So, You Want To Start Playing Poker? – Part 1

[shipitfish]

I have been asked a number of times by friends and acquaintances about poker. It is USAmericans' favorite game, and was so even before the boom. Post-boom, it's ok now for even the intellectual elite, who would otherwise frown on “gambling”, to like and enjoy poker.

I am somewhat used to the “Oh, so you're a doctor, I wanted to ask you...” syndrome of being a good poker player. As someone who also knows about computers, I have often been the person whom friends and acquaintances come to and ask their computer questions. Since I have barely ever used Microsoft products, I'm usually no help there — to their surprise. However, in poker, I'm well versed and knowledgeable in the ways that they need me to be, since I started from the very bottom games that interest new players.

When I started teaching my friend Dan how to play, roryk told me:

It seems fun and innocent and cool to be teaching someone, until one of the people you get into playing cards completely destroys their life with it. 90% of the people are suckers in the games, and more likely than not if you get someone playing, they are going to be a sucker. [...] So just save yourself some hassle and tell them not to get involved and that it is a brutal, frustrating game.

I gave that advice serious consideration, but in the end, rejected it (Sorry roryk). I have never had anyone come to me to ask about poker whom I judged to be susceptible to losing themselves in addiction. I have a good sense for this, but even if I do screw up and get someone involved who can't handle it, I am certainly not going to blame myself. Should everyone who ever served an alcoholic their first drink blame themselves? Of course not, it isn't their fault; it's a mix of bad genetics, bad environment, and a lack of self-control on the part of the alcoholic.

I model poker as an example of the typical USAmerican male hobby. Upper-middle class men spend a lot of money on their hobbies. Think of golf, for example. I know men who must dump a grand or two each and every year into their golf habits. They'll never make a dime of that back, of course. It's our culture; the “pursuit of happiness” appears right there in a one of our founding documents. Golf makes some men happy, so they dump all their so-called “disposable income” into it.

roryk is right, of course, many experts estimate that 90% of regular poker players are long-term losers. I've never seen hard data, nor a even rigorously computed estimation of that number, but it's still probably correct. But being one of the 90% is far from having a problem. If the player doesn't have a gambling problem, there isn't any inherent additional harm in giving poker a go and dropping a few grand a year in poker instead of golf. Indeed, poker losses can surely be mitigated by careful study to no more than any other hobby someone might undertake. And, the new player might even end up a winner for the year. I think it's a fun hobby and a great way to study the psychology of others, regardless of financial outcome.

The first thing I always tell people who have interest in poker, is that they will be losers forever unless they plan a rigorous, diligent, involved and constant learning process that will take up a large portion of their free time. As a new player, you must realize that to become a strong player, it takes study and lots and lots of active practice (not the passive practice of playing without an eye to game improvement). It takes discipline, concentration and nerves of steel. But, it's also rewarding, just as it is always rewarding to engage in competitive hard work with direct financial reward.

Having heard the caveats, you may still want to give poker a go. You have some “disposable income” and want to take your shot. Then, I suggest you set a budget for the hobby and be disciplined about it. It can be disheartening to realized you don't have the time to put in to learn how to beat the games, but any hobby one might engage in can turn out that way, despite substantial financial investments. It's important that you make an up-front budgeting decision on how much you're willing to spend on the hobby and stick to it. I am sure that every day, a USAmerican man realizes he's never going to be that good of a golfer but that he'll keep playing anyway because he enjoys it, but he surely does so on a budget.

Anyway, the upshot is that I have no qualms about helping people learn poker, with the caveats set forth. So, then the next question always comes: How do I get started and what type of game should I play? What should I read? Where should I go to start playing?.

I've answered these questions many times over during the past few years. I've decided, after tmckearney asked a few questions and I started putting down the usual answers, that I'll instead do a series in this journal, geared to help complete poker newbies get started. Each Sunday night, until I run out of things to say, I'll make a post helping new players navigate their way through the world of poker.

Comments

[roryk.livejournal.com]

Since I did not talk at the poker games, I do not know if you are aware of this or not, but I am getting my Ph.D. in neuroscience from MIT. Most people have the misperception that diseases such as depression, schizophrenia, bulemia, obsessive compulsive disorder, and, yes, addictions such as food addiction and gambling addiction are somehow not legitmate diseases with a physical cause. Your mind is your mind not due to some magical thing, it is a product of the physical structure of your brain which is an organ made up of a bunch of cells connected together in a precise way that communicate back and forth with electrical and chemical signals. If those signals are disrupted in any way, the person can have misperceptions about the world or they can have improper motivations, improper emotions at improper times, they can make impoper movements and so on.

Ask yourself, why is it called Parkinson's disease? Why do you look at someone with Parksinson's disease and call it a legitimate disease? The reason why is because some cells die and doctors can look at the people who die from it when they cut their brain up and see what is wrong. Thats why they call it a disease. Same with Alzheimer's disease. They look at people who die from it and see this crust on their brain and so they call it a disease. But people with depression, or schizophrenia or bulemia, or yes, a gambling addiction, they also have something wrong with their brain. That is why they cannot stop their behavior. Gambling addicts want to stop and cannot do it. There is something in their brain which is physically, biologically, messed up. In fact one part of the brain that is affected is the same part of the brain that is biologically messed up with drug addiction. To classify one mental illness as biological in origin and another type of mental illness as psychological in origin is to not understand mental illness at all.

