Are we ready for a round of poker??

My earliest experience with playing cards was that, they were taboo when grandparents were around in the house. Card games were meant for the un-couth and considered synonymous to gambling. However, over the years, cards had turned out to be the best form of recreation when cousins got together over a lazy afternoon after a heavy meal until the evening coffee and snacks. Games varied from rummy to ass to bluff and many a little monkeyshines that went along with it; but poker was an absolute NO-NO.

It was not until a few months back that I was introduced to the game of poker by my friends in Boston. We had watched the game being played with heavy stakes at the casino in Connecticut, which seemed like an engaging sport?! We of course didn’t have the money, valor or foolhardiness to try our hand then, but over one cold afternoon in the cozy room on the fifth floor of Huntington Avenue, we had indulged in playing the forbidden sport to capacity and frivolity! However the bids have never grown beyond the color chips that the poker pack accompanies. Ever since, no outing or coffee meet or movie meet or a just-for-the-sake meet has gone without a round of poker.

What is it that makes a game of poker, so special that even after 8 months of 10 people playing it at least twice a week doesn’t make it boring?? Is the infinite supply of coffee, chips, salsa that often accompany the fun?? Is it the indefinite possibilities of the game that no two plays are ever the same and for once permutation and combination actually makes sense?? Is it the colorful money and materialistic you that plays?? Is it the only sane thing a group can get involved to kill time??? Or is it the people who you play with and the shenanigans that make poker-time a memorable one???

I wonder why these questions ever pop up within me, when I do look forward to some good-humoured poker every weekend with my good friends and share many a joke over the hot cup of coffee; As I sit back and flip my two cards and glance at my depleting coin stack and yet proclaim to raise the bid, I stifle a smile to make the perfect ‘poker-face’ and sneak a peak into my friend’s cards – I realize that life wouldn’t be any good without a bunch of pals to horse around, make perfect sense of every non-sense, laugh at instances that don’t seem to make sense later, to share your child-likeness and tom-foolery and above all to make even an intriguing game like poker seem of no avail without the perfect friend-circle!! J