In Poker and Life, creativity abounds....

In Poker as in Life, using creativity to your advantage can make the single largest difference in your success or failure as you go. In Poker the ability to generate the action required and change your status quo, can take a great deal of imagination and preparation during the set up of a hand or two. With full commitment to utilizing a little creativity, your table image can be set for the hand, the session or in some players minds, even for the life of your Poker game.

When you've done everything just right, shifting your actions in and out of that image, should net you far more pots along the way.

SHOULD !

The danger of falling into the trap that is entitlement however, can be found within oneself after a particularly good winning session using maximum creativity to your benefit. It's at these moments that the Poker player needs to recognize the difference between reckless play full of enraged entitlement, and actual creativity being used to tell your opponent the story you want them to believe.

I had a particularly good session turn really fugly on me this weekend.

Strike that! It's total Bullshit!

I turned a really good session pretty bad this weekend, by believing that the story I had been telling the folks at the table, had been done well enough that they should all bow down to my superior abilities. And of course as always comes with the disgusting surge of entitlement, my holdings mean nothing to the actual play! It's me dammit! After everything you've seen along the way, give me your chips and lay down good hands because..... I'm in the pot!

I share this story with you now, for two reasons.

Firstly, I was pulled out of this sewer of emotion spiralling deeper and deeper into my on-line bankroll, by my beautiful Not-So-Mini-Peb's of all things. You see, she's taking part in her very first art showing this up-coming weekend. She's entered a couple of contests and if I haven't told you before, she won the first one and took second AND third in the last that she took part in. (can you sense the proud Daddy grin from there? :) ) This is the first time she'll be throwing her work and her soul out there for sale, so she's been a bit of a wreck. My words of consolation were about how wonderful her work is and how people would be crazy not to buy it and such. I just wanted to say all of the right things as any Father would, to make her feel better about herself going into this thing. Her response to my offerings was typical of everything I've ever tried to teach her along the way.

"Dad. I'm trying to tell a story with my work. People buying my art is not the be all to end all this weekend. It's far more important that they tell me which direction to go next. Because if I really want to be successful down the road, I can't ever stop telling my story. You know yourself Dad, if I expect to make great gobs of money this weekend, I'm only setting myself up for failure! I have no right to that kind of entitlement right now and unless I keep trying to tell a good and dedicated story, maybe I never will!"

When you're just plain stubborn and stupid enough to fall into the trap that you've tried to teach your child to avoid, I think it's only fitting that the child is the one to teach you the errors of your ways. I'm just glad I'm not too far gone to have really listened to her words! Hopefully I'll be able to keep that up for the rest of my lifetime. Not-So-Mini-Peb's is actually pretty clever! I think she may be able to teach me an awful lot of things I've forgotten, if I just let her tell a good story!

****EDIT as per The Doc****

Here are a few sample shots from our starving artist!




And of course, the starving artist herself.


I love you kid!

The second item of creativity I wanted to share today, is just a simple video offering. This one got to me however, for the creativity of not only the artists themselves who are truly, truly amazing, but the creative genius behind putting the whole thing together. If you've got five minutes or so, I think it's well worth your time.



My sincerest thanks for dropping by....