There’s a guy on Instagram who says he can teach me to play 100 songs on the piano in less than an hour.

And that’s what wrong with the world today.

Why would anyone think they could learn to play the piano in an hour? C’mon. The piano is a difficult instrument. It takes commitment. And sticktoitiveness. And dexterity. And musicality. That’s going to take at least a week.

You know what they say about poker, right? Takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master. That one I can vouch for. I dunno much about a piano. Poker? That takes some work, I can tell you that for free.

I’m still learning.

This underground club I play at in Scarborough? Best training a poker player could ever get. I’m serious. I’ve played all over the world in some of the biggest tournaments out there. Vegas, LA, Monte Carlo, Copenhagen. You get every kind of player from sharks to fish. And you get Mid-western, pear-shaped recreational players and you get comb-over drunks who got lost in the casino and wound up in the poker room.

At this club in Scarborough there are no weak players. None. They’re all either semi-pro players or very good recreational players. And they know their shit. And it’s a nice bunch of people… of every color, every gender, every age, and from every single walk of life.

And it’s definitely upped my game.

I’d been eying this Labor Day tournament in Montreal for a while now. It’s a WSOP circuit tournament with a million dollars guaranteed prize pool. But I was on the fence as to whether I would make the trip.

Then I scored a nice win at the club in a mystery bounty tournament (a ten-way chop no less!) and it gave me all the motivation I needed to make the decision to parlay that win into an even bigger win in Montreal.

Which is how I find myself on a road trip to The Iconic Playground Poker Club in Montreal.

As we speak I’m at an overnight rest stop at The luxurious Comfort Inn in Napanee, Ontario, birthplace of either Alanis Morissette or Avril Lavigne, I can never remember which one. Isn’t that ironic?

I’ll let you know how it goes in Montreal.