Yesterday I spent a great evening playing Texas Hold’em with some friends. Sure, I’ve lost some money, but it wasn’t much and I was prepared for that anyway. I could have stopped after I won some nice pots, but netting a profit definitly didn’t seem to be on my agenda yesterday. Instead I thought a lot about the game and came to conclude the following.

• Relax and look forward, things will get a lot easier that way.

• Most things in life depend on luck. However, it’s up to you how you deal with it.

• Don’t get cocky if you’re succesful, otherwise you’ll most probably fall hard.

• Being unpredictable really may pay off in tense situations.

• You have to take risks if you want to win big. And you’ll never really feel the rush of winning if you didn’t take the risk to lose in the first place.

• You don’t really have to be good. The others just need to believe you are.

• Money attracts more money. Gambling is easy if loosing doesn’t hurt.

I had a lot more of this, but I guess by now you get what I’m aiming at: Better to have loved and lost, than never loved at all. Am I still talking about Poker? I guess so.

Setting Orange, Bureaucracy 16, 3172 YOLD