Not sure if this will help, but one night on a train bound for nowhere I met up with a gambler and we were both too tired to sleep, so we took turns staring out the window at the darkness until boredom overtook us and he began to speak. He said, "Son, I've made my living out of reading peoples faces and knowing what their cards were by the way they held their eyes, so if you don't mind my saying I can see you're out of aces, but for a taste of your whiskey I'll give you some advice."
So I handed him my bottle and he drank down my last swallow, then he bummed a cigarette and asked me for a light. Then the night got deathly quiet and his face lost all expression. He said, "If you're gonna play the game, boy, you gotta learn to play it right. You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and know when to run. You never count your money when you're sitting at the table. There'll be time enough for counting when the dealing is done. Every gambler knows that the secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep, because every hand's a winner and every hand's a loser, and the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep."
When he finished speaking, he turned back toward the window, crushed out his cigarette, and faded off to sleep. Somewhere in the darkness, the gambler he broke even, and in his final words I found an ace that I could keep.
HTH
