Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Hit The Showers Kid

To put into perspective how I currently feel about the potential elimination of online poker, consider this scenario.

You’re 14 years old and just made the varsity football team in high school. You’ve been playing since you were 8 in youth leagues and seemed to always find a way to perform well enough to start and be a solid contributor to your team. You have no idea what the future holds, but you hold close to yourself thoughts that if you continue to do well, you just might get a football scholarship to a Division 1A college. And then, who knows? Perhaps you continue to do well and just maybe, you get drafted by an NFL team. You know that it’s silly to think that far ahead, but at this point you can only hope. Those plans don’t occupy a large part of your thoughts, but from time to time, you like to dream a little. After all, you’ve managed to do well enough thus far and there’s no real indication that you won’t continue to do so. The opportunity is limitless.

Then one day your high school football coach calls a team meeting after practice. He regrets to inform you that due to unforeseen circumstances, the football program has been cancelled indefinitely. Go shower up.

****

With that said, I don’t want to come across as someone with professional aspirations. What I do want to say is that at least the opportunity was there. I have been making steady progress over the last three years. Progress has been slow, but I figured I had all the time in the world. There was no need for me to try to accelerate it; I’m a husband, a father of two, and have a more traditional career to worry about. But progress was undeniably steady.

Now I feel that there’s a chance I may never grow to my full potential whatever that might have been. I could be stuck a $200NL player for the next 10 years or I could be on a growth path leading to the $2000NL games 5 years from now.

I may never know. And that is most disappointing.

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