Just playing some cards

Sometimes it’s the simple things.

As ,y vision got worse, one of the things I had to give up was playing poker. It was something I wasn’t necessarily all that good at, but I enjoyed it none the less.

I’d read some stories about people that were blind pulling up to the tables and trying it, so I tried to back in September before Jen and I were planning a trip to Vegas for a family get-together.

But I wasn’t just going to show up at the poker room and say “How are we going to do this?” That’s just not fair to anybody.

So I placed a call to the poker room at Wild Horse Pass to talk with someone on how we would work out any accommodations that I’d need. I got escalated up the food chain two or three times before I got transferred to a supervisor or manager or someone with instructions to leave them a voicemail and that I’d get a call back.

Well, that never happened.

I called a few more times and didn’t get any farther, so I did a little digging around on their website and found the number for their guest relations manager. I left him a strongly-worded voicemail where I may have mentioned the Americans with Disabilities Act and the next day I had everything worked out. I had approval to have my wife sit behind me and whisper to me what my cards were. As far as the community cards, the dealer would just read them to me.

So, with that worked out, I went to play a tournament just to see how it would go. I played like crap, but it went well.

I played a few more times before the trip to Vegas, including a trip o a different casino in town. I called them as well as the Monte Carlo, where we were staying in Vegas, and asked if the same arrangement would be ok with them and neither casino had any objections.

It’s taken some time to get comfortable with the arrangement, but it works out pretty well. But, more importantly, I felt like I got a little chunk of my life back since I got back into one of my hobbies.

Now, one of the things that I get asked a lot is if I feel like I’m at a huge disadvantage not being able to see the other players. While I do miss a few things, I feel like it’s not a huge disadvantage since I always read more into people’s betting patterns than what faces they were making or anything like that.

As far as Las Vegas, I’m going again in a few weeks and will be playing at the Monte Carlo again. They were so awesome with us that I won’t stay anywhere else.