Introverts

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There has been a lot of recent discussion about who is good for the game of poker. Daniel Negreanu tweeted out a list of traits that make people bad for the game, and then other people like David Lappin and Dara O’Kearney wrote some response pieces. Daniel then gave some consideration to what he said.

Feelings were hurt and people were mad online, and I related with some parts of everyone’s position. In my opinion, it’s hard to be bad for the game of poker unless you’re cheating people, borrowing money and not ever paying it back, consistently shooting angles, or directly berating players for making mistakes. I also think it’s not up to one person to decide what is or isn’t good for poker. But that’s not what this article is about. This article is about what it’s like to be an introvert in a world where being an extrovert is a prized trait.

Introversion is not a flaw and it’s not binary. I’m a natural introvert, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t ever want to talk to people. It just means that when I’m in situations where I have to interact with people, especially where making small talk is expected, I come out on the other side of that exhausted. People wear me out. If I happen to find someone with a shared interest in something and we talk about that for a while, I’m less worn out at the end of it. This is a very simple explanation of how it works for me, and I’m sure it’s different for other introverts, but it’s enough of an explanation to set a baseline for this discussion.

Poker offers me several things that are helpful for the way I approach social situations. First, I have built in excuses to be less than social if I’m already feeling like talking is difficult on that day. I can tell someone that I’m paying attention to the game or I can put headphones on and it’s not socially awkward to do so as it’s become such a regular part of the game. This preserves my energy and my sanity as the less energy I have to spend on making small talk with other people, the more energy I have to make better decisions at the table.

Second, the normal topics of conversation at a poker table are ones that I can tread in without too much effort. Things like sports and popular entertainment are topics that are generally pretty easy for me to talk about without wearing myself out because I keep up, at least nominally, with surface level information in those topics. Just popping in with a little part bit of information here and there allows me to seem like I’m involved in the conversation without actually being too engaged. I can, in a manner of speaking, get a lot of mileage out of very little interaction.

Finally, it’s much easier for my particular form of introversion to have one-on-one conversations, especially about topics that I care about. Those don’t drain me nearly as much as vapid group discussions about things that I don’t care much about. It’s easy in poker to have conversations like this because of the way the tables are set up and because of the available downtime between hands that you play. It’s easy for me to talk to someone sitting next to me who is interested in board games in between hands without expending much energy because I don’t have to engage in multi-way discussions about it and it’s something I’m passionate about.

I no longer play online, but I know that many of the best high-stakes players in the world got their start playing online. This is, very clearly, the best way for introverts to play poker. We can focus all of our attention on playing and none of it on entertaining others. It’s no surprise, therefore, that people in the high-stakes community, especially high-stakes live tournaments are introverts that Daniel’s post seem to be calling out.

It’s great that people feel comfortable to be who they are by engaging in conversations at the table and holding court, feeling like they are at home in a social situation where they are entertaining the people around them. They should also be aware that’s not something that everyone is good at and that the people who don’t engage with people in that way aren’t bad or detrimental to the game just because of that fact. There are all types of people in this world and you wouldn’t say that it’s bad for the game that a person of an unrepresented race, nationality, or gender was playing the game. Your position on the introvert-extrovert spectrum is something you are born with just like those things and it would be helpful to think of that before decrying a whole segment of the population based on it. ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed more than $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG