-in on what will clearly be a royal flush just to salvage the scraps of my dignity.