The original archetype of a Las Vegas professional poker player was that of the traditional western cowboy, like Doyle Brunson, who played the game primarily using instinct. In 2003, when an accountant from Tennessee named Chris Moneymaker won $2.5 million in the Main Event of the World Series of Poker, a new era was ushered in that featured the everyman rolling up their sleeves to try their hand at cards. Progressing to modern day, the typical poker pro evolved yet again, this time into wunderkinds, like LuckyChewy (AKA Andrew Lichtenberger), whose domination of the game at such young ages made them rich beyond their wildest dreams, enabling them to turn their attention toward other pursuits like becoming enlightened health nuts.
LuckyChewy spends a lot of time expanding his understanding of the intangibles of the universe, and he maintains a personal blog that exhibits his immense capacity as both a thinker and writer. While he doesn’t update his page very often, when he does the post is always worth reading.
You don’t need a background in poker to read this journal entry, as Chewy’s message focuses on the benefits of tuning yourself into the emotional wavelengths of your own soul, and the productive momentum that tends to follow. When Chewy writes on this topic, he speaks as someone who has already tapped into his own elevated space first-hand, and is recounting how he’s been transformed by it. Chewy also pontificates about a debate as old as time – intuition vs. logic – and defines ways in which these two subjects actually complement one another. In particular, I appreciate how Chewy illustrates the rationale of the importance of monitoring your own emotions and decisions in order to determine how they make you feel, because in general no one sits quietly with the express purpose of processing life often enough. The peril of leading an unexamined existence is that you give too much of yourself over to the randomness of the universe, which propels you into an unsteady life.
While “Enter the Matrix” does fixate on advanced concepts (I’m still trying to get my head around certain chunks), it’s not necessarily meant to be fully understood after just one reading. It’s also not meant to be read with perfect seriousness either, and in fact if there’s one takeaway it’s to embrace life with a lively optimism, because it helps you stay open to opportunity.
Whether you agree or disagree with Chewy’s various points of view – I still go back and forth myself – you can’t argue with the uniqueness of what he’s getting at, and you won’t find this type of conversation anywhere else. Even those who perfectly understand and agree with LuckyChewy’s perspective would find tremendous value in revisiting this piece every so often both as a refresher and to find ways to go deeper; our mastery over life remains a work in progress, but the more we parse the details, the more self-aware we become.
