The Selfish Game

Several years ago, when I played more poker than I reported on it, I was asked to appear on a radio show concerning "the lifestyle of the poker player," back when it wasn't as prevalent an "occupation" for young people. Delighted at the chance to talk about the glamour and drama of sitting in my bathrobe pressing buttons all night, I foolishly agreed. Not only was I naively not expecting to be an all-round apologist for online gaming (not just poker), but I was surprised to find another guest speaking about the admittedly destructive effects that problem gambling has on many people. This was not what I signed up for.

Winging it, I came out with a differentiation between, say, online slots and poker - one being a bells and whistles, immediate gratification type of gaming, while the other is a repetitive, skill-based game at which it takes a long time to become proficient. The sort of person, I equivocated, who wanted to use the Internet for a day-or-night quick gambling fix would be unlikely to be attracted to poker in particular, as when it comes down to it, a lot of people having dipped their toes in the game find it as boring as online Hearts. From a different angle, recently, players such as Jon "Skalie" Kalmar have convincingly written about how playing poker actually created a positive focus for an addictive personality attracted to gambling; Poker Cured My Gambling would have been a great thing to quote at the time.

Having semi-successfully placed poker in a different category than fruit machines, the tack changed to gambling as a career. At the time, I worked part time as a dealer at the Gutshot Club in London and lived with two other poker players, so I was unused to being questioned about the moral viability of professional card playing. I have found this to be the case with a lot of people in the insular poker world in the UK (and presumably elsewhere, too). When everyone you have regular contact with is either a professional player or keen enthusiast, you will be regaled with bad-beat stories daily, but never will have to explain your nocturnal lifestyle, obsession with statistics, or penchant for slang inscrutable to the outside world.

Back then, I had no idea how to answer when I was asked, "Is professional poker the most selfish job you could have?" By now I've had this conversation with various family members and friends, and have some handy stock answers stored up. People wonder why after studying Classics for four years, I would be attracted to such a non-academic profession. But I don't tend to view people's often widely diverse interests as mutually exclusive. I would have made a terrible teacher, too. Unless you work on a voluntary basis for a charitable organisation, it seems unfair to criticise poker as a job. A typical conversation with someone dubious about the morality of playing a game against complete strangers, with the sole goal of removing their quite possibly hard-earned cash might, however, go something like this:

"So what do you give back to society?"

"Well, if I were American, I'd pay tax on gambling winnings."

"Yes, but you're not. You are sort of parasitic, aren't you?"

"Well, I'd look at it more as a kind of self-employment. Just because I'm not trying to make money for a corporation or a business, or selling anything, doesn't make me a parasite. By that logic, footballers would be in the same group."

"Football is huge on TV. Footballers play for their club. It's a worldwide obsession. It brings happiness to millions. Poker brings self-satisfaction to a few, and monetary loss to the rest."

"Have you missed the televised poker boom? There's a reason the World Series of Poker main event now has multiple thousands of runners."

"OK, so people have a tendency to be money voyeurs; do you think there would be as big a following of low-stakes poker?"
"That's irrelevant."

But, recently, someone asked me if the world would notice if the entire poker industry - TV shows, players, commentators, authors, high rollers and penny-ante players - just disappeared overnight. While this is undoubtedly a stupid question, as poker is big business now, supporting tours, programming, and the careers of hundreds if not thousands of people, the big picture is an entirely insular one. Money, lots of it, enters the poker world online, and the only guaranteed winners are the sites that collect the rake. It is entirely up to the players themselves whether or not to "give back" to their communities, or to charities, or to religious institutions, in the cases of, for example, Barry Greenstein and Jerry Yang, respectively.

For every highly publicised poker player who joins the 1 percent pledge or supports a worthy cause, there are many more who are quietly out for their own profit and happy to survive as long as there is enough money floating around to sustain them. It could be argued that there are enough recreational players to support professionals, and that in return for fun, they provide money. But when it comes down to it, it's everyone for himself, and no one would readily admit that he is one of the small cogs that helped the poker machine support people with no other sources of income.

While it's true that most traditional careers provide something in return for money, be it a service or goods, the comparison between professional gamblers and city traders is a fairer one. Recently, in the Financial Times, trader Boaz Weinstein was featured in an article about buying in the current debt market. It was mentioned that he also played both chess and poker, and that "these games require skills similar to those required for managing a big trading book, calculating losses and gains in response to changing information." Gauging trends, being on the lookout for advantageous situations - it's the same sort of thing, just on a much larger scale. If professional poker is selfish, so is every profession in which money is used to create money in the abstract. If your job involves sitting in front of multiple monitors, watching figures that represent cash moving up and down, and looking for the golden carrot of "value," you can't criticise online pros for the selfishness of their employment.

While the American crackdown on online gaming made it noticeably harder to swim the virtual waters looking for fish to play, there still exists the same pyramid of cash - with the huge numbers of small-stakes players forming the base, and the handful of super-successful high rollers at the top. In the middle are an increasingly large, increasingly young group of players who have made it their goal to survive off the game rather than simply enjoy it for its competitive challenge in between living a "normal" life. There are pros and cons to every way of making a living, and if someone has the patience, and organisational and analytical skills necessary to play a game of mixed skill and chance for money, their self-employment should be no less respected. Plus, it's remarkably liberating to work in your pyjamas.

Jen Mason is a part of www.blondepoker.com. She is responsible for its live tournament coverage in the UK and abroad.