Hello, dear friends! Thank you for joining me for this new episode of Walk with Johan. I am very happy that you took this time with me to listen to this episode of personal development, and you are next to me. Here, I am walking on a path, and in my mind, I am not alone, you are with me and we are exchanging with of course, as usual, as the objective, to make available Authentic French, real French spoken by a real Frenchman. I don't know what a real Frenchman is, but in any case we will say by a native. It is probably more appropriate.
Today, we're going to talk about a deck of cards. You know what cards are, right? Cards are pieces of cardboard. There are 52 cards, I think, in a deck with different numbers on them. So, we have the Ace, which is 1; 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Then, we have Jack, Queen, King. And for each of these cards, there is a color: diamonds, it's red; hearts, it's also red; spades, it's black, and clubs, it's also black. And among these card games, there is one that is sometimes presented as a game of chance, but it is not. And we're going to try to see a little analogy between this card game and life. That's kind of the subject of today. And this card game is poker, and in particular, because I believe there are several types of poker, "Texas Hold'em", which is the... I think, I'm not an expert, but which is probably one of the most played pokers, which is the most successful.
So, in fact, to play this game, I think you receive two cards, which you are allowed to look at, and then, we gradually reveal, we gradually turn over five cards on the table. So, they japan whatsapp number data are turned over, we turn them over so that you can see what is there as you go, there are rounds, I summarize, I simplify a lot, and you can decide to bet chips or to give up. We call that "folding".
We used to joke with my Austrian friends, 'well, my friends, when I lived in Austria, we used to play poker and we had a friend who was really into the game. He played at a good level, he used to take part in tournaments. So, it was really one of his passions. And we would always tease him, we would say: "Yes, but poker is a game of chance". We would even say to tease him: "It's 50/50". When you say that something is 50/50, it means that it is something that is linked to chance. 50/50 means 50% chance of having one result and 50% of having another. So, 50/50 is clearly chance, a 50/50 chance in fact.
And I remembered… Well, of course, we didn’t believe it, we were saying that to annoy our friend, to have a laugh actually, to joke. And I remembered an advertisement. Well, it was for an advertisement for a company that offers betting, I think, and they had taken Patrick Bruel, who is a very very well-known, very famous French singer. He is both a singer and an actor. Well, he is someone who is very well-known in France. And he also plays poker. And in this advertisement, he said: “The important thing in poker is not the cards, it’s what you do with them.”
Actually, that's true. And for me, this notion brings two ideas. The first is that in poker, some people succeed with a bad game and others fail with a good game. Sometimes, you have good cards and you don't win the game; sometimes, you have bad cards and you win the game. Of course, we control... well, we don't control the cards we receive, that's chance. It's chance that makes me have two Kings for example in my hand rather than having a 3 and a 9. But on the other hand, what we control is what we do with them. Once I have this 3 and this 9 in my hand or this pair of Kings, well, I control what I do. Do I give up? Do I want to see? Do I bet chips to try to win? That's what we say to ourselves. With a bad game, you can decide to persevere to see what cards will appear next, you can stop, you can do a lot of things. So, that's the first point.
And the second point is that two bad cards… this is a little deeper, two bad cards can become two good cards. So, let me explain. Imagine if I have a 2 and a 7 in my hand. These are bad cards. A 2 and a 7, in principle, there is little chance of making a good combination, because it is true that I did not explain, but in poker we make combinations. For example, you have to have pairs that are twice the same card or a three of a kind, three times the same card. 'Well, there are lots of combinations: sequences, colors, etc. The idea today is not to become poker experts, it is really to make the analogy with life in fact.
So, imagine, I have a 2 and a 7, we say: "That's not good". My neighbor, he has two Aces. So, the two best cards, he already has two in his hand, which is a very good bet. But the evolution, what we're going to turn over on the table, well that can make these bad cards good because if, on the table, we turn over a 2, and then another 2, and then a 7, with the combination of what he has in his hand, he will have what is called "a full house", that is to say three times the same card, here three 2s, and twice the same card, that is to say two 7s. And the full house is very very strong, it's very difficult to have a full house. So, depending on what happens on the table, well a bad situation can become good. And my neighbor who had two Aces in his hand at the start of the game, who therefore had, in principle, a good hand, well in the end, he no longer has a good hand.