Thought I would share this, even though it isn't technically "theory." I didn't know where else to post.

I came across this article after finding out that Mamet played poker. He's a playwright who wrote Glengarry Glen Ross. It's a really good essay about our great game, in my opinion, and it covers the people aspect, which is rarely really covered. Mamet is doing a masterclass on play writing right now.




Full article (This was written in the 1980s)



IN 20 YEARS OF PLAYING poker, I have seen very few poor losers. Poker is a game of skill and chance.

Playing poker is also a masculine ritual, and, most times, losers feel either sufficiently chagrined or sufficiently reflective to retire, if not with grace, at least with alacrity.

I have seen many poor winners. They attribute their success to divine intervention and celebrate either God's good sense in sending them lucky cards or God's wisdom in making them technically superior to the others at the table. Most are eventually brought back to reality when the cards begin to even out.

Any poker player knows that, despite what mathematicians say, there are phenomenal runs of luck that defy explanation. The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong. There is such a thing as absolute premonition of cards, a rock bottom surety of what will happen next. A good poker player knows that there is a time to push your luck and a time to retire gracefully, that all roads have a turning. What do you do when you are pushing your luck beyond its limits? You must behave like a good philosopher and ask what axiom you must infer that you are acting under. Having determined that, you ask if this axiom, in the long run, will leave you a winner. For instance, you are drawing to a flush. You have a 1-in-4 1/2 chance. The pot is offering you money odds of 5-to-1. It seems a close thing, but if you did it all day, you must receive a 10 percent return.

If the axiom you are acting under is not designed to make you money, you may discover that your real objective at the game is something else: you may be trying to prove yourself beloved of God. You then must ask yourself if - financially and emotionally - you can afford the potential rejection. For the first will certainly, and the second will most probably, ensue.

Poker is boring. If you sit down at the table to experience excitement, you will, consciously and subconsciously, do things to make the game exciting. You will take long-odds chances, you will create emergencies, and they will lose you money. The poker players I admire most are like that wise old owl who sat on the oak and kept his mouth shut and his eye on the action.

When you are proud of having made the correct decision (that is, the decision which, in the long run, must eventually make you a winner), you are inclined to look forward to the results of that decision with some degree of impassivity. When you are so resolved, you become less fearful and more calm. You are less interested in yourself and more naturally interested in the other players: now they begin to reveal themselves. Is their nervousness feigned? Is their hand made already? Are they bluffing? These elections are impossible to make when you are afraid, but they become easier the more content you are with your own actions.

Poker reveals to the frank observer something else of import - it will teach him about his own nature. Many bad players do not improve because they cannot bear self-knowledge. The bad player will not deign to determine what he thinks by watching what he does. To do so might, and frequently would, reveal a need to be abused (in calling what must be a superior hand); a need to be loved (in staying for ''that one magic card''); a need to have Daddy relent (in trying to bluff out the obvious best hand), etc. It is painful to observe this sort of thing about oneself. Many times we'd rather suffer on than fix it.

The pain of losing is diverting. So is the thrill of winning. Winning, however, is lonelier, because those you've taken money from are not apt to commiserate with you. Winning takes some getting used to.

Many of us, and most of us from time to time, try to escape a blunt fact that may not tally with our self-image. When we are depressed, we recreate the world around us to rationalize our mood. We are then apt to overlook or misinterpret happy circumstances. At the poker table, this can be expensive, for opportunity may knock, but it seldom nags. Which brings us to a crass thought many genteel players cannot grasp: poker is about money.

The ability of a poker player is judged solely by the difference between his stack when he sits down and his stack when he gets up. The point is not to win the most hands, the point is not even to win the most games. The point is to win the most money. This probably means playing fewer hands than the guy who has just come for the action; it means not giving your fellow players a break because you value their feelings; it means not giving some back at the end of the night because you feel embarrassed by winning; it means taking those steps and creating those habits of thought and action that, in the long run, must prevail.

The long run for me - to date - has been those 20 years. One day in college I promoted myself from the dormitory game to the big poker game in town, up on the Hill. After graduation, I would occasionally come back for visits. I told myself my visits were to renew friendships, to use the library, to see the leaves. But I was really coming back to play in the Hill game.

Last September, one of the players pointed out that five of us at the table that night had been doing this for two decades. As a group, we have all improved. Some of us have improved drastically. Because the facts, the statistics, the tactics are known to us all, and because we are men of equal intelligence, that improvement can be due to only one thing: to character, which, as I finally begin to improve a bit myself, I see that the game of poker is all about.


http://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/20/ma...s.html?mcubz=3