It’s 7.15 am – Christmas Day 2007…
I’m sweating.
My heart is pounding.
… And I’m out for redemption.
The bad news – I’m already two Cadbury’s Celebrations, a Quality Street and a packet of honey-roasted peanuts in the hole…
The good news?
Well, this draw, I’ve got pocket aces…
… And I’m planning to dig myself outta the hole by taking my Grandad to the fucking cleaners…
Well, that was until the flop…
At which point the old man had a BIG grin on his face.
… A grin that I’d seen before.
… And a grin that in my experience said:
“Chuck, best throw in the towel before this get’s REAL ugly!”
See when I was young, my grandad taught me how to play cards.
His favourite Poker.
Which every Christmas, led to me, my brother and my old man getting extorted for chocolate and B-I-G money.
A Hutton family tradition that I now consider a rite of passage and an annual life lesson in body language, verbal cues and calling people’s bluff.
Now, the biggest lesson my Grandad taught me at the poker table was this:
Sometimes you lose – again, and again (and again).
… And just because you gambled and lost, it didn’t mean you made the wrong choice.
See gambling is about probabilities, NOT certainties.
And since then, if history has taught me anything, it’s that there is no certainty.
In gambling or life.
Nothing is a given.
Success, for self-made men like you and I, rides on running the odds… stacking the deck in your favour… and playing the fucking game.
Will you lose?
Yep.
But that doesn’t mean you stop playing.
It means my friend, you dust yourself off, saddle back up and calmly state:
“Hey Old Timer – Deal Me The Fuck Back In…”
Make More. Provide More. Be More.
Charlie Hutton
