Earlier this year in the Jan. 18, 2002, issue (“A Tale of Two . “), I wrote about Carlos and Jay, and the two different roads they took to learn, play, and win at the game of poker. Carlos took the route of going to the casino many years ago, sitting at an instruction table, and learning the ropes by playing the game. Jay, on the other hand, made analogies to chess and therefore took a more conceptual approach to learning the game. As I said then and I’ll say now, neither approach is wrong. Jay just has many more tools available to him than Carlos had. These tools are the books, computer software programs, online forums, and so on that I’ve mentioned many times.

When I was very young and going to the Catskills for the summers, one of my favorite things other than softball, swimming, camp, and Monticello Raceway was looking forward to those great weekends when my father came up and I got to sit behind him in the big poker game. Of course, poker wasn’t legal in New York in those days; in fact, it wasn’t legal when I was of age, but we played anyway. All the guys would circle the table looking for their usual seats, and it would turn into one of those great men get-togethers – you know, no women allowed. Of course, there was the usual wife walk-through: “Hi, honey, how ya doin’?” I kept thinking to myself that only men played the game. With all the off-color remarks and the bold play, a woman would become intimidated. Besides, in those days, the men were the breadwinners in the house.