I received a lot of PMs and IMs already on this blog post I made yesterday, some saying I should post it in MSNL.
I really don't mind playing attention whore one more time. (Previous post that inspired this offshoot
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...ad.php?t=89941)
Cross posted from my blog-
http://www.leggopoker.com/blog.php?u=7
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During nearly this entire maturation process, most of us who strive to ‘be the best’ were obsessed to some degree. I know you sat in freshman composition class, did not read the assigned chapters the previous night, and did math problems with win rates and tried to figure out how much money you were going to make this week, this month, and this year. I know if you ever took the time to learn equity calcs that you sat in the back of algebra and figured out how much fold equity you needed preflop to 4-bet shove Ax in a bvb battle. I know you skipped your 8am chemistry class because you were up until 6am getting unstuck.
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In reference to this specific paragraph in my essay “The Evolution of a Poker Player,” I’d like to say more.
Not everyone who reads this has any ambition to be a great, or the greatest, poker player. I don’t blame anyone who falls into this category, in fact, I admire them. At times I wish I had never come into contact with poker. I wish I had lost that initial 50 dollars and put my tail between my legs and went back to my stellar grades and exemplary test scores. Most people don’t have the personality to play poker. I say most, because there is without a doubt a majority of people that have failed in poker. For every Krantz or cts or aejones, there are at least a dozen who ran poorly at the beginning and gave up, or are presently struggling to beat small stakes because they aren’t comprehending an important concept. Of course this is not rocket science, but most of our minds are conditioned to assume poker is ‘easy’ since (if you’re reading this) most of us have had success at it, on some level. Our success at poker can be directly correlated to our obsession.
The majority of the time, I am thankful that poker is a (major) part of my life. In order to get somewhere in this essay, I’d like to take you through the trials and tribulations of a ‘successful’ player. Perhaps my mindset is not entirely similar to the rest of the poker world; maybe I am the exception and not the rule. Since my sample size on this issue is small (limited to my close circle of poker friends), I will inform you of my upbringing, and allow you to draw your own conclusions.
Poker was introduced to me in the same way many of you found it: I played home games as a kid, watched some Texas Hold’em on television, and started mimicking it with my friends. It all started innocently enough, five dollar tournaments four summers ago. It grew to 20 dollar cash games with the rich kids; which in turn, grew to 100 dollar cash games, and ‘wallet’ (the real NLHE- anything in your wallet played; table stakes did not exist). Before really venturing into these games, I wanted to be prepared. In preparation, I read any book that anyone recommended. Of the ones I can remember: Super System, The Theory of Poker, Mike Caro’s Book of Tells. Those taught me to play tight. Tight was perfect for the games I was in at the time, and I did very well. I can distinctly remember winning over 200 dollars one time and the effect it had on me. I was somewhat of a nit back then, so I hid the money and basically took it out of my working bankroll, if I had such a thing. Nevertheless, I remember that moment changing my outlook on poker. I suddenly thought that everyone playing this game was moronic- all trying to lose their money faster than the next guy (years later, it seems nothing has changed).
From there, I had a few online experiences. I had a friend who was over 18, and I used to play on his account. I’d play mostly .25-.50 on Party Poker- we both made a few hundred dollars, if I recall correctly. This was the infancy of my online play, but only a glint in the eye of my ambition.
I can’t remember when, but I had a friend recommend me to 2+2 and the poker forums. To be honest, I probably knew about them for 6 months before I really utilized posting on them. This was a mistake that I would give a hundred thousand dollars to change, easily. You live and learn though, and once I became aware of the resource that 2+2 was, I used it to the best of my ability. I can honestly say that for a period of at least one year I read every single post in mid-stakes and high stakes no limit. If I was gone for a week, I would literally come back and browse through everything that had been posted since I was last there. On a funny related note, someone I met through the 2+2 forums (luckychewy) actually expressed the same obsession. In some conversations we’ve had, we’ll literally recall a thread from 18 months ago where someone check-raised the river, and their reasoning behind it, with remarkable accuracy. This kind of obsession is two things- both scary and necessary.
To further define necessary, I want to reflect my opinion that you do not have to take poker with this level of seriousness to experience success- however, your chances increase dramatically. Ideally, the amount of knowledge absorbed through this much reading and conceptualization (even more important than simply reading- like the difference between hearing and listening) should be able to be tapped into during the most stressful of poker decisions. For an example of this, I can haphazardly associate concepts in the book
Blink (a psychology book about muscle memory, for those unfamiliar) with the knowledge gained from reading poker forums and playing hands yourself. The book’s only relevance to this essay is in the recognizance of betting patterns and specific lines taken by people and stored in your memory, only to be recalled in an instant when you need it most for a poker decision. Obviously with the correct thought process and necessary game theory background, you can bypass a lot of the critical experience you need. However, the old adage that there is no substitute for experience holds true in most cases.
To further define scary, I will take you through the two inherent problems with becoming too involved with one specific ‘thing’ in your life (I say thing because you can define poker however you want; it is a job, a hobby, a field of study, etc. for many different people).
The
first problem is that you think like a poker player at all times. There are very few, if any, exceptions to this. What I mean is, if you’ve been playing poker regularly, you have almost no way of controlling the problem solving thought process that it has bestowed upon you. Whenever I see a situation or problem, I see ‘EV’ everywhere. The expected value of a situation is always on my mind.
