The Fine Art of Maximizing your Losses!

[Bacon]

Trishan - any future use of my name for pun-related purposes will result in a lifetime ban.

He didn't use your name, just your username.

Sgodit?

[muzzington]

Scott Free... rolling

I'm Scott-Committed

[AceLosesKing]

Playing poker and picking up the ho's - The Scotty way, baby!

Leather. Jackets. Nuff said.

How to unclip a woman's bra and three bet a PLO fish while still keeping your cool.

Winning every 888pl event under 13 runners - by Scott M.

Why sitting backwards in your chair can throw people off.

[muzzington]

Banned for not using puns.

[Nathan Butler]

The Fine Art of Maximizing your Losses! V1.1 - So what do you know?

Things that you know you know, things that you know you don’t know and things that you don’t know that you don’t know. Huh?

This is a complicated premise to work with so ill start with a few examples to set the mood. Starting with something that I know; I know how to cook two-minute noodles. It was one of the first tasks I learnt when I first moved out of home, mum was no longer in the picture and I didn’t have a girlfriend to replace her so I had to fend for myself. I purchased my first packet from Coles, read the instructions on the side and added another crucial skill to the resume of my life. This is something I know that I know.

Also staying with the leaving home theme, I know that I don’t know how to fly a plane. I have travelled by plane on many occasions to many destinations but for life of me, if you asked, I couldn’t tell you how they get up in the air and go. I find something very strange about 40 tonnes of flying metal that is close enough in my opinion to the shape of an anchor.

Now on to the really hard part, how the hell and I going to describe something that I don’t know that I don’t know?

Poker for me is best example in my books. Now thinking back to my first piece I wrote that it was my brother who dragged me to my first poker event but lets step back one step further and talk about before that.

Before that first poker tournament, I had never heard of anything other than five-card draw and thought it was an extinct game that only cowboys used to play. I also didn’t know anything about free poker; online poker or even the possibility of have a career is what is now a booming industry. My point is, that before I was introduced to poker, not only did I not know anything about the game; I didn’t even know I didn’t know. As I said, I thought there was only one type of poker!

The reason this is so interesting to me is because I see myself as two different people. The person I was before poker and the person I am now. The person I was before poker was quite aimless. I had ambition but no passion to channel that ambition. Don’t get wrong, I wasn’t a drop out or a bum. In fact I have completed a few different education courses at both University and TAFE level since graduating secondary school I just never found anything I truly loved.

As I never pursued a career in any of the fields I completed and education in I found myself trapped in a job and life that was unsatisfying. I was “going career” in retail. The term “going career” was a little in joke my teammates used to share with me while I an employee at the Kmart brand of Coles Myer. My first job was at Kmart and I was employed for nearly eight year! In this time I was awarded employee of the month on four occasions at three different stores and even employee of the year twice at two different stores. Please don’t think this is just a gloat session, I only say this because for a while I really did think I was going to be that “career Kmart guy” that all my friends joked about. This was such a disturbing thought to me and I guess I only kept it up for as long as I did was because I thought I didn’t really have much else going on and my parents where proud that I had a good job and I was going places.

Now this is where poker really came in to my life! One of the more amusing days in my life was the day I arrived home one weekend and told my parents I had resigned from Kmart and that my future lay waiting before me in the realm of poker tournament hosting! To put it lightly, my parents where very far from impressed and it wasn’t until they met my close friends and boss’s Garth and Brett Kay that some of the pain was alleviated, I’ll save the whole story for another time.

Anyways I have now rambled on for way to long and I really only had one message I wanted to push across and that’s; of all the things that have impacted on my life it was the thing that I didn’t know that I didn’t know, once I knew, everything changed… you know?

[trishan]

Wow, the kid can write. There's actually some physcology term for what you describe although I don't recall it. I am looking forward to at least weekly articles now Nathan. I particularly am interested in hearing more about what your parents thought about the whole poker thing.

I have parents who are very old school and it's sort of expected that you go to school, get good grades then study medicine or law and worse come to worse you can always do engineering, pharmacy or god forbid, science.

If I ever wanted to take poker more seriously I think I may be kicked out of the family.

[Garth Kay]

I swear to god this is the most eloquent Butler has ever been in his life, is there a template or something you are using? Ghost writer?

Just jokes. I am actually quite enjoying your writing style Nath, very amusing and keeps me interested even though I know most of the story.

It has inspired me to at least start contemplating what I am to write about in my blog.

[Scotty]

[Garth's blog]

<insert raft of mum jokes here>

[/blog]

[Garth Kay]

Shrugs and Mum jokes! I am what I am!

And if you're good at something you need to share it with the world!

[Scotty]

There might be some copyright issues, but you could name your blog "How i met your mother" ...