When I was growing up there were all sorts of westerns on television, and in saloon scenes there was usually a
poker game going on. My mother had taught me to play gin rummy and cribbage when I was six or seven years old. I think that I inherited my love of cards from her. Not just playing the games but shuffling them, dealing them, and just feeling them in my
hands. Skip forward about four or five years to when I was a "tween".
All of those westerns must have had an effect because one day I told mom and dad that I wanted to learn how to play poker. They were always supportive and encouraging of any activity that I or my big sister was interested in. So we began to play poker on Saturday nights. We'd begin at eight when the
Lawrence Welk show ended, and play the last hand just before ten when
Gunsmoke began. I have a lot of nice memories of those times.
I pretty much left the game after being a teen for a few years and actually had a social life on Saturday nights. I didn't really play again until I was in my twenties and I'd play now and then with my co-workers at Allied Plywood. In addition to games at houses, in the afternoon on Christmas Eve we'd set up a 4x8 sheet of plywood with 5 gallon cans of contact cement for legs and play until around 5 pm. When I left that job after ten years I took another sabbatical from poker, until Foxwoods was built in the mid 1990s.
I played there off and on until the early 2000s, and then I took another leave of absence from the tables. In early October of 2018 I decided that I wanted to do something competitive again. I'd been on a smallbore rifle team in high school, and again as an adult for three years in the mid-1990s. I'd also shot sporting clays competitively for about fifteen years beginning in 1990. My work hours precluded my being able to shoot smallbore rifle, and the cold weather would soon be along and I didn't want to be out in it shooting clays. Then it occurred to me that I'd always wanted to play a poker tournament, but never had.
So on the morning of October 8, 2018 I got in the car and headed down I-95 to play my first ever tournament at Foxwoods. For the next year and a half I was a regular at the 9am Sunday morning tournament. Then Covid showed up in March of 2020 and put an end to that.
I'd been playing online for practice, but with no live games I began playing more. I joined Cards Chat that summer, and in November someone mentioned that he'd been a dealer in New Hampshire. I hadn't known that they had poker up there, but they did.
So I took a ride up to Manchester and began playing tournaments up there once a month or so. That has been my main venue for poker since that time, and on my weekend trips it also gives me time to have lunch with my sister and her partner. I still visit Foxwoods occasionally, but NH is where I do most of my playing.
