The Universe Hates Me

Usually I think the universe loves me, but sometimes I know it hates me. Just now, when I went to play poker online and found out that my Internet connection was down, I knew the universe was perversely punishing me for sins that I did not commit. It’s an old story, a story called defeat of expectation. When things don’t work the way that I want them to, when I suddenly can’t have what I want, I get all bent out of shape. And it’s not just the poker, trust me. It’s the whole darn Internet — the e-mail, the news feeds, the online dictionary, all of it. Without it, I start to twitch like the third day of detox. I hate it when the universe hates me.

If I’m lucky, it won’t stop hating me right away.

Why do I say that? Well, let’s say it did. Let’s suppose that my Internet service resumed right this instant. What’s the first thing I’d do? That’s right, play poker, the thing I wanted to do in the first place. But now, instead of entering the game with my head screwed on straight, I’d be in there as a victim of my own thwarted expectation. I’d have some catching up to do. At the very least, this would make me play rushed and rash, making up for lost time. Worse yet, I still may be lugging around the mental conviction that the universe hates me, and this will certainly color my judgment and impact my actions. In another context, we call this feeling tilt.

The funny thing about tilt is that many people mistakenly think it’s caused only by what happens at the table. Some sad mirplo (a very bad player) gets his money in bad and hits his three-outer on us. Boing! Here comes the tilt wagon. Or, we miss our fat two-way draw. Or, we lose to set over set. Or, we get our aces cracked. Or, any of the many other nasty things that can happen to us at the table. These things do cause tilt, no question about it. But I would put it to you (I think you already know) that the roots of tilt can go deeper — sometimes much deeper — than that.

Ever been stuck in traffic on the way to the casino? This is another case of thwarted expectation, on a par with losing your Internet connection. You arrive late and testy, and you’re on tilt before you even sit down. Or, let’s say you’re not quite over that cold you think you’re over, but you’ve missed three days of play already, and you’re darned sure not going to miss another one. But your lack of physical well-being puts you off your game. This is what we might call soft tilt, a condition in which you’re not playing your best and you don’t even know it. Insidious, that — and all too common.

Delving deeper, we come up against a whole range of psychological factors that can negatively impact your play. Did you just have an argument with a family member or friend? Are you sneaking out of work to play poker? Have you blown through a lot of money lately, and are now coming into the game stuck and short? Give these emotions their names — resentment, guilt, fear — and you can easily see that none of them can do anything but hurt you at the table. You know this, of course you do. The question is, can you admit it to yourself?

When my Internet connection went south, it didn’t take away just my online poker. It took away a wellspring of stimulation and distraction, which wellspring, I must confess, I count on to keep me mentally engaged during my working day. It’s not enough for me just to sit here writing. I have to know what the rest of the world is doing, too. Let’s give this condition its proper name: attention-deficit disorder. Can you imagine that ADD might hurt the quality of my play? Can you think about how much worse it would be if I didn’t acknowledge it for what it is? Then, on top of everything else, I’d be in denial, and when it comes to denial, I think you can almost make math of it, thusly: Your Problems + Denial = Tilt.

Knowing what I know about me and ADD, by the way, I play almost nothing online except heads-up sit-and-gos. They suit my condition. I get to play every hand.

True story: I was playing at The Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles a few years back, when the guy next to me at the table hits the bad-beat jackpot for about $9,000. You’d think he’d be thrilled, right? You’d think he’d be jumping for joy. (I was, and I got only the table share of something-hundred.) Instead, this guy tumbles into a funk so deep that he looks like he’s on the verge of nervous collapse. I have to ask him, “What’s the matter, dude? You just hit the jackpot. Why aren’t you happy?”

His answer? A classic: “My wife thinks I’m at the Lakers game.”

Aha, I get it! You lied to your wife about going to play poker. Why? Probably, she doesn’t approve. Why? Probably, you don’t do it well. Why? Because you’re lying to your wife, you mirplo! You entered the game in a mental state comprised of equal parts of guilt, deception, and denial. Apart from the improbable outcome of hitting a jackpot (which you now can’t even tell your wife about), how could you possibly do well with all of that negative noise in your head?

Roy West said, famously, “Play happy or don’t play.” This essay really just amplifies that theme, but I think it bears amplifying, and here’s why: Most of the time, most of us think we’re playing happy whether we really are or not. We lack the hard discipline it takes to look deep inside ourselves and ask the fundamental question, “What’s going on?” Unless and until we can be that frank with ourselves (and stop telling stupid lies to our spouses), we really don’t have much hope of beating the game. To put it another way, you can’t master poker if you can’t master yourself.

OK, I’m done with that. There’s a game out there with my name on it. The universe has hated me long enough.

John Vorhaus is the author of the Killer Poker book series and the new poker novel Under the Gun, in bookstores now. He resides in cyberspace at vorza.com, and blogs the world from somnifer.typepad.com. John Vorhaus’ photo: Gerard Brewer.