Here's version 2.0. Mainly I just changed the formatting similar to to my 500th post, and I think it a lot better structured and more readable as a result. I also added a few brand new paragraphs of new material, fixed typos, clarified and added some sentences here and there, and put in some additional quotations. If any mod here wants to, feel free to edit my op and update it with this version of the post.

Also, since I am quite a ways away from getting to the point of eliminating my ego, if you liked this post and want to rate it 5 stars or even just leave a comment or pm letting me know you found some of it helpful, stuff like that definitely does make me feel good.

Poker and Life

Introduction

For my 1500th post, I thought I'd write out a companion piece to my 500th post which was well-received on here. I didn't plan on this one ending being extremely tl;dr as well, but it did anyway. I think maybe the analogies might be cumbersome at times, and it's kind of rambling, but hopefully you will not find it too unreadable or tedious and I'm not just stating the obvious, and that you manage to get something out of it if you read.

Ostensibly, the purpose of this post is to compare poker to life and examine traits and strategies that will help you succeed in both. Really though, I tried to make it about how to lead a better life.

Here's a bunch of suggested listening material while you read. In keeping with the theme of this thread, all these tracks have something to say about life and the human experience.

Key Similarities

In many ways, Poker is set up similarly to life, much more so than any other game I can think of. It is played among people in various different venues and forms, no two situations quite exactly the same, with people's intrinsic and learned qualities and skills playing a large role, but with arbitrary variance playing an equally enormous role over any brief period. Also, as Tommy Angelo and others have pointed out, money buys food, shelter, and clothing in our world, so to some extent by playing for and making money the scorekeeping mechanism poker is almost akin to a fight for survival, where if you go broke, it is as if you have died a little death.

Many of the same qualities that are invaluable in life are also rewarded in poker--intelligence, logic, foresight, patience, self-assuredness, being able to quickly make informed risk-reward and cost-benefit analyses, fearlessness and calmness under pressure, process-oriented mindset, and removing emotions from decision making all will serve you well. The same qualities are also punished in both--impulsivity, illogical thinking, impatience, carelessness and lack of planning and caution, plowing headlong into situations where the odds are stacked against you, consistently improper weighting of factors in decision making, results-oriented mindset, overconfidence, and frequently letting negative emotions such as impatience, frustration, anger, fear, anxiety, and sadness influence your decisions are disastarous and will not get you far and cause you much misery in both pursuits.

Tilt

Much like tilt can wreck a poker bankroll or even career, letting negative emotions govern your behavior can severely damage your life. People make terrible decisions all the time because their emotions overpower their reason. How many people have quit jobs in anger and regretted it later? How many people have gotten the crap beaten out of them because they couldn't keep their mouth shut when they felt wronged? How many people have said hurtful things in anger to people they care deeply about and done irreperable damage to an intepersonal relationship, sometimes even completely alienating the other person? How many times has someone done something impulsive or sought out some sort of quick fix because they were frustrated, depressed, or impatient, and ended up with their life in a worse state as a result? How many people have missed out on experiences that could have been very fulfilling and enjoyable to them because they were too scared or anxious to seek them out?

People dig themselves in a deeper hole in life unnecessarily all the time because of negative emotions, the same way countless poker players spew off stacks for the same reason. TheAshman or Doorbread running up high six figures over a year of hard work and then losing it all back in a matter of days or even hours is much like a guy who is doing amazingly well in life, then he gets in a bad fight with his girlfriend, and he gets way too drunk at a bar, and then drives way too fast going home, and wraps his car around a tree and ends up dead or paralyzed.

Success

In general success in life is measured by things like how much money you have, how attractive and how good shape you are in, how attractive your partner is if you are in a relationship, the frequency and attractiveness of your sexual partners if you are are not; how nice your house, car, clothing, and other material possesions/status symbols are; if you have reproduced and if so how cute and well-behaved your kids are when they are younger, and how succesful and trouble-free they are when older; how good your job is and any achievements and noteriety in your field; how many friends and aquaintences you have and how well-regarded they are; and how many desired life experiences you have had (ie traveling, fine dining, concerts, partying in exlusive night clubs, etc). In poker, success is also viewed by things that can be quantified to the observer--how much money you have made, how high stakes you play, if you've won any big tournaments or been on television, and respect and acknowledgement from your peers and 2p2 and the poker world as a good player.

