Poker legend Johnny Moss is famous for saying that “I feel my skill at poker is good enough collateral for a bank loan.” Well, that’s a bold enough statement. And Johnny Moss was a good enough – and lucky enough – player that he could make such an outlandish statement and almost be taken seriously for it. Which brings me to the issue of playing poker professionally.

Despite the glamorous, laughter-and-light-filled life so many of the television pros seem to be living, remember that they are the extreme exceptions. If you’ve hung out at Fallsview as much as I have you’ll soon realize that the life of most so-called “pros” is one of grinding out a couple of hundred dollars a day, playing as tight as a nun, avoiding any speculative action and, well, avoiding any fun. If you want to see a fun bunch don’t sit at a table with a crew of leather-assed, long-faced grinders known as “pros,” they’ll put you off poker forever.

I list as my epithet a “semi-professional" player for good reason. I’ve tried to make a full-time living at it, and am skillful enough to do okay, but because of the unpredictability of results – not over the long run, but during those intermittent and inevitable destructive spells of card death or cold decks or just bad luck – I found the entire process far too nerve-racking, and the consequent insecurity terrible on my health and my relationships. More than one woman has left me high and dry because of poker life. Sure, if I was winning millions they’d be kissing my feet, but I’m not winning millions. I do okay, but nothing to really broadcast or boast about. The minute you do that you’re asking for a bad run. The poker gods always seem to be listening in.

I am clear-eyed enough to recognize my limitations – I know I can never be a great poker player because I don’t have the nervous system for it. It’s like Robert De Niro’s Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull lamenting the fact that he can never be heavyweight champion because of the diminutive size of his hands – so I will never be a champion poker player because I can’t bear the roller-coaster ride of poker. I get down, I get depressed, I go into a very dark place when I lose – and especially when I lose after having made the correct play. That’s what I’m talking about. Making the correct, the absolutely correct play and still getting dirtied by some donkey.

Someone at the casino the other night, a cheerful amateur originally from Newfoundland (as he informed anyone within earshot) sat at a $2 to $5 table with a group of local grinders and couldn’t help but notice their curmudgeonly demeanour. After a few hands and lots of mumbling and grumbling, he very eloquently put it this way: “Lord tunderin´ Jesus, why would you want to turn a game that you love into a job that you hate?” This silenced the grinders for a moment as they considered the Newfoundlander’s words. But by the next hand no one could remember what the guy had said, nor did they care.

Emile Frendo of the Honeymoon City is a semi-professional poker player and winner of the 2006 Pirate Poker Open Championship.