Generation Next --- Paul Hoppe

There’s not much that Paul Hoppe is afraid of when he takes a seat at a poker table, live or online. He’s a fourth-degree black belt with Taekwon-Do International, and has been a head instructor at a dojang in the heart of New York City in Times Square. Early in his life, martial arts became an obsession for Hoppe, while at the same time he was intrigued by strategy games that applied the use of psychology to manipulate an opponent. It wasn’t long before he discovered limit poker and mixed games, and then went about the process of combining both of his passions to achieve a level of mastery.

First, Hoppe had to learn how to learn to play poker. From thousands of hours as a martial-arts teacher, he began to understand the most efficient ways to learn new concepts and ideas. He applied these disciplines to poker, and found immediate success. The main asset that he brought to the game was an understanding of how to corral his own ego during the learning process. From experience, he knew that someone with a white belt in martial arts thinks he knows something, while the best black belts knows that he knows very little; this is mainly because the consummate black belt’s mind is open to every aspect of learning, for the rest of his life.

“When it comes to learning, the ego can be a great tool,” said Hoppe. “You must take great pride in how you do things, and derive your ego from doing well and making the best possible effort while playing poker. If your ego goes up and down with your short-term results, it can really prevent you from learning.”

In the poker community, students have come to know Hoppe as the giant Buddha of poker, because of his online blog of the same name. He shares how he has combined Eastern philosophy with the theories of poker to achieve success at the tables. He is also a poker instructor at the Drag the Bar training site, and recently authored a book called the Way of the Poker Warrior. In it, Hoppe has applied his hard-earned martial-arts knowledge to game theory, balance, discipline, focus, and heads-up play in poker. By sharing how to remove a destructive ego from the game, Hoppe hopes to help players remain disciplined and relaxed at the table to create a more enjoyable experience, as well as a more profitable one.

Craig Tapscott: Many people treat poker as a war to a bloody conclusion. Do you feel this way about the game?

Paul Hoppe: I think that can be true to a large extent, but I think people treat fights and confrontations in the wrong way. When they think about poker as being some kind of conflict, they involve their egos too much and have a lot of anxiety. Those are things that you really need to overcome as a martial artist. You must overcome that part of your ego to get a good performance out of yourself. That’s the point of competition in martial arts — to teach you how to compete, not so much as a martial artist, but in life. Through the practice of martial arts, you learn how to prepare yourself and give your best, and how to be able to perform as well as you can under stressful conditions. I quickly found that I could apply those skills and that disciplined approach to poker.

CT: How do you go about teaching students how to learn?

PH: The first thing I do is make sure that my students are approaching learning with an open mind. That’s not always easy. Students who think they already know everything are just not going to learn something new. You can’t learn something new until you let go of your preconceptions. As a teacher, you just don’t want to tell them directly that they are wrong. You have to find a way for them to reveal their mistakes to themselves, and realize them on their own. If you can show by example, it’s the best way for them to make an idea their own, and then, hopefully, you can open them up to new ideas.

CT: How did you use the skill of focused discipline that you mastered in martial arts at the poker table?

PH: I found that the most effective way to maintain discipline is really connecting to the reasons you’re doing something. You must make sure that what you are doing matters to you. If it doesn’t, you probably shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, because every time you need to reach down inside yourself for something extra, you need to know why. These reasons are going to provide you with the strength to do that. It becomes a way of living, and a matter of pride in what you are doing, besides just a bunch of zeros in your bank account.