Poker rooms in the early 1990s were great. Know it’s an odd thing to say but let me explain why.

Back then, only the weirdos and outcasts hung around poker rooms. I was one of them. Very old retirees. Addicted gamblers. Loners. Misfits. Criminals. Basically, a lot of losers.

Again, I was one of them. We all had that one thing in common. We were all abnormal and kicked to the curb. We mixed with gentle and cutthroat old people regs. Pathetic creatures spending hours staring by the rail hoping for a $25 gift. Everyone smoking.

Coffee stained Card Player magazines left behind everywhere. The smell of carpet that hadn’t been vacuumed for far too long. People wearing outlandish clothing and not knowing it. Gold chains hanging out. Or JC Penney dress clothes.

This is the world I joined. This is the world I was able to escape. Followed by the most amazing 20+ yr run in Silicon Valley, I retired and returned to enjoy poker. What I found was much nicer physical environment. No more Dollar Store ambiance.

Card rooms that looked more like a nice interior of a home in Holmby Hills or Blackhawk. People dressed in overpriced dressy casual hoodies and $100 t-shirts. Retirees were there but they weren’t considered the grizzly room fixtures. They were frail and an afterthought.

The people were (in my older trained eyes) the same exact misfits and outcasts. One significant difference. Now, the people looked and acted like they were normal. Somehow, over the years, math had crept into the smoke filled world and gave them a sense of purity and pride.

They seemed to think they were normal at least or special at best. To my dual experienced eyes, they still look like me in the early 1990s. Completely lost and with no clue of what the other side looks like. With no lengthy soaking in the other world, they were clueless.

They fight and bicker. They look down on each others. They form their own little caste systems and elitist tribes. They use the legitimacy driving force of math to divide people - not unite. Instead of respecting the prior generation, they deride and spit on it.

Sayre’s Law. So little at stake and yet so much to fight over.

As I sit back on this quiet day, I have memories of those long past days and nights in the card room. They were miserable days. But, when I contrast it to today’s scene ...

... it is today’s scene that I think I would’ve hated and struggled in more. Because today’s poker world is full of elitist outcasts who make it uncomfortable for outcasts to feel at home. No one thinks they are alike anymore. Everyone thinks they are above others.

I write prolifically with hopes of helping those people who were like me in the early 90’s go where they really belong. An amazing career in tech. Poker is a sanitized, artificial facility. A facility to occasionally visit to get something “fixed” or for a fix.

The dirty, abandoned building we all congregated at no longer exists. It’s been bulldozed. You see progress. I sometimes feel it has regressed. I’ll breath second hand smoke any day over being forced to be near a Louis Vuitton backpack wearing douchebag who spent 25% of BR ...

... on a wristwatch while renting a room in a nice condo.

I’ll befriend the chain smoker who lives for free in a small room with stained carpet. Because that friend is me 30 years ago. And that friend is doing just fine without playing a hand in a poker room.