Stick to the Point - Any Point

I admire Andy Glazer immensely. He is a gentleman and a gifted, polished writer. I like the way he throws in a lot of great quotes in his stories, although I'm not sure if that's because he's cultured or just looks them up in Bartlett's Quotations like I do. In any event, his tournament write-ups are lucid, insightful, entertaining, and very readable. Andy also happens to be an attorney. But, as Joe E. Brown said in the famous last line of the film Some Like it Hot, after he discovered that his "girlfriend" Jack Lemmon was really a boy, "Well, nobody's perfect."

Anyway, a while back I was intrigued to notice that Andy had made a rare post on rgp, the Internet poker newsgroup site. He was complaining about the tendency of so many posted threads to be "hijacked" and veer off in other directions as the messages twisted and turned like the Mississippi River, until people ended up viciously arguing topics that had not the remotest connection with the original message.

I know what he means. Some of those follow-up posts wander around so erratically that they make Mike Caro's columns look as spare and direct as a Hemingway short story.

Andy suggested that anyone wanting to divert from the central theme of a post should show the courtesy of starting a new post rather than tangling up an existing one. He got mixed responses. One rgp regular suggested that "Mr. Author" (AuthorAndy is his screen name) stick to writing his book about a spoiled tournament star and not try to run the lives or ruin the fun of rgp groupies, who hang around the house in bathrobes picking lint out of their navels and checking rgp several times a day.

Well, I agree with Andy. After all, it's very disconcerting to try to follow a serious poker subject, such as the best starting hands in Omaha high-low, only to find that 22 threads later the discussion has morphed into a spirited debate over the merits of SAT college entrance tests. My theory is that most rgp habitues have serious cases of attention-deficit disorder.

So, I would like to address the important topic of sticking to the point when writing for that newsgroup. You may ask why I don't just post this on that poker newsgroup rather than in my column. I have a very good reason: rec.gambling.poker doesn't pay me.

Now, I will give my lecture on sticking to the point, and I promise to make it short and sweet. To quote a line from Hamlet, "Brevity is the soul of wit." There are a lot of great lines in Hamlet. My favorite is the one he wrote about railbirds: "Neither a borrower nor a lender be, even when he says he's rooting for you." Wait a minute, I'm getting sidetracked now just like Mike Caro. Let's stick to the point, shall we?

Anyway, let's say someone asks about Omaha hands and hopes for satisfying answers. I'll use the analogy of a male fish swimming upstream to spoon, or spawn, or whatever it is they do with other fish. If it sticks to the main channel, it will get there quickly and have its choice of a real babe fish to mess around with. But if it wastes time dawdling and exploring side channels and tributaries, it'll end up with a dog fish.

Now, perhaps you've been spoiled by my usual weighty articles and think this is too trifling a subject to devote a whole column to. Oh, yeah? What about when Vince Burgio took up most of a column talking about how he never knows which way to turn when he gets off a certain elevator at Binion's? Big deal. I still can't remember which way to turn when I get off the elevator at the building where I've lived for about 80 years now.

Hold it, quit distracting me and let me get to the point about sticking to the point. I was talking about fish going upstream, right? I'm not sure if it's salmon or trout that do that. I don't know much about salmon, but I used to trout fish when I had part ownership of a condo apartment in Mammoth Lakes, California. I think I used worms for bait. I was told it was more sporting to use flies, but I had a hard time catching them, and I never could get a fly to stick to the hook.

Mammoth is a great ski resort. I used to ski there a lot. The first time I did I broke my leg. I took one lesson, thought it was easy, and stupidly took a lift all the way to the top. I was shooting down a mile a minute and having a great time when I suddenly realized that I hadn't learned how to stop. Eventually I did stop, but my leg kept going. Nowadays they have computerized releases on your ski bindings so that if you just sneeze you pop free. Back in the Stone Age when I started, they just nailed your foot to the ski, so if you took a bad fall you were dead meat. Back at the hospital …

See what I mean? I started off talking about Omaha hands, and Andy got me diverted to the dangers of skiing. Next time, start your own thread, pal.

You can send your comments and complaints to Max at [email protected].