Is it just my ungratefulness or does everybody find it excruciatingly frustrating to receive expensive and useless things when there's a long list of basic necessities that they, well, need?

With the season of giving quickly approaching, it's the perfect time to lure your friends and family out of their familiar patterns and into the giving of spirits. But, to lead these gift horses to water, one must first identify the reasons why well-intentioned people give lame presents:

1 They don't know what you like.
2 They were in a hurry, and couldn't find what you like.
3 They think plaid cartegan sweaters are always in fashion.
4 They're under the mistaken impression that you're difficult to buy for.
5 They saw something similar in your place and assumed you liked whatever it is. (A classic case of compounding misfortune perpetuated by a sense of obligation to display other useless gifts you've been given).
6 They have trailer park taste.

In order to get what you want, one must first condition the givers. This is easier than it may seem because givers are usually eager to please -- they just don't always have the good sense to recognize the glaring solution to their gift-giving dilemma. Here's how to help them help you:

1 Keep a running list of things you want or need. Think of the things you would buy yourself if you found a twenty, fifty or a hundred dollar bill on the ground. Every once in a while you luck out and get asked what you'd like. Be prepared, and be specific. There's no such thing as too specific -- size, store and even stock numbers help reduce guesswork.

2 Become unabashedly obsessed with a particular store (i.e., Williams Sonoma, Ikea, etc.), then endear yourself to someone on the sales staff so you can discretely exchange gifts without a receipt.

3 Develop a reputation (or perpetuate the myth) of being an aficionado or collector of something that's relatively easy to find. Wine and food lovers are already one step ahead of the game. You can never have too much fine wine or extra virgin olive oil, or too many cookbooks. Prominently display your cache, or create a shrine from the empty bottles to act as a constant reminder to potential gift givers. And once again, be specific about your tastes (e.g., Bordeaux from the St. Emillion region). If the giver is a militant teetotaler, embrace another collectible. Just be careful not to be perceived as fanatical about something that is too general (i.e., golf or cows) or you may open up a Pandora's box of useless novelty gifts. As part of the conditioning process, be expressive when receiving gifts you like (think: The Price Is Right), and restate your appreciation like a mantra each time you speak to the giver -- "I made a salad dressing last night with your olive oil, and it rocked my world."

After you graduate from this simple three-step program, you'll discover you can always get what you want. In fact, you just might find that you get a lot of it. Be sure, however, to let me know when you have too much Burgundy wine.

Best Endorsement: Coming in a close second to Ron Loutherback?s endorsement (see The Insider, page 40 in this issue) is an endorsement by Wine Spectator. We learned in 1999 that they (mainly their publisher) call us ?The Dark Side.? Not quite sure why. You?d think they?d figure out that the more young adults we turn on to wine now, the more subscribers they?ll have in about 10 years. But then again, it?s Wine Spectator.

Best Brokest Moment: In 2000, Random House published our first edition of the Wine X-Rated Guide to Wine. They were flying me to LA for the Festival of Books at UCLA to have me speak on a panel with other wine/food authors. Sounded great. ?Cept I had absolutely no money. I mean NO money. Nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada. And I had no one to sponge off. Luckily I had gas in my car, so all I really needed was $6 to pay for airport parking (when I returned). So here was my plan: I had some foreign currency (from press trips abroad). I figured I?d fly down to LA, do the festival, then get dropped back at LAX early so I could go to the International terminal to cash in the currency. These best-laid plans were going great until I found the foreign-currency exchange booth. Closed. After running through the terminal in near panic, I found another that was open. I cashed in my currency and made it back home with a whopping $11.52 in my pocket.

Best Catch-22: After a year of dogged persistence, former Wine X ad sales director Dan Eliason and I finally snagged a meeting with a brand manager for a big Italian wine company. For an hour we did the ol? dog and pony show, covering all the details on why the brand (which retailed for $11) would appeal to our readers. Their response? ?We don?t think your readers will spend $11 on a bottle of wine.? I could tell (from so many other meetings with middle-aged brand managers who think young adults don?t have any money) that arguing with them was futile. So I said we?d forward the results of our recent reader survey, which included the average price our readers were paying per bottle. Upon receiving this information, which indicated our readers were spending about $16.50 retail for a bottle, we received an email back saying that if our readers are spending that much on wine, they?d never buy an $11 bottle. D?Oh!

