To e or Not to e - Decisions, Decisions!

I recently got an e-mail from the editor in chief of Card Player. Because of a format change, writers had to decide whether or not they wanted their e-mail addresses included at the end of their columns.



Yes or no. Simple, right?



Not for someone like me, who takes five minutes to make up my mind when a waitress asks if I want cream and sugar with my coffee. Compared to me, Hamlet made split-second decisions. To be or not to be, that is the question. "OK, I'll take 'to be.' No, wait, 'not to be.' Hold it. Let me think about this for a few months."



Well, all Hamlet had to do was decide whether or not he would kill himself. I had a far more serious decision to make: whether or not to identify myself via e-mail.



Does this sound like an even stupider-than-usual and pretty thin premise for a column? Well, it's not, because there are lots of ramifications to consider. Everything in this world is connected. Just consider this lovely and thought-provoking quote from poet Francis Thompson, the English poet: "Thou canst not stir a flower without troubling of a star." (I'm not sure which star he was talking about; Tom Cruise, maybe.)



Anyway, the problem is that if I let my readers know how to reach me, I might get something. On the other hand, what I might get would be grief.



I mean, it's bad enough what lands in my electronic mailbox from the non-poker world each day. Here's a brief sampling:



"Dear Shapiro: My name is Botswani River. I am the finance minister of Rwanda and it is my pleasure to inform you that the sum of $Six Million has been left for you by …" Then there's the weekly forward from my friend Sharon with the hoax-of-the-week warning of some imminent danger; the nauseating, "Give someone a hug today and pass this on" feel-good messages from another friend, Nadia; the "phishing" schemes, such as the warning that my PayPal account will be closed unless I provide all of my personal data (I don't even have a PayPal account); all the usual spam, offering everything from refinance loans to Canadian Viagra; the forwards of cartoons and jokes that I saw and heard 50 years ago, and so on.



And that's just from the outside world. From the world of poker, I get earthshaking news releases from Google on poker boot camps, books (The Secret to Winning at Crazy Pineapple), Dirty Wally bobbleheads, stories about a bar in Nebraska that was raided because it had an illegal video poker machine in the men's room, and a woman who was paid $15,000 to have a Golden Palace online site's logo tattooed on her forehead. Well, those aren't too bad, because once every five years I find something I can turn into a story, like the one about PokerStars' survey asking how much a poker player would need to give up sex for a year. And, of course, there are the countless pitches from other online sites, most of which I never heard of.



Another irksome e-mail message I often get goes something like this: "I am a high school student who is just learning to play poker. I would like to turn professional and would appreciate any tips a pro like you could offer me to help me with my game."



Hey, why are you asking me, kid? What the hell do I know about winning at poker? And if I did, why would I be giving free advice to some punk I don't even know? On the other hand, if I ignore the kid and don't answer his e-mail, I'll feel rotten about myself all day … well, for at least two minutes, maybe. Then I get a rush of guilt when I see that Jan Fisher has instantly responded with about 80 pages of poker advice.



Then, of course, there's the basic e-mail I get all the time: "Hey, Max. I love your column. How's Big Denny? You're the best thing in Card Player, and you should ask that cheapskate Barry Shulman for a raise. P.S. Can you stake me in a few tournaments?"



Other readers love to send me stupid corrective criticism, like the time I wrote about how I spent a month traveling to a mountaintop in the Himalayas to find a wise old man who could tell me why Q-7 is called the "computer hand," and someone sternly admonished me that I got my travel directions all wrong. (Sigh.)



The most infuriating series of poker e-mails I ever got was from some guy who e-mailed me about every week trying to get me involved in various poker projects he was pitching. I finally had to threaten to send Big Denny after him if he didn't leave me alone.



On the other hand – or, as Hamlet would say, "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind" – I sometimes (rarely, but sometimes) get positive poker e-mail. For example, there was the e-mail from player and entrepreneur Mori Eskandani, offering me an assignment writing bios of top players who would appear on a poker game show.



And then came "Poker Pete." That's a talking poker doll that will be on the market soon. I was contacted by Jeff Gasman of Full House Toys, offering me a job coming up with poker expressions that the doll could utter. This was a fun assignment, but there were some frustrations. For example, the most common expression in poker is "f- – – – – – river," but for some reason they wouldn't use it. The second most common expression is, "How could you play that hand?" But then I discovered that Phil Hellmuth had patented and copyrighted that line and it couldn't be used. I kept plugging away and finally came up with some 20 or so "side-splitting phrases" (as the brochure describes them) to put into Pete's mouth.



Just think, the words of some writers and leaders will live forever in books (Call me Ishmael), in plays (Stellaaaa!), and in speeches ("Four score and seven years ago … "). Mine will live forever in a doll ("I think my seat is starting to get warm … or maybe it's the taco I had for dinner"). Oh, well, anything to get in Bartlett's Quotations.



But perhaps the most fortuitous poker e-mail I ever got came after I spotted Scott Fischman wearing a tee shirt with illustrations of a large and small stack of chips and the saying, "Size matters." That inspired me to do a column about all the companies making tees with funny poker sayings. One of them was Slowplaying apparel. The owner, Sol Joye, e-mailed to thank me and asked if he could send me a couple of shirts. Of course, as an ethical journalist, I could never accept gratuities, so instead, I asked if he could design a shirt for my sweetie. The next thing I knew, he was producing a whole line of Barbara Enright signature poker apparel, which should be on the market by the time this column sees print. If enough garments are sold, I'll be able to retire, even if it will deal a blow to literature.



OK, those are some of the pros and cons of printing or not printing my e-mail address. So, what's my decision? Like I said, I can never make up my mind. You decide for me, Steve.



Editor's note: Max can be contacted at [email protected]. Now, Max, wasn't that easy?