However NONE of these things will truly tell you whether someone has been a success in life or poker. All that really matters in life is the affection you have felt for, the connections you have made, and the good times you have shared with other people, the fulfilling and pleasurable experiences you have had, and just in general your overall level of happiness and contentment and absence of suffering. In life, happiness is the ultimate currency. Granted, someone having fantastic results in the aforementionted categories will tend to be far happier then someone not having good results, but being a smashing success in all these categories does not mean a thing if you are unhappy and constantly feeling negative emotions and mental suffering. I'm sure there are many minimum wage workers living happier existences than a lot of millionaires.

The quest for happiness through accumulation is ultimately an empty and futile one. As Eckhart Tolle says, "Most people don’t realize until they are close to death that the whole concept of ownership begins to expose itself as empty and hollow." What use are the millions if you were miserable earning them, what use are the lavish luxury surroundings and items if you take them for granted, what use is the perfect 10 trophy wife if you don't even really enjoy her company? Moreover, things (and people for that matter) are impermanent, so by deriving happiness from accumulation, you are setting yourself up to feel loss and deep sadness when you no longer have something that made you happy. That is not to say you shouldn't strive to get lots of money and nice things that can bring you pleasure and take some level of satisfaction when you have earned them, just that you should not let your desire for and having or not having these things define you as a person.

And so in poker, how high you play and how much money you've won and how many tourneys you've shipped and any other prestige or notoriety is also largely irrelevant, and the only true measure of success is how much your life and happiness level has improved as a result of playing. And in both pursuits, all that really matters is the quality of your decions, seek to maximize happiness EV. In general, this will be the same as dollar EV in poker since almost everyone is happier on at least some level when they win money, but one example where this is not the case is quitting a highly profitable game or just not sitting down to play at all so you can get off the computer and be able to do something more enjoyable. A couple others are passing up a +EV play that is very high variance or not player higher stakes where your winrate might be higher, it can be wise to sacrifice some dollar EV to reduce variance and safeguard against an unwanted emotional state or tilt should you lose big.

Making Good Decisions

In both poker and life, we are constantly presented with decisions to be made, and we have tremendous leeway in what we choose to do. Much like it is often quite apparent what the optimal decision is in poker, the same is true in life. For example, the decison to open-raise AA on the button or fold 27 in the blinds to an utg open is a no-brainer, much like the decision to not commit murder, rape, or any other crime that is highly immoral and/or of which there is a significant likelihood you will be caught and go to jail for. There are many ways you can cheat, steal, and otherwise scam people to get money and other valuables from people in life and poker. However, I would say doing these things is a terrible idea, not just because it is immoral, evil, and harming fellow human beings and will end up making you feel bad about yourself (or at least I hope you would have enough of a conscience to feel guilty), but also because of the repurcussions of getting caught, specifically the damage that can be done to your reputation, which is frequently vital in both life and the poker world. Just look at all the damage Jose Girah just did to himself trying to cheat his friends out of money.

As another example, you don't want to negative freeroll yourself in poker, so much as you should fold when you have invested not much in the pot with the nuts and it is very apparent the other guy has nuts with redraw, it is generally a sub-optimal decision to lend a substantial amount money without a chance of making some profit, since in the very best case you break even (you actually lose a bit due to time value of money), and the person you lent might never be able to pay you back or might even write off your friendship rather than pay you back, in which case you're out your money and a friend (though that person probably wasn't a great friend to begin with). The only reasons to do so, in my opinion, are if you are very, very confident of getting paid back, or if helping the person out would be worth it to you even if you don't get paid back, or if you anticipate you might need to borrow money from this person at a later date when he is flush and you are hurting, or that the goodwill generated will lead to other postive things for you, or some combination of these.

In general, being free from health ailments, being fit enough to able to particpate in enjoyable physical activites, and being alive for as long as possible to experience as much pleasure and fulfillment as possible in this life is desirable, so to that end getting frequent exercise and eating healthy is optimal. People are happiest and perform their best when well-rested, so getting a good night's sleep as much as possible is another decision where the best option is fairly apparent. With many other decions, the optimal decision is not so clear cut and has to be carefully considered with a properly weighted cost-benefit analysis, and often as in many spots in poker you will have no idea whether you are making the best decision, but with the use of logic and enough experience you can usually be fairly certain you are at least making a decent enough one.

