Today I want to discuss something that holds great importance in both poker and life: history. With life we are deeply affected by our history in most every way, inextricably linked with both the good and the bad of previous generations. With poker we have more personal control however, and are specifically dealing with our history with other players and how they affect our future decisions.

While I think general history and poker history are both interesting topics, it is important not to mix the two. So today I will be forgetting about general history completely for the time being, and focusing purely on poker history.

I believe it was Gus Hansen who said "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." For us to hear such sage words and not react to them would be a terrible thing indeed.

Typically this history will be between two players, with their previous encounters directly affecting the plot of any given hand they play. You will have all certainly heard someone describe a hand with the disclaimer of "we've got history", but rarely do people fully grasp the importance of the concept. Such misconceptions can in the short-term be overlooked in this variance riddled obsession of ours, but poker history is littered with violent examples of when things simply don't turn out how we'd hoped.

I remember a time when things got really bad. I think it was my friend Danforth who didn't want me to play that day. He just kept going on...about some kind of feeling. We'd all had feelings. Some good, some bad, but most of us had decided it was best to not listen to those kinds of thoughts anymore. Didn't seem to be a point. No matter what time or what place we entered battle, there would always be someone willing to put everything on the line against us. The enemy would turn up regardless of how we felt that day.

Oh you had a good sleep? Great. But Charlie always seemed to be more prepared. Charlie_414 on Full Tilt Poker.com. It seemed like Charlie slept more than anyone seeing as how he was always so refreshed, but yet as far as I could tell he never did. I know this must seem like a strange idea. I guess you have to be in that world to really get it.

Generally people outside the poker-verse have little to no idea about the wonders that lie inside. From a sick turn check raise to the stunning monument that is FullTiltPoker.com, ordinary people furrow their brows with immense confusion and wonder. Hell, sometimes I feel the same way. It is true that no one really knows how they built Full Tilt. Some say the Babylonians, others chime in with theories about Alien life forms from beyond. I'm a little more conservative in my estimation and think, while it would have been an amazing feat of manpower, that it was probably the creation of a very large group of slaves under the leadership of Pharaoh Lederer.

But although there are many wonderful achievements from individual players throughout the ages, it couldn't exist without the majestic origin of our species as poker players. In such a discussion it would be impossible to omit the groundbreaking work of Leggo's own Aaron "Darwin" Jones in his earth shattering article entitled 'The Evolution of a Poker Player'. Before the work of Jones, as utterly absurd as it seems today, the popular opinion was that the Earth was formed just 6000 years ago and that poker players had simply been walking around since its inception.

We relied on a series of stories such as the famous "Ace on the River", an epic tale of a playing card (the Ace of Spades) so big it blocked the Amazon River for 100 years. As we all know the story continues with a series of ancient heroes doing their feeble best to restore the river to its former glory, while in the end it required the card's original creator 'Barnabus Greenstein' who it turns out could extricate it with a simple flick of his wrists. Modern logic of course reveals this tale as a bit of silly fun, though in some quarters people are still reciting this fable verbatim, and as the holy poker truth, to their children.

Such madness aside, the more enlightened of us now not only know but embrace the ideas presented in Aejones' article. To some it seems ridiculous that poker is not played within a box ("but poker is too beautiful and perfect a game, how can it have come from anything but the sunless shelter of a box?!"). However not only can we be glad and satisfied with our well balanced theory of the game, but also find the beauty in it.

Ignorance does not equate to beauty my friends. The more we learn about the game, and our history within it, the richer our lives become.

Till next time.