Last night, after the kid was snug in her bedsy-wedsy, the wife and I hosted our monthly poker game. We had our biggest turnout, 11 people, featuring:

- One woman who had never played poker before
- Another woman who brings her notebook each time, listing the order of hands
- Me, working on little sleep, mostly thanks the to the previous night's scream-fest

Several interesting things happened. In no particular order:

1) The woman who had never played poker before won our Texas Hold 'Em No Limit tournament.

2) I'm now, finally, a good enough player to note the mistakes I'm making, mere seconds after I make them. I am, however, totally unable to stop making them. Ignorance was bliss.

3) We had 7 men and 4 women at the table during the tournament. All 7 men fell out of the tournament before a single woman did. Since the men were, on average, slightly more experienced at Texas Hold 'Em than the women, I'm forced to conclude that either the women were taking advantage of their womanly wiles, or perhaps they just easily saw through our bluffing attempts. Or maybe we spent too much time staring at their breasts. Anyway, it seemed statistically anomalous. The odds of this happening were about 1 in 330.*

4) I came in 10th out of 11 people. Wooo! Top ten!

We got to bed about 5 hours before my daughter woke up the next morning. I went downstairs with her, all bleary-eyed, and promptly taught her how to play poker. Now, some people would say that I should not be teaching a five year-old how to gamble. Frankly, I'm inclined to agree. With my atrocious poker skills, she could use a much better teacher. In my defense, however, we played 5 hands and she won all 5. She even bluffed me out of one hand. I really suck.

So, the moral of the story is: Those who suck at Texas Hold 'Em can only hope for redemption through their kindergartner children.

* Assuming that all players have equal skill and equal luck. Also assuming that my statistics are better than my poker playing