DOYLISM OF THE DAY: “Life involves risk. You can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first.”

I’m sitting at my desk at 8:30 at night wondering if I should go to bed, watch a movie and go to sleep. Good Googa Mooga! What in the world has happened? Poker games are getting to be scarce in Vegas and all the players are going to tournaments in other cities and even other countries. It’s my opinion that these tournaments may be the end of the high and medium stake poker games. Back in the 80’s, 90’s and the early years of 2000, there were games everywhere. If there wasn’t a game going, Chip Reese, Pug Pearson and myself would sit down and start games that would fill up and run for days. Now between tournaments and the internet, you could shoot a cannon through the high limit sections of Vegas cardrooms and not hit anyone. Thank goodness for NFL football and the college bowl games. With no poker games going, they fill the time in nicely. I always bet the underdogs in the college bowls and I had a banner year as the underdogs won by a 3-1 margin. The NFL is a little trickier and you have to be lucky to pick the winners. The Brunson family has a tradition of making Kentucky Colonel Bourbon candy for the holidays. We haven’t done it for a couple of years, so our family, Todd and his wife Anjela and my daughter Pam joined Louise and I to start making the candy again. We made the best tasting candy you ever ate. It was so good I made another batch the next day that was even better. Maybe I’ll join the Food Network on TV. I took some of my candy down to my doctor and he showed me the results of my last checkup. I’m one lucky guy! All my blood levels were in the normal range and on an echocardiogram they made, everything about my heart was perfect. I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve always felt that a poker player’s heart pumps so hard it keeps your arteries clean. After all the chit I’ve been through, mine are completely clear. You probably shouldn’t quote me on that :) . On the flip side of that, seems like we are losing a lot of poker players in the past few years. We lost Amir Vahedi a few days ago with complications from his diabetes. Amir was in the Iranian army before coming to America and becoming one of the more popular poker players. Amir represented DoylesRoom.com for a year and always did anything that was asked of him. He did everything with an infectious laugh that made everybody love him. I hope they put a box of his trademark cigars in his coffin because I know how much he liked them. RIP my friend. -DB