Best Cover: To this day, despite all the great celebs we?ve had grace our cover, I think the best cover we?ve ever published is the first. Not because it shocked so many old farts in the industry (which it did). And not because the design of the cover alone cost me more than the design of the following 63 pages (which it did). I think it?s the best cover we?ve done because it did exactly what it was supposed to do: it alienated the ?old guard? (as intended); it attracted young adults to a magazine about wine (as intended); it paved the way for a new era of wine magazine appealing to the other 35 million U.S. wine consumers who weren?t reading Wine Spectator or Robert Parker. If you have a copy of our first issue, Vol. 2.1, hold on to it. Trust me. It?s worth more than the paper it?s printed on. Wanna see the intricate detail that our then-cover designer Glen Martinez achieved on that first cover? Look at the button on the jeans. (No, Wine X wasn?t making jeans at that time.) Or examine the tattoo. One by one Glen painstakingly placed each hair that seemingly comes through the tattoo ink. Yes, the tattoo was Photoshopped in. But the belly ring was real.

More next issue.

Never play cards with any man named 'Doc.' Never eat at any place called 'Mom's.' And never, ever, no matter what else you do in your life, sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own. -- Nelson Algren

Without man's innate urge to take risks, we'd all still be sitting around drawing on cave walls, grunting and belching. Fortunately, our daring ancestors ventured forth into the dangerous world and created civilization. Which means today we can take our risks in small doses, like sitting around a dining table playing poker... and grunting and belching.

If you haven't smugly riffled a newly won stack of poker chips in a smoke-filled room surrounded by smelly guys swilling beer and cursing, then you haven't lived. You can leave the martinis, Baccarat and double-breasted dinner jackets to James Bond and his crumbled-British-Empire ilk. If you're an American man, playing poker's part of your heritage.

Our nation was founded on the idea of taking chances. This country was built by a bunch of rowdy guys who liked drinking and taking risks, and didn't like being told what to do. This is precisely why poker -- that most American of card games -- couldn't have been invented anywhere else. The father of our country, George Washington, who also happened to brew his own beer, was known to host card games in his tent during the Revolutionary War -- a war in which, it's important to remember, our opponent held the far better cards. Against all odds, those stalwart colonial souls managed to back up their bluff and rake in the rich pot that included freedom, democracy, self-determination and the deed to several hundred thousand acres of prime real estate. Some years later (in the mid-1800s), poker as we know it today was invented in the American West. So, if our founding fathers hadn't played and won, we'd be as lacking in cultural identity as our floundering Canadian cohorts up north, eh? (Note to Canadians: Please address your letters to the editor, RE: Canadian Cultural Identity Crisis.)

It's estimated some 60 million Americans play poker regularly. Some play for their love of gambling, some for their love of money, some to escape the humdrum routine of their lives, and some just for their fondness for camaraderie. Whether you win or lose, whether you know when to hold 'em or know when to fold 'em, gathering around a table with a group of pals, a deck of cards, stacks of colored chips, and some eats and drinks is one of the hallowed traditions of the American male.

The human instinct to gamble with fate is probably as old as...well, human instinct. The Ancient Greeks believed the lofty Gods of Mount Olympus threw dice to divide up the world. (Crude dice have been found in most ancient civilizations.) Roman soldiers cast lots for Jesus' robes. Julius Caesar conquered Gaul to pay off gambling debts. It's a fair bet that amoebas floundering in the early primordial soup wagered on who'd be the first to make it out of the bog.

Poker differs greatly from the games of pure chance in casinos. Gamblers, whether they bet on the roll of the dice or the spin of a roulette wheel, are generally betting against the odds. Smart gamblers know this, but it hasn't stopped gaming from becoming one of the most successful business enterprises. Skillful poker players use their knowledge to wager only on favorable odds. Gamblers are romantics looking forward to what might happen.

Accomplished poker players are realists betting on what should happen. Of course in poker, as in most endeavors, what should happen isn't always what does happen.

Fortunately in poker, as in life, you don't have to be good at it to like it. (Though I'm sure those who are absolutely no good are welcome and regular guests at many a poker table.) You just have to enjoy yourself.

