Rememberment

Like so many others, I found poker during the great poker boom of the early 2000s. Poker shows (such as the World Poker Tour ) started to become popular, and I was quickly hooked by the combination of skills that it takes to be a successful player. And it is, indeed, a game of skill. While randomness certainly plays a part - often infuriatingly so - it's only important in the short term. The more you play, the more apparent this becomes; if you put your money in as a 60-40 favourite, you may lose 10 times in a row. But if you make that play 100,000 times, you're almost certainly going to show a profit. But while maths is important, it isn't the aspect that I find most fascinating. Sure, you certainly need to acquire some understanding of the maths involved (such as how odds work or what an M-ratio means in a tournament) but that's all just mechanical. To me, the real beauty of the game comes from the fact that it's largely about telling stories . First of all, as th...

I spent some of my most memorable summers at my aunt's countryside home. Often there was a whole bunch of kids; Jari and Juha (my cousins, who used to break my toys at Christmas), Jukka (with whom I had the long road trip), Ilkka and Tiina (cousins of Jari and Juha from their dad's side) and sometimes even Jani, Marko and Mika, my older cousins from Sweden. The summer of '88 was a fun one. Elementary school was over for me, so when my aunt and her husband left us alone for a weekend, my cousins decided it was time to celebrate the occasion in the most Finnish way possible. There was an old junk car in the woods nearby, and my craftly cousins had prepared a bucket full of prison wine in its trunk. And so we went upstairs into their room, put on some Samantha Fox tunes and started to party. I didn't need much to get a nice buzz going (imagine that - I was a scrawny little 12-year old after all) so when my mom suddenly called to check on me, Jari's face turned pale. I ...

I've had the busiest of weeks, not really having the time or energy for a proper update so this entry will be brief. Writing this, it's late Saturday evening. I have just returned from our fifth grade class union. About half of our group made it. Some of them I've met once or twice during all these years, others I had not seen at all since that time 40 years ago. I have to admit, I was a little anxious about the whole thing - I even considered not going at all. But I'm glad I did. It was a bit weird but wonderful at the same time, and hearing everyone's stories about what became of them and how their lives turned out was something special. There were stories of success and happiness, but also those of pain, sickness and loss. There was laughter and there were tears.  Many memories and names I had long forgotten came right back to me. Isn't it strange how your brain can just dig them back up instantly when someone else talks about them, while on your own they wou...

Mom's youngest sister Raija and her husband Reijo had a tradition of visiting Lapland every summer. They usually traveled by themselves while another of my aunts looked after us, but that summer they took their son Jukka and me with them. I guess we were now old enough to endure the long hours of sitting in the car. Jukka was a year younger than me, but seemed more mature. He was a pretty serious boy who had inherited his father's composure; always acting very calm and collected and though he also sometimes teased me a bit, we mostly got along just fine. Our cats were also siblings: Miru and Miiru were their names (Miiru was ours) so other than being cousins, we had that going for us as well to bind us together. The travel plan was pretty ambitious - we wouldn't just visit Lapland, but drive all the way north to Norway along the western border of Finland, and then all the way south along the eastern border before finally heading back home. It seems a bit crazy to think abou...