When the trader Victor Sperandeo wrote the book “Trader Vic”, he started it with a story of a gamble taking place at a barn. A new guy walked in without knowing the rule and later realized:
Three clubs and two diamonds constitute a gamboni, the top winning hand in this establishment.
He lost with a good hand, so he continued, then soon realized there’s another rule:
Only one gamboni will be permitted per night in this establishment.
You guessed, he lost it again with a good hand. I could expand on this story and add another rule:
No gamboni will be allowed in the spring season.
Let me stop here. You should get the idea by now.
What does it all imply?
The point of the story is that before you can master anything, you better start to know the rules inside out; and only after that you are going to start to be possibly good at something.
Easy as it sounds, the story doesn’t end there. The rules are normally exceptions, so you need to have patience to wait for rule #1 to happen in our gamboni case. For rule #2, you need to sit through the entire night; and for the rule #3 I proposed, you might have to sit through the entire spring season. Which means, time is mandatory for the game.
No matter how smart you are, you probably still have to sit through a lot of games. Therefore, it could be very long before you can get to know all the rules, leaving alone you are getting good at it. Remember, winning is only the by-product after you know all the rules.
I haven’t told you all yet. There’s a even worst part to the story. Nobody said the rule can’t be changed. Moreover, nobody will notify you when that happens. So when you are learning and practicing based on the existing rules, you need to also keep an eye out watching carefully and patiently upon a rule change. Does that sound scary to you?
Don’t be, it’s just part of the game. Rule change doesn’t happen often, but that is only because you know all the rules already. If not, you better get to know them. Haha.
