I know the rules of poker, mostly, thankyouverymuch

After spending what must have been, conservatively, a hundred hours of playing poker texas hold 'em style over the last month, I'm proud to report that I know the rules of the game. Mostly. Generally. Don't ask me the details, and don't give me tricky questions. And don't definitely don't give me that bullshit about it being a game of 'playing people not cards'. Because lemme tell you, I came back from deep deep red, the deepest of the reds anyone's gotten into, to being the richest player over the course of a single night. And there wasn't no 'playing people' goin' around. I wasn't even looking at anyone because the game took so much of my concentration figuring out what cards I had.

You're supposed to either 'call' or 'raise' a bet, you can also 'check', or 'fold', in which case all the money you put in the pot is gone. And you're supposed to bullshit your way into all of this because that's how things work, you'll get bad cards but you're supposed to convince others that your cards are actually better than theirs.

You can do it a hundred different ways. My trick is to pretend to not understand the rules of the game and just fuck their experienced tells off. There's not much pretending going on, the trick is to convince yourself that you genuinely don't know what's happening so you're like an empty book. A notebook even. Nothing to read so much to write. Now it's tricky to actually play when you've realistically convinced yourself that you're an idiot in the game, and also you don't know all the rules. So what you do is, pause for a moment, and think as if you weren't an idiot. Just think as if you were a poker genius who's into a deep complex move that involves ignoring the actual cards in their hands. And then...and here's the important part...just do whatever. If your cards are good you'll win. Otherwise not. If this has been a bad explanation don't blame me, it's confusing to me too.

Another trick to generate some excitement and create confusion is to trash talk your opponents constantly so they lose their footing. Like really, anything that comes to mind, just go at it, relentlessly there's technically no rules on what's allowed and what's not allowed. Their friends family, choice of hair color profession, everything's a fair game. That's not what I did, but I hear it's good. They're so mad, they can't think straight.

And the final point. This is the actual point, the real one. The best way to play poker, or any game, any battle any war, is to play it such that your opponent loses the will to keep going. Defeating them man-to-man, destroying them obliterating them is difficult expensive and time-consuming. Instead, make the fight a hassle, a bore, a total hubris who not only are they defeated, they're empty shells of their former shells, unwilling to engage in a violent struggle, or a game of poker for that matter, with you. Not recommended if you actually enjoy playing poker, or like your friends, but a great battle-winning strategy. Like a the great generals, the lessons of the war can be generalized from one's everyday experiences.