Where you choose to live, what you choose to do to support yourself, the people you surround yourself with, and how you manage your time and what you choose to do in your leisure time activities will play define your life and playan enormous role in your happiness level, much in the way the type of poker you choose to play and the venue and specifics of your play (ie what stakes you choose play, whether you play live or online, if online what site and how many tables you play) will be vital in determing how much money you make and how much fun you have playing poker. In general in poker you want to play the games and against the opponents you have the biggest edge on, and in life you want live in the place and do the things that make you happiest and surround yourself with people you enjoy the company of the most.

One trap you should try to avoid falling into is all-or-nothing thinking and seeing things as black and white. Our culture at the moment seems to suffer from a case of borderline personality disorder, only strong, hyperbolic opinions get heard, things are amazing or terrible, people are champs or chumps, a great all-around person or a total a-hole. You should strive to be able to use nuance in your view of the world. Your romantic partner or good friend who just did something that absolutely revolted or disgusted you is still the same person that has many great qualities and that you shared a lot of good times with, so to feel pure hatred towards them at that moment is misguided. Similarly the guy who you previously viewed as slimy who does something really noble is still the same guy who had done all the shady stuff, so you need to keep that in mind as well and not build them up in your mind as a result of one good deed. And in poker, you should not superficially label people as good or bad or take something drastic away from their play based on their stats or any one hand they play, but should try to decipher their exact tendencies play style and the best counter-strategies and ways to exploit them.

All-or-nothing thinking goes along with what I talked about in the beginning on tilting and making things worse. If you catastrophize everything bad that happens to you and not being able to recognize all the good things you still have poker, then when you get stuck big at poker or have a big downswing in life whether a breakup, lost job, or health problem, you will suffer much anguish and be much more likely to make bad decisions as a result. Because you are viewing things as black and white, you might not realize that even though you are way down on the session, you have plenty of money left and have a good chance of wining it back over upcoming session, or even this session if you play well. Instead, you might play brashly and impatiently, way too long, or move up stakes, since because you feel so bad about the loss, only getting everything or at least the majority of what you lost will suffice.

Much like playing high stakes, playing with aggressive bankroll management, playing tough opposition, and just in general playing very loosely, recklessly, or aggressively will increase your swings of fortune and emotion in poker, there are similar way to increase variance in life. Drugs, alcohol, eating rich, unhealthy food, having much casual sex with strangers and/or prostitutes, gambling (especially neutral or negative ev), or partaking in "extreme" adrenaline rush activites such as fast driving, riding a motorcycle, snowboarding, etc. all have the potential to produce extreme emotional highs, but if things go wrong with them or they are done irresponsibly the results can be disastarous. I'm not saying you shouldn't do these things, just that if you do you do them with caution and awareness and make sure you don't do them to excess, much like if you were taking a shot at nosebleeds you shouldn't put yourself in a position where you can lose a signifcant chunk of your roll.

Adjusting to Other People

Adjusting to and evaluating other people is key to performing well at both endeavours. It is key to recognize when someone reveals a critical piece of information about themselves that will be useful in intereacting with them. For instance someone opening with AA or value betting a strong hand in position is not something noteworthy, while someone limp-reraising 67 offsuit or check-raise bluffing all-in on the river when they miss their draw is.

Similarly, there are many things people who are you encounter do or say that you don't need to remember, but some things, such as their names, and vital details about their background and personality that you probably want to keep in mind. And if they do something unusual, such as tell a needless lie or get enraged about something very trivial you can infer something about their character which could prove useful in your dealings with them.

Adjusting to people's tendencies once you recognize them is also key, much as you don't bluff a call station, you should not get into a debate about a contentious issue where you hold a differing opinion such as religion or politics with someone who is stubborn, close-minded, and/or not very intelligent, since it is very likely they will get upset and think less of you if you try to assert your conflicting views. And there are some people who will get a huge kick from a good off-color joke or explicit degen tale from your life, while others will get highly offended and might think you are a monster. Similarly, some people can take either constructive criticism, or a playful ribbing or joke at their expense, while others can't stand to hear anything negative about themselves and will resent you for it, possibly even becoming very defensive and lashing out creating a hostile situation.

