Yeah I did, and you don't listen, I tell you to play within your means, you risk your whole bank roll, I tell you not to over extend yourself, to rebuild, so you don't have to hock for more, I was giving you a living, showing you the playbook I put together off my beats and that wasn't enough for you.
JOEY KNISH, Rounders
Rounders is not a particularly good movie. It does for poker what The Hustler did for pool. Rounders is not a film that will change your life, but it does make you think about life. This is because of the three main characters--the cheater, the gambler, and the grinder.
Ed Norton plays Worm. Worm is a cheater. He cannot play an honest game of poker. He needs an edge to win, so he chooses to cheat at the game. His real gamble is in not getting caught. Naturally, he does get caught and pays high prices for his grift. The people in his life also pay a high price for befriending Worm.
Matt Damon plays Mike. Mike is a gambler. He plays an honest game of poker, but he takes huge risks which result in big wins and big losses.
John Turturro plays Knish. Knish is a grinder. He plays a safe game of poker where he takes small risks and grinds it out by taking small wins and cutting his losses. This style of play involves long sessions at the table where the grinder amasses those small wins. Essentially, a grinder is a blue collar poker player with a serious work ethic and iron discipline.
Of these three characters, I identify with Knish. He is my type of guy and represents a certain moral center to an otherwise empty movie. Though it is about poker, Rounders is also about that other game we call life. Unlike poker, the game of life is semi-permanent. It ends in death. Until then, you are in the game whether you like it or not. This leaves you the decision of how you are going to play that game. Are you going to be a cheater, a gambler, or a grinder?
I am not a cheater. I know of no one who made it for long in life as a cheater. Yet, cheaters won't have it any other way. This explains the high recidivism rate of criminals. In their eyes, doing the right thing is for suckers.
I am also not a gambler. Gamblers are the ones who try to make it as athletes, actors, rock stars, and day traders. The sad thing is that many of them actually succeed with these gambles making them the bait for suckers to play the same game and lose. As I say frequently, for every Brad Pitt, there are a hundred good looking fellows waiting tables in Hollywood.
I am a grinder. Hard work and discipline are the only strategies that I know in life that consistently work. I prefer to win by not losing.
Mike and Worm mock Knish and his grind. Yet, Knish defends himself and his strategy. He has this moment where he tells Mike that his kids eat. Knish doesn't delude himself with dreams of playing in the World Series of Poker. Poker is a job for Knish. Poker is the grind. Knish doesn't have the luxury of taking big risks and big losses. What Knish considers wisdom and prudence is cowardice to Mike and Worm.
You learn to ignore the insults when you are a grinder. Ultimately, you have to play your own game in your own way. I find that the cheaters are 100% losers. The gamblers are 90% losers. The grinders are 90% winners. I wish I could say that grinders are 100% winners, but life isn't like that. You are going to get knocked around. Not every hand is a winning hand. The best you can do is limit your losses and stay in the game.
The real debate is between the gamblers and the grinders. Knish offers a hand to Mike if Mike is prepared to grind. Mike chooses to gamble, so Knish cuts him off. Naturally, Mike turns out to be a big winner at the end of the movie. This is when people get turned off with the film. The fool wins in the end, but you know he shouldn't. Mike learns no lesson but aims for the World Series to try his luck there.
That ending is a bitter lesson of life. Life is not fair. The big wins go to the fools. They always have and always will. No one sees the fools who lost it all. They only see the winners. That is the secret at the heart of grinding. You have to have the discipline to resist the temptation to gamble.
I have lived long enough to see the gamblers win and lose. The losers outnumber the winners. That fact is why I stick to the grind no matter what. I don't care about winning. I only care about not losing. All I can say is I have seen gamblers come and go, but I am still in the game.
I do not play poker. Life has all the risks I care to take. I grind at life. I got busted up awhile ago, but that is also part of the grind. My work is recovery. The temptation is to gamble as if I could win back what I lost. That is foolishness. I never deviate from the grind. I pray, and I work even if it is for just a few hours a day. Unlike Mike the Gambler, I listen. I play Knish's game, and I cut out people like Worm. I know that the grinders are the real winners in the game of life.
