Patience

I had earlier written a piece about the health hazards, particularly to children, that may be attributable to using a computer for a prolonged period of time. I must confess, however, that I have been playing computer games for a long, long time. I doubt if anyone can recall the first game console that came out in the late seventies. It was called Atari. I used to play the table tennis like game that they first introduced. From there I got hooked on the small consoles called Game and Watch. I think I had something like five to ten of those. Next was the Nintendo game console with games like Mario Brothers, Link and many others.

The personal computers then introduced their own games. The first time I played a role playing game in the PC was the time they introduced the game Civilization. My wife would laugh at me because I used to keep the computer on for more than twenty four hours so that I can accumulate loads and loads of money.

Currently, I must admit, I am addicted to on-line poker. I have been playing the game since January this year. And I have accumulated more than $80 million in chips. You cannot imagine the frustrations I feel every time I get beaten by someone who calls an all-in bet despite the fact that he holds non betting cards in the first place but subsequently wins due to the luck of the draw.

Playing the game with other real people gives one an insight to the characteristics of a particular group of people. My current peeve involves Indonesians in general. These guys seem to have only two moves before a flop, all-in or fold. Every time they see a high card in the hole, they invariably would go all-in even if one of the pair is a 2. Playing with them is very exasperating particularly if you have cards that are callable but not in an all-in situation.

What I have learned however is invaluable in so far as I am concerned. I have learned that in playing poker, patience is a virtue. If you lose your patience, you will have the tendency to be very careless and end up losing all your chips. I guess this is true in life, too. As they say, the patient shall inherit the earth.