As another example, if you want to keep something a secret or want to trash someone else who is a mutual friend, it is best not to do so to someone who know likes to gossip, while it might be fine to do so with a close friend who know has very good discretion. As an aside to this last sentence though, I don't think gossiping/****-talking is a smart or healthy thing to do under any circumstances even though I must admit I still succumb to these vices quite a bit myself, and in the same way showing your hand or explaining your strategic reasoning for making a play at the poker tables, you should not divulge any piece of information that has even the slightest potential of being used against you later in your real life.

It is also useful to be able to put yourself in the head of others and decipher their intentions. In poker oftentimes people show weakness to disguise a very strong hand, and take an overly strong line when bluffing. In life, sometimes you have to look deeper than the surface too; maybe someone is being really nice to you because they want to somehow take advantage of you or scam you, while on the other hand maybe someone is being standoffish because they admire and are intimidated by you, or because they are upset about something else in their life.

Self-Consciousness/Ego Traps

Caring what people think of you and having an ego in constant need of feeding will hinder you in both poker and life. You don't have to prove anything to anyone other than yourself. Do what makes you happy, not what you think is "expected" of you.

In Westernized culture, popular culture over the years has drilled into our heads that we need to measure up favorably to and be thought of highly by others in order to be happy. When the Dalai Laama was explained the concept of low self-esteem, he did not comprehend at first, not because his English was not sufficient but because he found it baffling that anyone could have a poor opinon and feel negatively about their own self.

There will always be at least some way in which you will feel inadaquete and there will always be times when you perceive someone having a negative opinion of you, so once you are able to reduce the prominence of your ego and no longer feel like you have to be a success by society's standard or equal to or better to others I think you should become more content. In poker, these type of thoughts can lead to tilt, because when you are losing or you think you are being outplayed by someone, this will conflict with your image you have built up in your head as a great player, and you could start forcing things and spewing stacks as a result. You could also start taking sub-optimal lines in order to try to achieve feeling of victory or owning someone, or fail to quit against someone who you might not have an edge on because you don't want to admit that he is better than you.

Avoiding Conflict and Being a Good Person

One way poker differs from life is that poker is by definition an adversarial endeavour in that to succeed you need to take money from those you are playing against, whereas in life I would say probably the deepest level of success and the one I haven't talked about yet is the way in which you have improved the lives of other people.

This also works from a selfish, maximizing your own happiness perspective, since the "I just did a good deed and helped someone out/I just made someone happier/I'm a good person" ego buzz is the most satisfying one you can have if you ask me (and it's even more satisfying if you take it to a further level and can recognize that your ego is latching onto this notion for selfish reasons and then try to do these deeds as selflessly as possible and truly just for the benefit of our other fellow living creatures, which from the Buddhist viewpoint are indistinguishable from ourselves). The happiness created from being a good person and improving the lives of others, if only slightly, is among the purest, deepest, and most fulfilling feeling of well-being in my experience.
And you don't have to do an iota of volunteer work and you don't have to a single cent to charity to improve the world, though those are certainly fantastic ways to do it.

Simply being upbeat and friendly as much as you can be when you are around people is sufficient. Think, do you tend to be in a better mood when around someone who's friendly and in a jovial mood, or someone who is depressed and grumpy? Moods are infectious, so try to put out positive vibes that can be picked up by others. Try to smile and say hi and make pleasant small talk to the strangers you encounter in everyday life as much as possible.

Being a good friend, a good son and brother, a good boyfriend or husband, a good owner to your pet, a good father if you have kids, these are the true measures of success. Not creating drama, being polite and courteous, making people laugh, not saying mean things, not gossiping, not getting in arguments, doing thoughtful things and giving assistance to people if not too inconvienent--simple things like this are making the world a better place.

I'm fairly sure everything is random and meaningless, and we are a happy accident, and there is no higher power with an agenda, but here's some food for thought, what if my gut feeling is not right, what if life is a test and there are ramifications to our decisions that go beyond this existence? In that case, I'm damn sure I want the amount of positive things I did in this life to outweigh the negative. It can't hurt right, after all, even if it's only a remote chance, eternity is a very long time. And to top it off, by acting selflessly as much as possible, I think you will find you will be a happier person to boot.

