Many years ago (1978), I lived in a Rhein Main barracks that featured a Saturday evening poker game. I should state....there were probably three poker games going on in the building, but two were modest events where guys walked in with $20 in coins, a six-pack of beer or some Jack/Coke mix, and someone would offer up chips or corn curls.
The third game was a pretty serious episode, and guys could be playing with $250 (this was half-a-month's pay for a E-1 in those days).
We had this one single guy who had this fake belief in lucky hands. This meant that he might reach a stage an hour into the game where he'd bluffed his way to some point....laid all of his remaining $250 on the table, and needed someone to shuffle another $25 to $50 to help him win. It was always a 50-50 situation....where half the time....folks loaned him another $50 only to discover he had a crappy hand, and he walked out of the game broke (even worse....owing $50 out of the next month's paycheck).
I had watched this particular game about five times (I had zero knowledge on poker, being from a dry county in Alabama with no bad habits). I had actually been one of the folks to loan the guy $20 at some stage....where he did win, and I got my money back.
The problem was....he just didn't know anything much beyond bluffing. He didn't know when to fold or leave the game. He'd bankrupt himself....until the next paycheck arrived.
If you asked where this guy is today? I'd say he's around 65 years old, deep into debt....living in some urbanized 'zone', and still bluffing his way through life.
Putin? In the last two weeks, I've come to view Putin's history (prior to his President's job, and to include the glory years at the KGB) to be mostly a bluff era. He's just like the poker-bluff guy.
He did figure out how to reshuffle the cards, putting 'you cannot win' strategy against opponents, and developed a cannot-lose mentality.
But he's standing there now like my former associate in the barracks....a loser who can't walk away. In this case, he's bluffed himself, the folks around him, and the majority of Russians....for twenty-odd years. He's even bluffed western leaders, the CNN crowd, hocus-pocus-intellectuals, and a thousand-odd writers of international diplomacy garbage into a bluff end-game.
Where this all leads onto? More bluffs, and bluffs that start to look like 1-percent win-bluffs. That's usually where people lose confidence in your 'game'.
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