Fricka-Fracking Fractals

As you know, I wear many hats: I’m a poker writer and player; I write novels and screenplays; I travel the world teaching and training writers. Sometimes, when I’m feeling a little tired, I do none of the above. I take off all my hats and just… sit… and… muse. I contemplate the big questions of life: Is God real? What happens to us when we die? Why do I keep drawing to inside straights? Like I said, the big questions.

Not too long ago, during one such contemplative interlude (nap) I found myself thinking about poker and its compelling nature. With so many fascinating things to do in this world, why do so many of us lavish so much time, energy, attention and effort on poker? What is it about this narrow slice of human endeavor that we find so compelling, so spellbinding, so… if I may use a gratuitously obscure word… ensorcelling?

Part of the answer lies in poker’s big unknown, and the jolt of stimulation, the buzz, implicit in the turn of the next card. Will it bring joy? Despair? A big pot? Poverty? We don’t know, and it’s the not-knowing that keeps us coming back to the tables time after time. There is, of course, a certain biological imperative to this. Humans are drawn to risk and drawn to the unknown; were it otherwise, we’d have been out-competed by more daring and more questing creatures long ago. We’d still be living in caves wondering where our next mastodon was coming from. I’m not saying that an affinity toward poker is somehow good for humanity, but okay, maybe I am. We poker players want to know, and we won’t be happy until we do. And that’s what human evolution, or at least part of it, is all about.

Close examination of this phenomenon, however, reveals a trap of a certain sort, for hard on the heels of the last unknown comes… the next unknown. The last hand recedes into the past and a new hand is dealt. We look down at the backs of the cards before us, and we wonder: Will I find pocket aces? 2-7? Something in between? Something requiring big thought or a tricky decision? There’s only one way to find out, and that’s to look at the next hand, and the hand after that, and the one after that, on and on down a tunnel of funhouse mirrors.

Which brings me to the mathematical concept of fractals. As far as my tiny non-math mind can comprehend, a fractal is a mathematical function or geometric shape that repeats itself in such a way that every part of the fractal is identical to every other part of the fractal in every respect except size or scale. This business of anticipating outcome after outcome after outcome is, it seems to me, a bit of a fractal function.

We invest our hope in the outcome of this hand. We invest the same hope, on a larger scale, in the outcomes of this orbit and then of this session. We invest the same hope in the outcome of a day’s play. In the outcome of a tournament. In the outcome of a tournament series. In the outcome of a year’s play; in the outcome of years’ play. We invest our hope in the outcome of our whole entire poker playing career, anticipating that our combination of guts, skill, learning and discoveries (and some luck along the way) will render us net plus over the long arc of those careers. We think big, and that’s good because thinking big is also part of what makes humanity thrive.

However, it’s useful to remember that the long arc of our poker careers is dependent in no uncertain terms on how we play this tournament, this session, this hand, this single bet. That’s what fractals are all about: It’s not that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, it’s that the whole and the parts are one. Think about this the next time you’re contemplating a frivolous bet or a suicide bluff or a “hunch” call (or a fricka-fracking inside-straight draw). You’re not just impacting your outcome on this hand or this orbit or this session. You’re impacting your outcome overall. This decision you make right here has fractal repercussions all the way up the line, until it impacts, literally, how you play poker during your life as a whole.

Of course, poker isn’t really a fractal function because fractals never end. They build upon themselves and repeat endlessly, but a poker player’s career ends, well, when he does. To quote the sage, “You’re born broke, you die broke; everything else is just fluctuation.” It’s flip, I know, and disingenuous to say that, “It’s only money,” although that attitude, when properly applied, can help us shrug off the pain of bad beats. Nevertheless, it’s good to draw a distinction between this endeavor we love – poker – and the outcomes of that endeavor – money won or money lost. If our skills are trending upward, we’d like to think that the money will trend upward, too. But even if the money doesn’t trend upward (because, you know, luck happens), we can still devote ourselves to improving our game, through all the fractal iterations of hand after hand, orbit after orbit, session after session, week after month after year after years. There’s a chance for growth here, and I’m not just talking about growing our math skills or our ability to bluff. I’m talking about the way we see ourselves as players in the game, how comfortable we are in our own skins, and how deeply we know our own souls.

In another context (in my most recent novel, Lucy in the Sky, which you should really buy because, you know…) I made the observation that “eternity is now.” This is not a shocker; many great minds have arrived at the same conclusion. But think about it next time you play poker. Whether you know it or not, you sit in the midst of a grand fractal function: your total experience of playing poker. What you do right now matters a lot. It defines you as a player and as a person. The good news is that every hand of poker gives you a fresh chance to define yourself anew.

As for your willingness to take a risk and your desire to explore the unknown, trust me, all of humanity thanks you for that. ♠

John Vorhaus is author of the Killer Poker series and co-author of Decide to Play Great Poker, plus many mystery novels including World Series of Murder, available exclusively on Kindle. He tweets for no apparent reason @TrueFactBarFact and secretly controls the world from johnvorhaus.com.