Here’s an example: On the vacation I recently got back from, we got into a problem with traffic. We left the beach with two distinct options: to go back the way we came (the highway) or to go the scenic route along the beach. The beach route was much, much shorter, but we saw the traffic on it many hours ago in the afternoon and deduced there was a good chance that it was still clogged (the beach route in no way connected to the highway, they were entirely separate entities). The highway was the sure way- less pretty to look at, but plenty reliable for us to make our dinner reservation deadline. My friends parents argued briefly on which way to go, but in the end my friend’s father convinced his mother to go the scenic route, definitely the high variance way.
Fifteen minutes later, at least ¾ towards the bridge, we were in traffic at a dead halt. We waited a few minutes, and then turned around and went back to the highway, costing us nearly an hour in travel time. Everyone in the car bickered and argued, but I knew the facts of the situation- I knew our EV was fairly close to neutral. Based on the time of day, the fact that I’ve vacationed in that area other times, etc, I knew that there was a good chance that the beach route was faster and going back to the highway was lengthy. However, the entire car was convinced that the beach route was too risky- and they’d never do that again!
I told that story and sidetracked my post to prove to you one very, very important point for poker players when considering the thoughts of non-poker players:
Everyone is results oriented.
There are almost no exceptions to this. This is the first time I really witnessed other people being so results oriented it turned my stomach. I wanted to explain to them, but I knew they would never understand. I wanted to explain to them that this particular time there was an accident, or a gaper’s delay, or something- but not every time. It was certainly not worth my breath to try though, since it would go far over everyone’s head. It is difficult dealing with intelligent human beings who don’t have a grasp of how I think, which is why we can associate so well with other poker players.
Secondly, poker destroys other areas of your life. This is certainly not true for everyone, but for anyone who has really hit poker hard, they have made sacrifices. For the predominant age of ‘internet’ players, their education has been hampered. For some, it means going from A’s to B’s, while others just lose all motivation and fail or dropout before their grades deteriorate beyond recognition. For me, it meant going from a straight A student with mediocre work ethic to a mediocre student who lacked anything resembling work ethic. In this regard, I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. I’m not sure when I promised my mother I would finish college, but at some point I did. I will finish college, without a doubt, and most likely ‘on time’ (the five year plan, obviously). Perhaps I am costing myself hundreds of thousands of dollars by plodding to class four days a week, but college keeps a balance in my life. Since I’m living off campus this year, it provides me a link to fellow students who I might otherwise not talk to, and it makes me go to campus a few days a week. I really enjoy the campus at Butler and the people I go to school with (~2 to 1 girl to guy ratio). Next year, I’m actually making a step to improve my social life by moving into a place with 4 other guys back on campus. Admittedly, my social life isn’t really bad or lacking, but I had moments where it got strained by the hours I was playing and the time of day I was sleeping (always the most awkward- you get a phone call at 2pm but you haven’t slept yet so you can’t really function). I think, on average, I’ve done much better than most other 2+2ers who have really been obsessed with the game. I really have a close circle of friends, and another former obsession (basketball), to thank for that.
Poker extends beyond those things though- beyond the thought process, beyond the daydreaming in school, beyond any social impairment. Poker is a state of mind.
A great player and a legend in his own right (EmpireMaker2) once posted something that changed my life:
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In order to beat poker, you have to be poker.
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I don’t think he ever realized how profound of a statement he was making when he made it, but that is why he is the illest. Although not complex, that quote embodies the goal for most of us. We sit around and think about poker from tens of thousands of angles. I think of how I can compare poker to fishing, and then I try to figure out a poker hand from a fisherman’s point of view. I sit and think of every different way I can play every significant hand I’ve ever played. Some hands, to this day, haunt me. Mistakes I’ve made that I have to take with me to my grave leave my sleepless at night. I am not results oriented in my thinking (although this is the toughest bridge for everyone to cross) but I examine everyone’s frequencies and tendencies in every spot, and I focus on what I could do better in similar spots in the future. This has clearly helped me in my analytical skills of poker hands, but it hinders my focus and concentration on other things. Like any mental illness, it impedes my everyday life. I’m reading the sports section of the local newspaper, an article about a local high school basketball team, and by the third paragraph I’m trying to figure out if there is any merit left to check raising the turn, and with what range of hands and against what types of players, given the state of today’s games. I find myself moving to counter strategies and complex floats before I snap back into reality. Unfortunately, in becoming poker, you sacrifice a very real part of your individuality.
The entire ‘goal’ of a poker player is a catch-22. It is what Einstein and Picasso and Jordean and other greats must have dealt with. The ultimate paradox- to get what you want, you have to sacrifice what you have. In order to have great understanding of concepts and theories, you have to allow it to take over your everyday life. I’m not quite sure how necessary this portion of the obsession is, but I think it is the ultimate mountain to climb as a poker player. As I am descending now from this mountain, I can say that everything about my life improves as I de-focus from poker (including an improvement in my poker game). However, it would have been impossible to be able to do this had I not first struggled to get over the mountain by focusing all of my physical, mental, and spiritual (I know everyone prayed a time or two) energy on this stupid, beautiful, complex, and simple game.
Two Plus Two
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