How To: Win At Poker

Cliff here. If you’re a man, you’ve played cards at one time or another. Men gamble. If you’re going to participate in a game, there had damn well better be something at stake. Whether it’s the right to ridicule your buddy daily at his lack of skill in Scrabble, or money AND the right to ridicule your buddy, you always must have the chance to win something. If you’re not good at something, don’t play. Practice on your 6-year-old niece until you can formulate some sort of basic strategy, then come to poker night and hustle the coins from other men’s pockets.

When I say “coins”, by the way, I mean “hundred dollar bills” or at the very least, twenties. If you don’t play for a reasonable amount of money (I never join a game for less than five large – that’s five thousand dollars for you prancing fairies. A lot of gambling websites say something to the effect of “if you can’t afford to lose, don’t play”. I say those ass clowns can lick my salties. If you can’t afford to lose, don’t lose – it’s as simple as that. If you lose, you deserve to eat ramen noodles and butter sandwiches until your next paycheck. By my generous estimates, one out of every five males is an actual man. That means if you’re a real man, your four best friends probably are not. You should consider it your job, and probably your responsibility to hustle them for their paychecks until they can hold their own. You owe it to them.

I have a few key pointers when playing poker that have allowed me to win millions of dollars from other suckers like your four besties. On a related note: stop calling your friends “besties”. Possibly the gayest name for a manfriend you could ever choose. Get out your big gay journal or whatever you call your diary. Write these down and memorize these pointers so you never again get your ass handed to you while losing your ass simultaneously. Also, stop keeping a diary. You shouldn’t need a place to chronicle your feelings, since you shouldn’t have any emotions because emotions are only found in the ovaries. I kept a “journal” for three days, just so I could see what you and your scrapbooking homo friends do in your spare time. Here are the journal entries from those three days:

Day 1
Hungry. I think I will kill that saber-toothed cougar snake in the backyard. Play date with a mother tonight.

Day 2
Still eating on that cougar snake. That was a meaty little bastard. Note to self: punch the next douche who makes eye contact with me.

Day 3
Some random hot girl in my bed woke me up this morning. I let her finish me off, then gave her a Dutch Oven. That’s funny. Hungry again.

After looking through my “journal” entries for the three days I concluded that men who actually keep diaries are either gay and have emotions and other crap to write about, or their diary entries are so boring the paper weeps when they start writing. Quit being gay. Regardless, here’s how to win at poker.

Step 1: Bring a LOT of money. Your chip stack should be high enough that the other players (I’ll henceforth refer to them as “enemies”) can’t read your emotions behind your well-constructed chip fort. You shouldn’t have emotions in the first place, though. Re-read paragraph three, sentence seven.

Step 2: Kill the first man who beats you in a hand. Do it openly and leave the bloody body slumped on the table. Stare around at your other enemies, while scooping his chips into your pile and saying, “I don’t think he’d want this to go to waste. I don’t think he’d advise anyone to leave the table, either…” Trail off menacingly.

Step 3: Play every hand. If your enemies are really stupid, they may need further instruction on how to play the game. Repeat Step 2 as necessary.

That’s really all there is to becoming a huge winner at the great game of poker. If you have actual poker skills, you may not need these three quick tips, but they’re fun to throw into the mix every now and then to really get in your enemies’ heads. Good luck with the gambling. Now you should be able to afford hookers that don’t have visible skin grafts or conjoined twins.

See you next week.

Category: Featured, How To: Your Guide to Being a Man