Is this dementia? (1 Viewer)

[Quicksilver-75]

It has many manifestations. The hardest part of diagnosis is acceptance.

 

[joker80]

I agree that mental stimulation like cards is good for them.

 

[Jambine]

Condolences to all who've had to deal with it.

A lot of us are in the club.

Unfortunately I'm also in that club.

BTW @mike32 Most people can not balance their checkbook. Fact. Not a joke

 

[Irish]

I've had this happen a few times. Each time with the same player. Sad thing is it was my father. He insisted on playing and rather than have him attend his usual watering hole we dealt him in. Each time he'd lose he would turn into a rant. He has trouble controlling his emotions. He would also seemingly get confused when someone went all in. Curiously, he would get angry and fold because he felt he couldn't call..
When I asked him why he said he didn't have enough in chips to call. We all just kinda looked at each other. When we told him he can still call and win what he has invested he seemed confused and wanted to leave.
I since have asked him to not join my games. Rather, if he wanted to play I'd organize a game for his friends at their pub. It's sad to watch. It's harder to deal with.

Man my heart really broke reading this, I commend you for having the courage to have that conversation. My wife and I have been helping to care for her grandfather for several years now. I've know him for nearly 30 years, actually met him before my wife, he was a custodian at the middle school I attended and we chatted frequently (met my wife in high school a few years later). He was just a great guy, big Mets fan like me, we had countless baseball chats over the years. He's been progressing through the stages of dementia for the past ~7-10 years or so, just a shell of his former self now. You're absolutely right, its so sad to watch and even harder to deal with on a daily basis. Shooting out some thoughts & prayers for you and your family (and for the others who are in the same boat as well, @Mental Nomad is unfortunately right, lots of us in the club.)

 

[Mental Nomad]

Medicine and science have progressed enough to keep us alive past many heart attacks, strokes, and cancers that would have killed us, before. We see more mental problem associated with the elderly infirm... because we see more elderly infirm.

It used to be that only the toughest, most resilient, most disease-free people had a good chance of reaching advanced ages.

But they're working on it, those scientists and medical folks.

 

[AWenger]

This guy is very nice, plays a lot of poker locally

It was more than a slight confusion... when it was clearly explained, he continued to be adamant that he was entitled to V2's chips. He acknowledged that V1 was entitled to his main stack, since he had him covered, but somehow believed he should get V2's bounty and 3k. It was weird.

Just a guess, but maybe your player might have played limit games in the past that didn't use "table stakes," and (maybe due to aging) is confusing this with the concept of "table stakes" that are inherent to no-limit games and tournaments.

Around 15-20 years ago, I played in a regular low stakes dealers-choice spread limit poker game, that didn't use "table stakes." This really only makes sense in a cash game limit format, not tournaments or no-limit. Short stacked players staying in the hand had to dig into their pockets, or "go light" by pulling out chips from the pot to count his IOUs, and match all the bets until showdown. FYI, that particular game was something like $0.10 or $0.25 antes, and bets had a $3 bet cap, plus 2 additional raises per betting round, $9 total, although bets rarely got that high. (If a player that "went light" won the pot, he just scooped the pot. Or in a split pot game, he just gave his 'light' chips to the other winner. Or if the short stacked player lost or folded, he owed his 'light' chips to the pot + additional $ from his pocket for the chips that were 'light' from the pot.)

 

[Trihonda]

@AWenger this player has played my game for several years, including tourneys and cash. He's usually very bright. This confusion was a departure from the norm.

As others have suggested, I'm going to just keep inviting him as normal, but keep an eye out to make sure the instances of confusion don't become more frequent.

 

[DJ Mack]

But they're working on it, those scientists and medical folks.

And the sad thing is we're really no closer than we were back in the 50s. I was reading an article on this the other day that basically said unlike cancers and other diseases with all sorts of treatment options and stuff our knowledge of these dementias is still next to nothing. When we think we have a breakthrough on further study it turns out the past assumptions were wrong and the outcomes are statistically insignificant. So we wind up right back where we started.

It's a bitch. My great aunt died yesterday at 94. She didn't start to deteriorate until her early 90s so she lived a very blessed life, but damn those last years sucked.

 

[Mental Nomad]

And the sad thing is we're really no closer than we were back in the 50s. I was reading an article on this the other day that basically said unlike cancers and other diseases with all sorts of treatment options and stuff our knowledge of these dementias is still next to nothing. When we think we have a breakthrough on further study it turns out the past assumptions were wrong and the outcomes are statistically insignificant. So we wind up right back where we started.

I disagree vehemently with that article.

Yes, there were a lot of false starts down paths that didn't lead to cures or treatments... and today, we have now viable cures...

But to say we're back where we started, or that we know next to nothing, is just dead wrong. We know a fuckton more than we did before - about effects, progressions, genetic and epigenetic influences, chemical contributors, correlated buildups, causal relationships at the cellular and chemical and signalling levels... and our rate of progress in analyzing/decoding the kind of really complex stuff that's now most likely to lead to progress is continuing at an accelerated pace.

It's easy for an article writer to miss the boat on everything that's going on, and just focus on the fact that we have very little in the form of deliverables cure for the sufferers, but we're nowhere near where we started.