The Need for Speed

The other day I was playing online in a small buy-in no-limit hold'em tournament, when the following common situation came up. Holding K-9 suited on the button against five other preflop callers, I faced a bet and a raise on the flop. Just as I was trying to figure out who bet into me and how much, and what the flop was, I was dealt aces in another game, a ring game. While I was trying to remember if that game was pot-limit or no-limit, my phone rang, and it turned out to be my mother, asking me for the thousandth time if she should bet out when she flops quads. I don't know why she keeps asking me that question, perhaps she's waiting for me to give her the same answer twice. Mulling that over simultaneously with the two pending decisions, I typed out a few lines of this column, and then hit the skip button on my CD player in order to get to something I could sing along to (I can't stand that Yellow Submarine). I decided to flat-call with the aces and let the aggressive/suspicious player on the button get in the first raise. That K-9 suited hand was still a stumper. I just couldn't get my mouse to sit still over the first player's bet. Just then, my wife dropped by to ask if I'd found that web page with the discount airfares. I had a few different pages up, but I couldn't put my hands on the one she wanted. (Call.) I think another page got loaded over it while I was managing my fantasy baseball team, but for some reason the "back" button didn't work (it did take us to a page full of recorded sounds of people laughing, so I played her the one I thought sounded like her brother). That's OK, because I had my PDA handy, with the URL attached to one of my contacts. My wife wandered off while it was still searching for our fares. I clicked in a few actions at the poker tables, but quickly, because I'd upended a glass of milk (no alcohol while playing, of course) and wanted to mop it up before it made it to the edge of the table. (One of the biggest drawbacks of online poker is that when you make a mess, it's in your own place.) I was starting to feel a little uncomfortable with my aces, partly because the flop contained a pair of sevens, but also because I couldn't remember if I'd put a sweater in the load of laundry that was now in the dryer. Anyway, to make a long story short, I busted out of the tournament a few moments later. I guess that last bet had me covered. I never saw the turn or river, or the other guy's cards, but I'm pretty sure it was a bad beat. The turn card in the ring game was a 10, and my lone opponent bet his whole stack into me. What do you do there?

A friend of mine who plays poker and also has been known to do a bit of occasional reading on psychology once told me that he thought a particularly important personality trait was what some people call "need for cognition." I didn't get the full story from him because I was half listening and half playing some computer game, but I knew what he meant. Some people can sit on an airplane for eight hours, staring at the seat in front of them, wide awake, not thinking about anything in particular, and be perfectly happy. Others get antsy during the 700 milliseconds between critical multimillion-dollar decisions on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

It could be argued that "need for cognition" is just a respectable-sounding name for a short attention span. But I'm not talking about people who can't focus; I'm talking about people who can't stand being without anything worth focusing on. It also could be argued that it's a form of addictive behavior, perhaps a weakness of self-control. But that makes it sound like a bad thing to be impatient staring at the wall, when it should be considered admirable. So, I prefer to think of it as a low tolerance for boredom. It's the same kind of motivation that seeks out stimulation, action. It's not quite thrill-seeking, but it's still a sort of need for speed, even if you're sitting still.

Although it might sound like heresy to print in the pages of Card Player, poker can get a bit tedious on occasion. Not every hour brings a wealth of interesting, difficult, or consequential decisions, and it's not always that much fun trying to find tells at a table full of experienced players, or working out odds in your head. And the more you play, the worse it's liable to get. Unless you're a dog, you just can't get excited about something you've seen a thousand times before. To be sure, I still think poker fares a lot better in this respect than most other things you might do in a casino. As a poker player, I lump slot machines and staring at airplane seats together in the same category. But inevitably, players who need constant mental stimulation will reach the point of looking around for distractions (not to mention people who don't need constant mental stimulation, but just happen to be distractible). It's the same way chronic overeaters may keep an eye open for doughnuts.

Some people are liable to be a little more vulnerable to this kind of distraction – like me, for instance. Although I don't really do 20 things at once when I play poker online, I have been known to do a few more than I should. I'm not proud of it, and I don't think it improves my game any. But at the same time, I wouldn't want to sacrifice the facet of my personality that's always on the lookout for something to think about.

Poker already takes more than a bit of self-control to play well anywhere. In a casino, you can find people at the table to talk to, sometimes there's a few games on TV, and if you get really antsy, you can bring a CD player and a book to the table. But playing at home is the acid test for the post-MTV generation. Although you may have more control over your environment at home than at the casino, it doesn't necessarily follow that you'll be less vulnerable to distractions, or that you'll have an ideal poker-playing environment in any other way. When it comes to distractions, nothing beats home sweet home.