Poker is Cooking

Poker is cooking. While it is certainly a lot sexier to compare poker and coitus, such a comparison leads to an ungainly conclusion – do you really want to think of 10 un-showered old guys sitting in a smoky room and sex at the same time? Cooking is the better metaphor.

• First of all, poker is a game of patience just like cooking. Even for the most aggressive of players, most of your time at the poker table is spent folding your cards and waiting. Likewise, most of your time spent cooking is time spent waiting for the right opportunity to fuss with your ingredients more.

• Once the time is right, a lot of things happen all at once. In poker, you’ll fold five hands in a row then pick up pocket tens. Immediately, you have to factor in your table position, how many players are already involved in the pot, who those players are, how many poker chips you have and THEN you have to figure out how to bet. Same thing goes for cooking: you wait and wait for your skillet to heat up then you have to add two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, three minced garlic cloves, pinch of salt, a teaspoon of cumin, a little chili powder, a bay leaf, then sear the chicken but flip it before it burns, then add the white wine then simmer, cover… and wait for another twenty minutes.

• A card room or a casino works a lot like a restaurant. First thing that you do is walk up to the person at the counter and put your name on a list to sit down. Then you go wait at the bar for them to call you.

• Finally your name is called and someone in a suit leads you to a chair at a table. Once you sit down, someone even brings you chips just like at a Mexican restaurant.

• The dealer is your server. If you cook at home, everyone usually serves themselves, but once you enter the friendly confines of a restaurant the server is there to speed your meal along and take care of any special requests you might have. The dealer will take care of your table in much the same way. The dealer also expects to be tipped.

• While you can make most any dish in most any place provided you have the ingredients, cooking tends to be very different in different parts of the world. From the beans and rice of Costa Rica to the high priced gourmet of LA to the fried everything of Great Britain, food changes from place to place. So too does poker: go to Costa Rica and expect to get involved in slow Limit Hold’em and Stud, go to LA and you’ll be involved in high stakes action-packed No Limit Hold’em and go to Great Britain and get ready to play Pot Limit Omaha.

• Whether you play in a home game or go to out to eat, it’s always nice to do it on a neatly set table.

• Great chefs and poker masters come in all shapes and sizes – from the Mario Batali/Doyle Brunson type to the Gus Hansen/Bobby Flay type. Body type is no pre-requisite for either activity.

• Movies about both tend to be awful. If you are looking for a truly awful poker movie, and there are so many to choose from, check out “All-in” with Michael “Mr. Blonde” Madsen. For a recent wretched cooking movie rent “Spanglish” with Adam Sandler. On the other hand, for a good poker flick check out the seminal "Rounders" with Matt Damon and Edward Norton. And for fine food cinema you can’t go wrong with Stanley Tucci’s all-time great “Big Night”.

• At the heart of all cooking there is a simple equation – change in temperature + food = cooking. Every last bit of food you ever eat has been through some derivation of this equation. At the heart of all poker there is an equally simple equation – cards + bet = pot and every cent you win or lose in poker has been done under this equation’s umbrella. Any beginner can pick up a get a seat at a table and win a pot just like any ten year old can make scrambled eggs.

• Of course, to master either takes a lifetime.