Moving The Meme

I want to talk for a moment about the Hashishin. (Bear with me, folks, ‘cause this’ll get back around to poker in a sec.) If you’ve heard of the Hashishin at all, it’s only because two lurid words, hashish and assassin, have become linked in the public mind. In fact, the Hashishin were not a bunch of drug-fueled crazy assassins. Rather, as a 12th-century splinter group from the main Muslim Shia community, they were a minority within a minority, persecuted by Sunnis for being Shia, and by Shia for being, you know, not the right kind. Yes, they were radical, and yes, they fought wars, but far from sneaking into throne rooms to slice royal throats, they largely kept their heads down and tried hard not to get wiped out.

But just imagine being the leader of that sect, or any sect, and saying to everyone around you, “Folks, you’ve got the wrong idea. We have to start all over.” Whatever wrong idea you’re setting yourself against, it’s got to be pretty prominent or you wouldn’t bother birthing a schism over it. Because when you do, you’re in for opposition. As all the top iconoclasts will tell you, when you attack the status quo, the status quo gets pissed off, and here’s why: because belief systems are like organisms, and ideas are like species; they reproduce or they die. They also have a certain Darwinian imperative — at least the strongest and longest-lasting ones do — a fierce urgency to impose their memes on new members, be those members children, or converts, or conquerees. So if you’re going to start a sect or a splinter group, you’ve got to be prepared to work hard to move the meme — change the way everybody thinks about everything forever.

Same with poker. (Told you I’d come back around.) Poker is filled with memes — core ideas that everybody knows and agrees with. Here’s one: The standard raise is three times the size of the big blind. Here’s another: Never slow play aces. Here’s another (one I have personally promoted loud and long): There’s three ways to play pocket jacks — all wrong. Now, as it happens, most poker players play strictly according to the meme. They follow rote instructions like “Never give a draw a free card” and “Don’t bet on the river when the only hand that can call you can beat you.” These are useful words of advice, and they might even be largely applicable to the poker games you play. But here’s the thing: They can never move the meme. And as long as you play in accordance with them, you can’t move the meme, either.

Just think for a moment about the poker players you know who have moved the meme. Chris Moneymaker did it by putting front and center the notion that any jamoke with thirty bucks could win the Big One. But really he did it by bluffing Sammy Farha, in historical fashion and in a situation where no one would dare to bluff. In that moment, with that bluff, he moved the meme.

Phil Ivey moved the meme just by being Phil Ivey. He demonstrated that there’s a place in poker for Tiger Woods.

Antonio Esfandiari moved the meme by demonstrating that, similarly, there’s a place in poker for party boys.

Phil Hellmuth has moved the meme so many times we can’t even keep track. (Though if you ask Phil he’ll tell you that it was one time more than that.)

Annie Duke moved the meme by proving that girls got game.

And that’s all well and good if you’re rich and famous and have umpty-gazillion Twitter followers, but how do we move the meme down here on the level of workaday play? Simple: by going against the grain. By setting the goal of upsetting the status quo. By being — by insisting on being — the straw that stirs the drink.

Everyone in your game buys in for a hundred? You buy in for five.

Folks in your game love to limp with middle suited connectors? You raise with yours.

No one gets out of line out of position? Get ye out of line!

Everybody raises with aces? Try dragging one time. If you get sucked out on it’s not the end of the world. But when you move the meme to a place where other players no longer feel comfortable, you deal yourself a tremendous edge. Example: Last week I played a certain hand a certain way and my opponent said — like literally said out loud — “Well, I never put you on that hand.” How happy am I when my foes can’t put me on a hand? One hundred percent happy, that’s how happy. And how do I get there? By willfully moving the meme. By being the one who does different things.

You can move the meme on yourself, you know, just by placing yourself outside your comfortable space. Are you a dyed-in-the-wool hold’em player? Good for you — but when was the last time you played Omaha? Or limit instead of no-limit? Can you honestly say you’re not in a rut if no-limit hold’em is the only game you play? Can you see how easy it is to get out of that rut? Just move the meme — and move to a game you don’t ordinarily play. That’ll change the sorting system in your brain, Jack, and that can’t help but do you good, right?

So here’s what we’ve got. The Hashishin got a bad rap because their name sounded like a drug. World-class poker players are ones who step outside the norm. And even non-world class poker players like you and me can move the meme just by deciding to. Carry that idea into the next session you play. Ask yourself how you can upset the status quo, destabilize the game, move the meme. Take control and be the boss. That’s what all the great meme-movers do, and it’s what you can do, too, if you try. ♠

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.