Is it a reasonable thing, I ask you, for a grown man to run about and hit a ball? Poker’s the only game fit for a grown man. Then, your hand is against every man’s, and every man’s is against yours. Teamwork? Who ever made a fortune by teamwork? There’s only one way to make a fortune, and that’s to down the fellow who’s up against you. ~W. Somerset Maugham
While I’m a big proponent of team-playing and accomplishing things together (heh, I shouldn’t be writing about poker now, should I?), I think Somerset Maugham is being a little too dramatic with this quote. Or actually, the character who speaks these words is. In this context, it seems that baseball is also crap, on the basis of it being a team sport where one doesn’t get to shine personally. I don’t think baseball sport is any better than poker, in fact, it may be worse because in my opinion it doesn’t require heaps of logic or making risky choices. It’s more of physical skill sport, isn’t it. Are there any baseball experts out there that can tell me that it’s more than being able to hit the ball and run? Or depend on other people to do their job well? Or recite baseball statistics.
The one man against the world mentality is a little too much for me as well. Yes, you can indeed be rough in poker, and you have to play to defeat everyone else at the table, but I would definitely argue that you can make a fortune that way. Emotions will eventually get the better of you, at least once. This is where team mate’s advice would really help, no?
It's how you play it...
As I was listening to my colleague passionately explaining the following idea to me, I decided to turn it into a post. In reality, this post was spawned by M.L., but I’m acting as Herodotus now and bringing you the true transcript embellished with only punctuation marks! He he.
Thesis: participating in life situations is a lot like a playing a poker hand.
You start by sitting down at table with several other people. Everyone’s goal is to win, or succeed as much as possible and walk away with more than they came in with. You’re dealt two cards; that’s what you’ve got to work with and make the best of it. It could be a pair of sevens or a pair of Aces, or complete crap or a beginning of a straight flush.
No matter what it is, you’ve got to use those cards in your current set-up. Isn’t it the same in life? We’re dealt different cards in life. It’s how you play that matters. If you’re collected, cool, and calculating, you can go quite far, sometimes surpassing those players with better cards.
At the poker, like in real life, you can approach a situation from different angles – you can try to terrorize everyone at the table by skyrocketing the bets and behaving perhaps irrationally and see who’s going to stand up to you (call your growing bets!). Or you can take risks within limits (raise when you’ve got a great hand and watch out for other vigilant players), or you know when to call it quits and prevent more losses – when to walk away from the situation without causing any more damage to yourself.
It’s about handling your emotions, too, and manipulating the emotions of others. Or not manipulating them at all (no staring, no interrupting, no coughing, or yapping during the game!), and going with the flow. It’s about assessing risks when new information becomes available (the flop, the turn, the river) and changing your strategy accordingly.
This marks the end of my Herodotus role. It’s definitely interesting to watch how people play the game. Is their approach to poker somewhat similar to how they approach life? Can we learn anything from poker and use it to help us in our life? Or, vice versa, can playing poker make us worse off (gambling and all)? You tell me.
The journey of a poker newbie continues. Let me explain my academic background, because it plays a role in how I approach this game/sport (haven’t decided on that one yet). I’ve some training and university-level experience with probabilities and game theory that I gathered from my advanced economics classes.
I subscribe to the know-your-probabilities school of thought; knowing realistic probabilities of this or that occurrence really helps in making better decisions in life. It’s very simple, in fact! People tend to freak out a lot, get enmeshed in fears of a pandemic (hello swine and avian flu), and take stupid risks when their chances are very, very slim (drinking and driving?).
Photo by geishaboy500
All it takes is some math probabilities knowledge, and a dip in combinatorics. Learn-Texas-HoldEm.com web has a pretty good step-by-step guide, if you want to polish your skills or learn a little.
I’ve watched a couple of poker tournaments on television, when channel-surfing on a random Saturday afternoon. My favorite part about televised tournaments is not the stern faces of sunglasses-wearing, thousand-dollar-betting poker stars, but watching their (betting) behavior once they get their first two cards and probabilities of winning the pot pop up.
Many professional poker players say they play by “feel”, but I seriously doubt that. If you don’t have strong grounding in mathematics, it can get tough to make a decision in a difficult situation.
Of course, it’s not all odds. And seriously, if you know the odds of every possible hand in poker, and can swiftly calculate them in your head based on what cards get dealt, I’d be surprised… and a little freaked out. (Unless you’re Rain Man, of course J) That’s when the psychological element of poker starts being interesting. Working with the cards you’ve got, and your probabilities of winning, you decide to intimidate opponents psychologically, or rightfully risk and beguile with aptitude, or plainly bluff with garbage of a hand.
As long as you have the grounding and mathematical foundation, the rest is up to you. You’re prepared, now work your emotional intelligence magic!
Photo by Jam Addams
I’ve never played online poker, or rather – I haven’t developed ardent interest in playing poker because I associated it with pretty bad decisions in life. Mostly, because I had a friend who not only ran an underground poker room, but also lost quite a bit of money in this game.
Nevertheless, I don’t shun the game, and like to play it when an opportunity presents itself. I used to view it as something similar to bingo, expecting fun cards and then inconspicuously asking a friend standing behind my back whether I had good cards or not.
Very silly.
Having recently started playing again, and having developed a deeper understanding of probabilities and combinatorics, I realized there’s a lot more to the game than waiting for the “fun” cards. There’s a lot of “what are the odds of…” It’s a game of skill as opposed to a roller coaster of luck.
I realized that the first thing you should in poker is to understand that it’s not about hoping for the best cards, but realizing that sometimes you’re just gonna be sitting on the not so generous card deal. It is one thing to calculate the odds of getting a powerful hand and figuring out whether it’s reasonable to continue with what you’ve been dealt. It’s another thing altogether to hope for four-of-a-kind deal when you hold a 6 and a 10. Watching poker tournaments on TV can help you with odds if you’re not good at calculating them yourself.
You also need to understand that things can get pretty rough, emotional and seemingly irrational sometimes. People won’t play according to the probabilities they hold in their hands. Distinguishing between bluffers and amateur mathematicians is the hardest task, I find. But that’s a post for another time.