Inflicting as little harm as you can at poker is one way you can reconcile taking money from people with trying to be the best person you can (another way to justify it, is that almost all the people you take money from would have lost it to someone else or at some other form of gambling). You should be as polite and friendly as possible to your fellow players, especially in live poker, and never berate/lash out at them or needle them/rub salt in their wounds.

This generally turns out to be good business too, since weaker players are more likely to stick around a friendly table, and if you don't form vendettas against people you will not play poorly because you are trying to get one up on someone. In poker and life, it can be satisfying at times to have a me/us versus them mentality, as it will give you a rush of endorphins whenever you are able to get one up on someone you consider your enemy or see them fail at something, but in my opinion this mindset damages your very soul, and it is setting you up to feel devestated when your ego is crushed when someone you have to come to hate gets the better of you.

You should try to your best to make life as non-adversarial as possible. There should be no one that you consider an enemy. You should take no pleasure in seeing people you are jealous of or dislike fail. Instead of feeling hate and disgust for people or deriving amusement out of the shortcomings and failures of others, try to feel compassion and sympathy that their innate qualities and life experience so far up to this has shaped them into such a misguided, ****ed up person. Try to live as non-confrontationally as possible. When someone cuts you off in traffic, you shouldn't fly into a rage and lay on the horn and flip the bird. Try not to blame anyone for anything, even if it's clearly their fault, unless it is with a person who might do something similar again that could have the same negative impact on you, and even if that case, you should try not to cast judgement on them, but rather let them know as constructively as possible that their behavior was not appropriate.

If someone blames you for something trivial that was not your fault, in general it is best to just let it slide and not try to defend yourself or even worse argue with the person about how it is was really their fault. As a general policy in these situations I feel the best play is to simply say something like, "I'm sorry I upset you, it was not my intention." This will defuse the situation without explicity admitting guilt, and often might even make the other person feel foolish for accusing you. Being polite, courteous, and non-confrontational should serve you well from a happiness/life ev perspective too, since not having enemies and being thought of as a good guy will generally lead to people deciding to be more likely to do something nice for you and less likely to do something spiteful.

There is a famous story about a buddhist monk who was brutally tortured for years in POW camp. When he returned, he was asked about his experience, and he said, "At one point, I was in serious danger." When asked if the torture was that awful, he replied, "The torture was very physically painful but I was never in danger from that, what I was in grave danger of was feeling hate towards my captors." This is the mindset you should strive for when relating to people you find unlikeable or repulsive.

Note that being non-confrontational is not the same as being a pushover, and while generally I think it is best to quiet your ego in these type of situations by being the bigger person rather than getting into it with someone, in the event someone is blaming you for something, asking you to do something inconvienent, or otherwise doing something that could have a not insignifcant impact on you, you should stand up for yourself. For instance, when someone's pushing you to do something you don't want to do, don't be afraid to firmly tell them "No, I'm not going to do that." But much like the tight-aggressive style in poker, you should choose your spots carefully to make a stand, and when you do you should calmly and rationally but forcefully state your case in a confident but even tone of voice.

Conclusion

One quote I used that seemed to resonate with a number of people in my 500th post was the Larry Phillips line "Poker is a bit like a beautiful woman who will only go home with you when you show you are truly indifferent to her." In poker and in life, doing your very best to make yourself succesful and happy, but not caring about the results is a great strategy. The best way I have found to do this is by employing mindfulness and buddhism concept such as prescence, acceptance, and non-attachment.

By focusing on your breathing and eliminating unneccesary mind noise and clearing your brain from everything but the experience of the present moment, you should experience improved performance and happiness. I'm not going to talk much more on this subject, as I already went over these concepts in my 500th post, and if you're interested you can read lots of great material on the subject from Tommy Angelo and spiritual teachers like Eckhart Tolle, John Kabatt Zinn, the Dalai Lama, and Thich Nhat Hanh. Suffice it to say it really does rate to make you much happier if you can implement these teachings into your life. The secret is to stop caring for the most part about how much you achieve in life or in the poker, and through this you should become more succesful, at which point whenever you lapse back into the old flawed accumulation, egoic mindset you will be very pleased with where you are in life.

