Let’s Improve Poker’s Image

My last column said poker’s poor image damages relationships with our families and friends and helps our enemies to commit outrages like UIGEA and Black Friday. Let’s improve it.

Preston Oade, a poker player and distinguished attorney, collaborated on both columns. We believe that you, we, and other serious players can improve poker’s image by publicizing poker’s age-delaying and educational value.

Poker Can Delay Aging

Older people often fear age-related mental deterioration, and poker can slow down or prevent it. My recent series, “Stay Young; Play Poker,” explained how poker’s mental stimulation and social interaction can help players to stay young and sharp.

Poker Isn’t “Just Gambling”

It develops important skills and personal qualities, including understanding others, discipline, patience, controlling emotions, managing information, and conducting risk/reward analyses. Players can improve important decisions about careers, investments, warfare, and so on.

In No-Limit Life, Charlie Shoten stated, “to become a better poker player I had to become a better person.” Similarly, WSOP Champion Greg Raymer, said poker made him a better lawyer. Preston agrees. His seminars, “What Lawyers Can Learn from Winning Poker Players,” explain the different levels of poker thinking and the critical value of studying opponents.

You may object that careers, business, investing and war are not games, but they have many game-like characteristics. Google searches for “business game,” “investment game,” and “war game” got hundreds of thousands of hits. More persuasively, Nobel Prizes in Economics have been awarded for game theory research, and it greatly influenced America’s cold war strategy. The 1994 prize announcement stated it “emanates from games such as chess or poker.”

David Sklansky and I published “Poker Is Good For You.” Let’s discuss two important skills poker develops:

Handling Deceptive People

Many people want to deceive you. If you can’t recognize deception and react effectively, you will certainly become a victim again and again. We wrote: “Many people are easily deceived. Because poker players constantly try to…deceive each other, you learn how to recognize when someone has a good hand, is on a draw to a good hand, or is flat out bluffing. Those skills can help you to spot and react effectively to deceptive people everywhere.

Many Americans are too trusting, including several presidents. For example, President Obama appeared to trust Vladmir Putin, but he is ex-KGB, an extraordinarily deceptive organization. He’ll lie when it suits his purposes, and it worked regarding the Crimea. An administration spokesperson recently acknowledged that “we misjudged Putin.” 

Worse, President Obama did something no minimally competent poker player would ever do. He turned his cards face up by announcing that the U.S. wouldn’t intervene militarily. He gave Putin the green light, and he drove right through it. Why not?

Getting Into People’s Heads

You must do more than just recognize and react effectively to deception. David and I wrote: “Poker’s most important psychological lesson [is]: teaching you what other people perceive, think, and want…If you focus on your own cards, you can’t win…The important issue is not how good your cards are; it is how they compare to the other players’ cards…Understanding other people is vital in virtually every area of life. You can’t have good personal relationships or succeed in business without being perceptive about people.”

If Obama played poker well, Putin wouldn’t have outplayed him. Obama apparently thought — as all of us are inclined to do — that Putin could be reasoned with and sees the world largely the way he sees it. He thought — as most people do — that my way is rational, and other ways are irrational. If, like a good poker player, he had gotten into Putin’s head, he would have realized that Putin was playing for higher stakes and by a different set of rules

Russia has much more to win and lose in Crimea than we do, including its only warm water port. Putin had vital national interests to protect and, in poker terms, was playing for an enormous pot. He was therefore willing to deceive Obama to buy time and gain position by putting troops on the ground in Crimea, even though he had to know that his deception would soon be exposed.

Putin understands his opponents much better than vice versa. He knew that the U.S. and European Union have much less at stake than he does and that we won’t take large risks to protect Crimea and Ukraine.  Putin’s risks were minimal, and the pot odds were huge.

Because Putin knew that we didn’t have vital interests at stake, he could reasonably infer that we wouldn’t intervene militarily. While we shouldn’t intervene, it was unnecessary for President Obama to announce that we wouldn’t do it. In poker terms it’s the difference between believing you have the best hand and seeing your opponent’s cards and knowing you have it. You’ll be much more aggressive when you’re sure.

While it remains to be seen how much of Ukraine Putin will grab, his annexation of Crimea is an accomplished fact. It’s a bad start that’s unlikely to be undone.

Obama and (Secretary of State) Kerry often complain that Putin doesn’t play by civilized rules. Of course, he doesn’t. He’s protecting and advancing Russian national interests by power’s rules, the ones that often apply when a nation’s vital interests are at stake. 

President Carter made the same mistake about the Russians. He ignored his advisors’ warnings, believed Russia’s lies, and then — when they invaded Afghanistan — he publicly lamented that he didn’t understood how devious they were.

We made similar mistakes in Vietnam. We simply didn’t understand that they don’t want what we want, nor do they think the way we do. President Johnson offered North Vietnam $1.5 billion in foreign aid to end the Vietnam War. Referring to its leader, Ho Chi Minh, Johnson said, “Old Ho can’t turn that down.” But he did.

If Johnson had been a good poker player, he probably would have understood that “Old Ho” would never be moved by money. He was playing for national unification of Vietnam under one leader, not money.

Because recognizing and reacting effectively to deception and reading other people are so crucially important at the tables, poker can teach players — including you, me, and American presidents — how to apply these skills in more important situations.

Improving poker’s image helps us all. Take every opportunity to explain its benefits and educational values to your family, friends, authorities, and general public. Let them know that poker is much more than just a great game. It delays aging and makes us better people. ♠

Do you often wonder, “Why are my results so disappointing?” Ask Dr. Al, [email protected]. He has published five books about poker psychology, five on other psychological subjects, and is David Sklansky’s co-author for DUCY?