Dear Diary

I have never been very good at keeping records. At tax time, the best I can do is dump any vaguely pertinent papers I have collected onto my accountant's desk and let him figure things out. Rather than try to balance my checkbook, I simply take the bank's word for it when they send me a monthly statement. The fact that the statement more often than not says "Penalty for Insufficient Funds" I figure is just the price I pay for letting them do my paperwork. As far as household budgeting goes, don't be ridiculous. If I sat down and tried to budget for every quart of milk I plan to buy, I'd never have time for poker.

Ah, poker – my worst record-keeping nightmare of all. I hate to keep poker records because then I'm confronted with irrefutable proof of how badly I play. And since I can't deduct net losses from other income, why bother? I know, keeping track of results gives you discipline, but first you need the discipline to write them down. I did try, for a couple of years, but I never did get past February. That's as far as I could get before the endless string of minus signs so infuriated me that I tore up whichever ledger I was using. Still, one never knows. I might yet win the World Series of Poker and have need of records to offset my $5 million win.

Then, one day I entered a tournament where they were handing out Card Player poker diaries as gifts. Great. I blow a few hundred dollars on a tournament and get a $1.25 diary in return. Anyway, rather than let it go to waste, I resolved to put it to use and try to finally bring some order to my chaotic poker records.

"I'm going to keep accurate records of all my poker results," I proudly told my sweetie.

"Better stock up on lots of red ink," she replied encouragingly.

Ignoring her, I began perusing the ledger. I was intrigued to discover it included lots of little-known and expert pointers from Card Player columnists. Did you know, for example, that you have as much chance of being dealt aces as you do deuces? I never thought of that.

I began filling it in and was doing great until my sweetie later happened to come across it again and expressed skepticism at some of my entries.

"Maxwell," she said suspiciously, "I see you've entered 40 straight wins here. Isn't that just a trifle exaggerated?"

"Well, you see," I explained, "it's essential that I verify my standing as a poker pro."

She began laughing so hard that she started to choke. Five minutes later she had finally recovered. "Please don't say things like that," she requested. "It's dangerous to my health. You're a professional, all right. A professional fish."

"Hey," I protested. "Remember how I cleaned up in that $40-$80 game?"

"That's right – 40 and 80 cents. Who were you playing against, Doyle Brunson?"

I began crying. "Everybody makes fun of the way I play. So what if I exaggerated a little in the diary. It makes me feel better, and where's the harm?"

"The harm, you idiot, is that when you tell the IRS that you won $50,000 instead of losing that much, you're going to have to pay taxes on money you never won."

"Oh, don't worry, I've got that figured out, too. I'll simply offset my wins with my poker expenses."

"What expenses? All that aspirin and Alka Seltzer you have to buy?"

"No, no, stuff like entertainment."

"Entertainment?" My sweetie began choking again. "Mr. Big Spender. For my last birthday you treated me to dinner at McDonald's with a two-for-one coupon good for any senior citizen selection served before 5 p.m."

"I took you to the movies, too."

"Oh, yeah, I forgot – a second-run theater showing year-old movies. One small box of popcorn between us, and I still haven't gotten off all the chewing gum that was on my seat."

I quickly changed the subject. "Look," I pointed out. "Here's $400 I spent when I treated Vince Burgio to dinner at Big Denny's Four-Star Buffet."

More choking. "Four hundred dollars? Their buffet is something like $4.95."

"Well, yeah, but then I had to pay for Vince's treatment at the Barstow Emergency Center."

My sweetie continued examining my diary, her eyes widening with each page. Finally, she put it down. "Well, I will say this much, Maxwell. You have lots of things here that you could sure use more of in your columns."

"And what would that be?"

"Humor."