What Poker Has Taught Me About Life

Regular readers know that I love comparing the games I play to real life, and finding the similarities. In this column, I will be more specific, and will speak from a personal viewpoint. What follows is a list of things that a long poker career has taught me about life:

1. There is some good in all bad people, and some bad in all good people. As I am sure you are aware, there is no better melting pot for meeting all kinds of people than the poker table. I have met poker players who are on the Forbes list of the world’s richest people, well-known movie stars, famous athletes, university presidents, and highly successful politicians. I also have met professional hit men, drug dealers, gun runners, bookies, hookers, and people who have spent a lot of their lives behind bars. Also, I’ve met a lot of “ordinary people” like myself. All have flaws and virtues. I remember reading a while back about a professional killer who had executed numerous people but was very good to his wife and children. I am sure that this contrast surprised a lot of people, but it sure did not surprise me. We all know of politicians who were supposed to be very moral people, but got caught cheating on their spouses with call girls or playing footsie in a public bathroom, trying to get a tryst; no surprises there, either. We poker players are privileged to meet people from extremely diverse backgrounds, and can lead a wiser life because of it.

2. Fortune favors the bold. There is an old poker adage that states that if you never get caught bluffing at poker, you are not bluffing enough. A poker player who risks only small amounts on a bluff and has the goods every time the big money goes in may be a winning player against weak competition, but he will never win as much as he would if he ran a larger risk once in a while. A good poker player knows that there are occasions when you have to put all of your money at risk in order to play in the most effective manner. “If you wish to give yourself the best chance to live, you must be willing to die.” Life is not filled with certainties, of course. You give situations what you think is the best shot and hope that all ends well. I sure did not know that I would be able to earn a living and live a happy life when I started taking poker seriously.

3. Luck is not distributed evenly; it comes in batches. Having luck meted out in even doses for a sustained period of time is very unlikely. You can easily go several hundred hands without holding pocket aces, then get them twice in one round. In life, my father had an expression that he got from his father: “It is not going to rain on your roof all the time.” So, whether your luck is running bad or good, it certainly is going to change at some point. If things don’t go well, be prepared to handle it psychologically, and ride out the bad stretch.

4. You need to learn how to win and how to lose. There is a school of thought that children should not compete because their self-esteem can be wounded by losing. I obviously do not agree with this. During my entire life, I have undoubtedly both won and lost at competitive games far more than the average person (I have competed at many other games besides poker), and believe that both winning and losing contribute to improving one’s character. Can you imagine all the satisfying life experiences that a person would miss if he never did anything that could turn out badly? This means no spouse, no children, no business, no traveling. If I had not played poker and other games all of my life, I would have missed out on a great deal of fun — and would not have been the same person.

5. Poker forces you to put yourself into another’s shoes. Poker teaches empathy. I do not see how you can play a decent game of poker unless you try to get into an opponent’s head and figure out how he may be thinking with different holdings. Looking at situations through the eyes of another is an important poker talent, and an important life talent. The essence of poker is not how good your hand is, but how it matches up against your opponent’s hand. Maybe the reason that I like politics so much is that it is a lot about getting into the minds of other people. You may recall my recent column about historical leaders who were unable to get into the minds of their opponents, and thereby met with disaster.

6. Poker teaches emotional control through deferring pleasure. One of the most important character traits in life is controlling your emotions. And one of the most important emotions that you must control is the drive for pleasure. (Hey, I am not against pleasure; I am not a stoic. I am talking about deferment, not abstention.) In poker, it is more fun to play than to fold, and more fun to play a lot of big pots than to pick your spots carefully. But having the maximum amount of fun in playing the game clearly interferes with getting good results. If your goal is to win, you need to be able to defer some of the pleasure in playing the game in order to maximize the pleasure of counting your winnings and enjoying life more because you have extra money. I do not know of any game that’s better for teaching self-control than our game of poker.

7. Poker teaches you to analyze and act based on incomplete information. Even the best poker players make mistakes — probably more than you realize. We players have to make decisions, some of which are of great consequence. A decision cannot be postponed until our knowledge is sufficient enough to give us great confidence. Many of life’s decisions — especially the most important ones, such as how to earn a living, who to marry, and where to live — are based on incomplete information. You can usually defer important decisions longer in life than you can at the poker table, but you cannot defer them until your information is complete. Deferment is in itself a decision, and may not be the right course of action.

The bottom line is, poker has not only been a big part of my life, it has taught me a lot about life. Many people (but few poker players) think the main things that poker teaches are how to get money without hard physical labor, how to cheat, and how to be a compulsive gambler. I say to them that poker has enriched my life and taught me many desirable character traits. What has your poker experience done for your life? Should poker be judged by the few it has harmed rather than the many it has helped?

Bob Ciaffone has authored four poker books, Middle Limit Holdem Poker, Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Poker. All can be ordered from Card Player. Ciaffone is available for poker lessons: e-mail [email protected]. His website is www.pokercoach.us, where you can get his rulebook, Robert’s Rules of Poker, for free. Bob also has a website called www.fairlawsonpoker.org.