JV Juega El Póker En Nicaragua

I have a life motto, and I think it's a good one: "Walk down the beach, pick up everything you find, and turn it into a party hat." Service to this motto has taken me to some pretty strange places: like Zurich, teaching stand-up comedy to the Swiss; Jamaica, in the heat of a nationwide riot - er, election; the South Island of New Zealand, where sheep outnumber humans by a factor of, at last authoritative count, roughly 10 to one.

Recently, the strange waves I surf washed me up in Managua, Nicaragua. I've been there several times over the past decade, and noted many changes on the nation's long march from Central American backwater to full-fledged resident of the global village. This trip's big change? Poker, at last, has come to Nicaragua.

And so, of course, I went out to find it. This led me, by a fairly long traverse down streets that could be called "paved" only in the loosest sense of the word, to the Pharaohs Casino. By good fortune, I happened to arrive just as a one-table satellite was getting under way. The game was no-limit Texas hold'em (yippee!). The buy-in was paltry: a mere 400 cordobas; roughly just 20 of our rapidly devaluing dollars. And the top two winners of the shootout would advance to the next day's main event, just like winning a satellite into the big one at the World Series of Poker, only on an infinitesimally smaller scale. Considering my noted expertise in poker (all those books; all those bad beats on www.pokerreallyhatesme.com), I figured I was a lock to advance to the next round. Just one problem: Given my limited grasp of Spanish (though I try, I really do), I was never able to determine, exactly, the structure of the tournament, the intervals of rising blinds, or even the starting time of the next day's event. This last point will prove crucial, as we shall see.

Still, playing poker beats not playing poker any day of the week, whether you measure those days in Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Lunes, Martes, Miércoles, or even Δευτέρα, Τρίτη, Τετάρτη, as the Greeks would have it. I've played in underground clubs in Sweden, where everyone talked about me behind my back right to my face. I've played in France, handicapped by ignorance of the language, game rules, betting structure, and currency value. I've played in New Jersey in a "charity" game, where I tried to find out the house rake and a guy with no neck growled, "Youse don't ask." No problem. Poker, like life, is a learning experience, and I'm prepared to pay for my education when necessary.

But it turns out that all my hours frittered away on www.pokerreallyhatesme.com weren't entirely wasted after all. I just ripped up that sit-and-go. I had a good, solid strategy for the match, which included playing only premium hands early, and then opening up my hand selection and ratcheting my aggressiveness way up as the bubble loomed. It didn't hurt that everyone else's strategy was reminiscent of that old joke about the seafood diet: "see food, eat food." The prevailing any two will do attitude started to take its toll in bust-outs.

Meanwhile, Pharaohs had some peculiar and counterintuitive house rules. For instance, if a player busted out on the big blind, the button didn't freeze, but advanced. This resulted in the player who should have next taken the big blind taking the small blind instead, and enjoying a half-a-blind free ride. I tried to protest, but my every attempt was lost in the vortex between my bad Spanish and the floorman's steadfast commitment to "that's how we do it here." The concept of the dead button, it seems, has yet to live in Managua.

In the event, I managed to navigate the rocky shoals of some very sketchy floor decisions (including the apportionment of a side pot on a basis that can only have been influenced by the I Ching or, perhaps, phases of the moon). By the time we got down to threehanded, I had well over half the chips, and I won going away. Yay me, right?

But now we come to that crucial point I mentioned earlier. Remember, I was working in Nicaragua, spending my days building a social-action TV drama designed "to teach effective family communication and positive models for microeconomic enterprise." (I know, I know: How sexy is that?) This was my day job, and day jobs have a tendency to take place during the day. Hey, I'm no dummy: I look out for my own interests. Before I plunked down my 400 cordobas for the satellite, I took pains to gain assurance (from three different people!) that the next day's event would start at 7 p.m., well after working hours. But when I got my receipt for winning the satellite, I learned that, yep, the main event would start at 2 p.m., spang-blam in the middle of my workday.

Transferable? Yet another concept foreign to these shores.

What could I do? What would you do? I try not to be an ugly American in this world (often having to settle for being a paunchy, panicky, short, bald American instead). I saw no point in railing against the awful unfair unfairness of it all. I was stuck with a tournament win I couldn't cash - and out the princely sum of 20 bucks. Oh, well. That's what happens when you surf strange waves. Sometimes you wipe out on the beach.

The episode was not without value, though. It reminded me of a lesson I now would share with you: In poker, as in life, you don't always know completely what's going on, and sometimes you can't know completely what's going on. If you choose to participate under such circumstances, you have to be willing to take surprises and setbacks in stride. Alternatively, you could spend the evening in your hotel room drinking Nicaraguan rum (some of the world's finest) and watching CNN en Español. In poker, as in life, you make the best possible decision based on the best available information. After that, "Let the chips fall where they may."

I went into that tournament with my eyes wide open. I couldn't know all the crucial factors, and I accepted that. No matter. For just a double sawbuck, I enjoyed poker in Nicaragua, and added that experience to my growing collection of party hats; all of which just serves to reinforce what I understand about the ongoing adventure of my poker and my life, and what I would have you understand about yours: If everything you encounter turns into a party hat, you're probably not going too far wrong.

John Vorhaus is the author of the Killer Poker book series. He resides in cyberspace at vorza.com, and in the blogosphere at somnifer.typepad.com.