The Free Lunch Bunch

Bruce Brown's semi-fictional memoir, The Free Lunch Bunch, offers life and investment advice through a humorous lens. It is a reflection on life, and it guides readers into the poker world, a world mirroring the real one. It details a man's journey from youth to adult crisis. But he learns that sometimes playing against opponents was like playing with monkeys ... no disrespect to monkeys.

The Free Lunch Bunch, a semi-fictional memoir, is humorous and offers life and investment advice. John Maynard is a finalist in a big buy-in poker tournament that he desperately needs to win. After going all in and awaiting his opponent's decision, he ponders how he reached this point where his happiness and financial future will be determined by another. He ruefully reflects back on his life. While job hunting after college he discovers the exciting, legal card clubs in CA. Along his zig zag journey, he learns strategy and life lessons from older, grizzled players. He learns that sometimes playing poker against opponents was like playing with monkeys ... no disrespect to monkeys.

Bruce "Mr. Mellow" Brown grew up in ... shall we just say he grew up. For four years he proudly served our country during the Vietnam era as a Corpsman in the Navy where everyday was a holiday and every meal a feast. Then he got his BA in Economics. For a while, poker was his sole source of income, even working a few months as a cardroom, shill-like prop or "host." Subsequently, he earned a fellowship to, and graduated from, USC's MBA program. Working in the stuff shirt and tie economy, he assisted small business owners with SBA loan applications, through HEW was a health center consultant and was a chief medical group administrator. Eventually, he started his own businesses--a video games company, and he ended in real estate. Throughout his life he played poker a few times a week at night, and he had 41 years of profitably playing what he viewed as a side hustle. His other jobs were human test subject, strawberry farm, roadside sales, park maintenance worker, Dodgers' vendor and lab tech. Happily divorced, his marriage produced two fine young men who by job diaspora are beyond their childhood home in Manhattan Beach, CA. End of story.