A Student's Comment Sparks Personal Consideration

One of my poker students said to me, at the end of our first class, "You know, I really like poker, but it takes so much time from someone's life to play. I wonder sometimes if it would be better to spend that time writing a novel or something else to contribute to society".

I admit that he makes a good point that has kept me thinking since he said it nearly four weeks ago. I have spent so many hours at the poker table. It's so many that I loathe to run the script against my log data that would tell me how many hours of my life it actually is; I like to be blissfully unaware and think only in terms of "per hour" stats. I also marvel at the irony of the post-modern and existential emptiness of poker. Money and people give poker meaning. But, if you just look at it from a distant view, you see a bunch of plastic-coated, thin and strangely-marked objects deciding who gets more or less of the stacks of the round clay things. It's really nothing more than that, yet we poker players spend so many hours pushing those chips and cards back and forth for otherwise no apparent reason; it's all constructed. Couldn't we, as my student asks, be writing the Great American Novels instead?

Well, set aside for the moment that I don't have the right skills to write a novel. I do have the skills to write software, so maybe I could be off writing some new, exciting Free Software for the world. I could shuffle bits around on a hard drive in interesting ways rather than shuffle those cards and chips. Would that be a "better contribution to society"?

Perhaps it would. But, as I considered that question for the last month, I began to go through my mind what poker has afforded me, apart from my hourly rate (read: dollars), that has improved my life. I was actually surprised to discover that it's given me as much as I have gotten out of my other "more important" academic and professional works.

There is one specific thing that poker has given me that I value highly. Since playing poker on a very regular basis, I have become a more patient person. Indeed, as I continue to play more, I become more and more patient. I used to loathe waiting. Yet today, As I fly back from a business trip, I am contently waiting to board, waiting for people to walk past before I can stow my carry-on luggage, waiting for the plane to land, and all the other standing and sitting around that travel requires of a person. All these things once drove me insane. These days, such things don't really get to me. I find now I have primarily the meta-problem: I get frustrated and annoyed at people who are, like I once was, too frustrated to wait patiently. But, even that improves with time, and it improves thanks to poker.

That "tight-aggressive" poker style has taught me to just let things go until I'm "in a better spot". Another hand will come along. My opportunity will come. It might not come in this session, or this day, or this week. Maybe it won't be an opportunity with the same people in the same place. But, if I keep watching, and waiting, and my time comes. Eventually, I get to the counter and place my order; I use the wait-time efficiently by spending more time weighing my options than I once did. Eventually, I get to board the plane. In the meantime, like I do at the poker table, I spend my time seeing what interesting things people around me are doing and saying.

I believe poker has expanded the world around me. It hasn't made the world a different place, but I believe that I actually process more of what is around me. I used to be one of those people who went through the day not noticing things -- completely focused single-mindedly on the task at hand. I probably missed meeting and talking to people. I missed opportunities, I am sure.

Indeed, through poker, I have met people that I would never have met or spent time with otherwise. The people I spend time with at Greg's game, for example, are not the people with whom I would have likely chosen to spend my time. But, they are not, as I once might have assumed, people not worth my time. Almost everyone is worth my time; if I'm patient, I might learn why. Poker has taught me to stick around and try to find out, instead of tapping my foot, looking at my watch, and wondering when I won't have to be where I am anymore.