Poker is also like life in that when someone first starts out at either, they have absolutely no clue what they were doing. However, through experience, hard work, and learning from others, it is possible to get dramatically better no matter what point you are currently at. To get a little bit personal, I was pretty much a complete trainwreck in life up until a few years ago, and I was pretty terrible at poker for the first few years I played too. Fear, anxiety, addiciton, low-self esteem and insecurity, laziness, not seeking out the help of others, and letting my ego dictate my behavior all made me much less happier and succesful than I could have been. Now I feel I am a much happier person, though I still lapse into the same bad habits and negative thought patterns and experience destructive emotions way more than I should, both in my everyday life and poker. At least my awareness has become much better, and now when I start to slide downhill, I seem to catch myself sooner before things get out of control. There is always room for improvement, no matter how great you may be, you can always strive to be better.

In life, much as in poker, we are constantly getting dealt a fresh hand. What has come before and what is yet to come is irrelevant, except in the way it informs our current decision, which we should always strive to make to the very best of our abilties. Try to make the perfect decision, at every chance, at the poker table and in life. And moreover, be as happy as you can in the now, don't fret about the future or dwell on the past with regret, savor and be as present as possible for every precious, miraculous moment in this fleeting life.

first! good stuff. read the first part. will read later.

Second, love the format love the song love the quotes, I'll comment more on it in few hours, thx for posting .

great post thanks for taking the time to write it. bookmarkeddd

will be reading this today, thanks for taking the time to do this

u are a legend!

i love u bro

almost never read the ones that are this long but this is pretty cool. i like the soundtrack too. really wish me and u would have started posting here and getting into this kind of **** a few years back. pretty sure we would both be much, much wealthier

can't wait to read this, also want to say that Time by Pink Floyd is one of my favorite songs. Thanks.

Holy wall of text!

Will read later.

easily the best post i've ever read on any forum.

definitely gave me things to think about regarding my own pursuit of happyness.

thanks for taking the time the share this with us, highly appreciated. i will print it out and put it in my collection of the most influental quotes/stories, right by your 500th post.

you sir are my hero.

definitely one of my favorite post's on this forum

congrats on your success and GL in life.

There goes your 3k post...

Great read, once again.

I've also made a comparison for life, but can't quite write the bible on it, unlike you. Just simply one day came across this thought "Life is like jazz, you're given the basic pattern, but then you'll have to improvise on it."

Thank you for this.

You have incredible talent for "something" what i cant exactly describe. But that "something" is more awesome thing than being really skilled in single skill.

Great ideas, great post, nice music, awesome attitude.

For the little I know about you you are true role model for many of us.

Thanks!

This is so true. I'm sure you've all heard the cliche don't mix friends with business, but it really can't be stressed enough.

As a good friend, you have a natural inclination to help somebody who is down on their luck. I've lent money to people who I believe genuinely had every intention of repaying me. However, as time passed the fact they owed me money motivated them to socially dodge me and vilify me as to self-rationalize their actions. It would especially seem that the general public views poker winnings as found money.

Sure you may seem like a selfish, stingy, brat by denying them financial resources; however, I can almost guarantee you this is a -EV proposition for you. Even if you could somehow charge them enough interest to compensate the risk, you still come across as an opportunistic asshat, since after all who charges 15% for a 1 month loan when your friends no less?

I doubt my 2c was really necessary, but if I can hammer this home to at least one poker player I'm happy. TL;DR or not, this post is FILLED with valuable info. for succeeding at poker and life. Thanks CWhips, I definitely feel you have your poker MBA

Interesting enough, if you could stab someone and steal, say, a significant amount of money from his leather suitecase, and the just put the knife in the hand of a nearby drunken hobo, it's fine?

Either way, you find a lost girl on GHB wandering in a lonely area, are you just going to rape her(with your condom so no DNA spillt) 'cause nobody will ever know?

Not really reading these long tl;dr threads, but this was really awesome!!! Changed my mindset a little bit. Thank You.

Thanks very much for positive comments guys, very gratifying to read.

Well, yeah, I probably didn't phrase that part as clearly as I should have, with murder and rape, even if you were 100% sure you could get away with it, it is still a no-brainer not to commit these acts, as they are immoral and downright evil by any standard and you are causing severe harm to a fellow human. With some other crimes like tax evasion, insider trading, drug dealing, unarmed bank robbery, etc., I think they are bad ideas mostly because of potential punishment if caught.

Nice post, post more.

About best post I have seen in 2+2

Def. agree w/you

wow

bookmarked

kindred mind ty