>> There are no Miranda Rights in poker; anything you say and do can and will be used against you.

Being a good poker player requires something few people do in today's short-attention-span society: paying close attention to everything. Because poker's as much about people as it is about cards, and how we live influences how we play. There are those who play and live cold and conservative, striving to avoid risk, and those who play and live brash and full of bluster. There are players in the games of life and poker who'll never bet unless the odds are actually in their favor. If you can't spot the sheep waiting to be sheared at the table by the time you've quaffed your first beer, there's a good chance it's you. But in a friendly game always remember that you can shear a sheep many times, but you can only skin him once.

You don't have to have the best cards to win, either. You just have to play the best. And every hand is different, depending on what you choose to do with it.

If you enjoy bluffing your way through life -- and getting away with it -- then you probably get a major adrenaline rush by stealing a healthy pot knowing your opponents have you beat. The bluffing element of poker sets it apart from almost all other games and pursuits. You can't pretend to have the best hand and win in bridge or blackjack. You can't pretend you're a great mountain climber and conquer Kilimanjaro any more than you can bluff your way through the Iron Man Triathlon. So many human endeavors are cut and dried; if you say you're the best, there's only one way to prove it. This is the very beauty of poker. After all, isn't this what we all want?

In every deck of 52 cards there are 2,598,960 possible five-card poker hands. The bad news is that you're only going to be dealt one of them. The better news is that there's always the chance, the possibility, that you can transform whatever cards you hold into the winning hand.

That's why poker's never dull. The game has thousands of variants, and all it requires is your group of buddies, a deck of cards and some chips. It's always better if you switch the venue and the responsibility for providing the eats and drinks. And you can bring as much, or as little, flair to your poker night as you like.

If you're like me, you started with Budweiser, smelly Swisher Sweets and nickel-dime-quarter games. Over the years my friends and I have graduated to imports in both our beer and cigar preferences, and the same red, white and blue chips have grown to represent much larger sums. It's not fun without the risk of losing a bit more than you should, and you can't win if you don't play.

If you're really a gambler (this most superstitious of species) you'll of course have a good-luck token of some type, whether it's the old Dunes $5 chip you didn't cash in before the implosion, your tattered boxers emblazoned with the Queen of Hearts, the filthy Cubs cap you bought at Wrigley the year they were going to go all the way (but didn't -- again) or maybe even a silk smoking jacket. Poker is more psychology than sophistication. Studies have shown there's a real psychological boost from believing in a good-luck piece and that gamblers actually get an adrenaline surge as if they were in a fight-or-flight situation. Jonny Chan, former World Series of Poker champion, was always known to place an orange beside him when he played, though he never ate it. Stories abound about how many people have offered him absurd amounts of money for his orange, which he never sells. Having others believe in your good-luck charm never hurts.

Whether you carry an edible good-luck piece or not, poker night requires sustenance. You need fuel to keep you going during the hours you're spending trying to outwit your opponents. The history of eating and playing cards goes back even further than the Earl of Sandwich, who actually invented the snack that bears his name as a way to eat without getting his hands greasy and without missing a moment at the card table.

While it's not as exciting if there's no money involved, your game should never be too serious. You can play to win money or to have fun, but doing both is the best. Dealer's choice allows the deal to rotate around the table, with each person given a chance to deal whatever game he chooses. In the old days they used to place a silver dollar, one buck, in front of the person whose turn it was to deal. This ultimately became a cliche when President Truman, an avid poker player, declared: "The Buck Stops Here."

When we play poker, the games run the gamut from the classic 5-Card Draw of the Old West to 7-Card Stud, 7-Card No-Peeky, Baseball, Black Mariah, Chicago, 2-22, Guts, Lo-Ball, Omaha, Acey-Deucy, 3-Card Monte and several of our own twisted variants. It's good to have a healthy and eclectic mix of games, some where skill plays out along with some of the whimsical games of pure dumb luck that the poor players and drunks always enjoy and often win.

Each pack of cards holds within it the possibility of millions of different outcomes every single time we deal. In life and poker we can't all be winners, but we certainly can't win if we're not in the big game. And not knowing what'll happen, well, that's the real beauty of this poker game called life anyway, isn't it? That's exactly why life is such a big deal, after all. Anything might happen.