How having a baby has ruined my poker game (and why I’m ok with it).

Annie Duke played the WSOP 8 months pregnant one year. How she did it, I do not know. I lost my poker game sometime around month 6. I think the growing baby living in my uterus somehow siphoned all my brain juice (that’s a medical term, yo), and I became unable to make any proper analytical decision.

Sample discussion of a typical post-game analysis:

Banky: Why did you call that raise?

Me: Um. I don’t know?

Banky: There was a 4 card flush on the board.

Me: Um. Yes.

Banky: What did you have?

Me: I forget.

But, you know, pregnancy can do weird shit to you. So I chalked it up to my status as a human incubator, and shrugged it off. Then I actually had the baby and, well, that was some insanity all on it’s own. ‘Nuff said.

When I finally (after 7.5 months) started getting some sleep, I thought my game might come back. Nope. I still suck. I chase flushes and open-ended straight draws are my own personal kryptonite. Raising pre-flop is a foreign concept to me. Value-bet on the river – why would I do that?

Why this has all happened, I’m not quite sure. I’m only half kidding about the brain juice – my memory really is for shit these days. But maybe it’s something more...maybe karma has decided that my life is an embarrassment of riches (good job, hot husband, and now a lovely happy, healthy, little boy) and decided to smite me with the poker game of a blue-haired old lady at a charity casino. If that’s the case, then I’m cool with it. I’d rather lose to a 2 outer on the river because I checked the whole way, then change anything about TartWell – because he, dear friends, is the stone-cold nuts.