Gavin Griffin: Poker Questions Asked And Answered

People in the poker community often come up to me and ask about whatever is on their mind. Some of these questions are good questions, and some are bad beat stories in disguise. I’ve been through quite a few things in my poker career and I like to help whenever possible, and in this new Card Player series, I’d like to share my experiences and knowledge. Feel free to ask any poker-related question, and I’ll do my best to answer it in the space below.

Question: I’ve been trying to teach my wife how to play but it’s not going well. Any suggestions? – John

Gavin: Well, first of all, good luck. I tried to teach my wife some tournament concepts ahead of a ladies tournament a few years ago. My wife is a Civil Engineer who is much better at math than me. She is also a very logical thinker. Seems to me like a perfect combination to be at least competent at poker. She had two problems. First, she gets impatient. Not a big deal, she just doesn’t enjoy poker that much and can’t deal with the grind of a long tournament day. I get that, it’s tough for everyone sometimes. In fact, that might be the biggest skill the best tournament grinders possess, which is the ability to continually make correct decisions no matter how long they’ve been playing that day or how many days in a row they’ve been playing. If you can always be focused on the hands you’re playing and the decisions you’re making, you have a great chance to be a very good tournament player.

Her second problem was a strong tendency to be results oriented. In poker it’s very important to know that no matter how many good decisions you make, one unlucky turn or river card can make a big dent in all the progress you’ve made leading up to that. If you get it all in with 10-10 v 9-9 for a big pile of chips because you were certain the guy was jamming pretty light to get you to fold tens or jacks, but they still hit the nine and cripple you, that doesn’t mean you played it poorly or that you should have waited until the K-Q-9 flop so you could fold. It means you got unlucky. Because of her profession, where if a bridge falls down something was done wrong, she must be results oriented. She can’t just say, “we did everything right and got unlucky that the soil was different than we thought it was.” Nope, a bridge that you built falls down, it’s your fault, end of story. This teaching session did not go well and neither did the tournament. She didn’t have any fun and since then hasn’t played a tournament that wasn’t accompanied by an open bar.

I did, however, learn a few things from this teaching session. We made a mistake by trying to do it all at once. We should have done several short teaching sessions instead of one or two long ones. When you try to jam a ton of information into one session like that, wires get crossed, things that should stick out don’t and things that you thought were throwaway comments are burned into their brain like gospel. In addition, most people’s attention span is pretty short and if they’re not super excited about learning poker in the first place, it will be hard to keep their attention for more than 15-30 minutes at a time.

To that point, make sure the motives of this are clear. Are you teaching her because she wants to learn or because you want her to learn to enjoy the pastime that you do? If she approached you, saying that she wants to learn poker and is super excited about enjoying it with you, that will go a long way towards making your sessions easier. If you’re trying to get her to play the game that you love and nudging her towards liking it, realize that might make this a difficult process. There are some things that I’m sure she’s tried to involve you in that weren’t your cup of tea, try to remember how that felt and see if you can think of ways to make it more fun and interesting to her. Poker can be a very dry and boring game so try to fun it up a little. It also wouldn’t hurt if you bargained with her a bit. Tell her that you’ll do something she’s been wanting you to try for a while if she’ll learn poker with you.

Marriage is about communication and compromise. Compromise with her by doing some other things that she wants to. Communicate with her effectively by checking in with her periodically while you’re doing a teaching session, and when you realize that she’s done for the day, don’t try to push it. Don’t forget that non-verbal communication is just as important as verbal communication. Since this is a skill that you’ve developed from playing poker, and hopefully one you’ve honed pretty well from being married to this person, use it to be aware of when she’s saying she’s having fun but doesn’t really mean it. We are always looking to please our spouse and putting up with some poker lessons for a bit longer than we want to as long as we get to spend that time with the person we love is a small price to pay. Just try not to make her pay that price if you can avoid it.

To wrap up, try to keep it fun, light, and short while paying attention to the clues she’s giving you about whether she’s really interested in continuing.

If you have a question for Gavin, send it to [email protected].

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