A gambling addict will be a gambling addict for the rest of his life. He has an actual biological problem in his brain. If you are really an alcoholic, you should know that. You don't get cured of being a real alcoholic, you are an alcoholic your whole life. You are just either an alcoholic who is not drinking right now, or you are an alcoholic who is drinking right now. If you think you went to the 12 step program and you are fine now then you weren't an alcoholic, you just had a problem for a while. You weren't the real deal addict. If you are a real addict you are an addict forever.

It's like depression. Sometimes life sucks for a while and people get sad. That's situational depression. People die, you lose your job, a couple things hit at once and you have to kind of go to therapy for a while and talk it over but you get over it. But there are some people who go through their whole life depressed, like the majority of the time for no reason. Those people don't have a psychological problem. They have a biological problem in their brain. If you have that, it is like having diabetes. People with diabetes don't take insulin for a while and then don't have diabetes anymore. They might not appear to be diabetic anymore once they take insulin, but they are. They have to take it the rest of their life. That is what being a real addict is.

I just feel like you are trivializing what could happen to these people because you don't get what being an addict is. You think people can just get over it easily, because you think you were an addict and you did. But it sounds like you maybe got out of hand with your drinking in college and had a problem. But that's not being an addict, you know what I mean? A problem is not an addict. People with a problem still have control of themselves. I dunno I don't know your experience, but just from your attitude about addiction it seems like you don't have a firm grasp on the reality of the situation and the real danger of what can and does happen to people. I dunno. It's like.. it's your loved ones, man! Don't you care?? Am I being dramatic or what. I just picture like people I love with all my heart being these people broken down. For what. I would never ever forgive myself. You could just go on and not care? Blameless? I mean really? I'm trying to save you regret for your whole life.

[shipitfish.livejournal.com]

Ok, I'll bite for one more round:

You are probably right about me; I seem to have been spared the addiction gene that was in my family, and my drinking problem in late high school and early college was just a temporary problem and not chronic illness. However, my uncle died of alcoholism. A good friend of mine in Cincinnati died of liver failure caused by long-term alcoholism and drug abuse. I know and understand addiction in loved ones.

But, I also know that addicts tenaciously seek out their drug of choice, almost from birth! They reach out to it and can't be kept away from it. Having spent a good amount of time around addicts, I'm good at catching signs early, but even if I miss it and teach them something about poker and they get addicted, I feel sure that it would have been a matter of time.

Plus, it's really kind of a cop-out to pretend that you can have no guilt simply because you never offered them help with their game. And, after all, how do you handle that situation: Problem Gambler comes to you to teach them about poker. You say no. They get into poker elsewhere, then come back to you for strategy advice. Under your current rules, you'd help him, trying to make sure he loses less. Yet, that might get them more interested!

My point is that no clear line can actually be drawn easily. You either are comfortable with the poker world existing, with its flaws and temptations, or you're not. If you're not, you should stay away. That's what confuses me most about this — not that we disagree, not that I know you are sincere in your advice and genuinely worried about me and the people I might meet — but rather that you seem to still occupy the poker world, taking money from the addicted.

I knew you were a graduate student in something scientific, but not much more than that. I hope your plan is to write the amazing PhD thesis on the neuroscience of gambling addiction or something, and go on to help people. Obviously the issue is one of passion for you, and while I don't agree with your remedies, you obviously could make a very good positive contribution to the situation with your work.

[roryk.livejournal.com]

Nah, all I care about is not seeing someone I love and care for on the other side of the table, broken down because of me. That's it. Actually, all I care about is not seeing ANYONE on the other side of the table, broken down because of me. I would never want to be responsible for hurting someone like that in any way, even if I was only the person who gave them the drug or brought them to the casino for the first time, or went on about how much fun poker was to them.

All of this addicts will find it anyway stuff is just justification. The fact is, you're the vehicle for their demise if you give the crack addict the crack for the first time. You're to blame in some part. And I just think that if you think you'll be fine with it and you won't lie in bed at night some nights thinking about the person that you introduced to poker, and how they shot themselves if it comes to that, or the words his wife screamed at you, or his kids crying after they lost their house, that that won't haunt you for years, because you have this intellectual justification of, "Oh well, he was a gambling addict and he would have found poker anyway." then you are sorely mistaken.

Enough people are finding poker all by themselves. There are enough message boards and places and you can meet all kinds of people already playing everywhere. There is no need to get more people to play. All it takes to protect them and yourself from that ever happening is to just play it down, "Yeah, it's okay. Kind of boring." and change the subject. And you are doing such a good thing for them, showing them you love them and they will never know it. For them and you. I can't believe that is not totally obvious to you. If you want poker buddies just post on 2+2 or unitedpokerforums or Dan Negraneu's site or something, don't fish around your friends and family.

[shipitfish.livejournal.com]

Like I said, I've never fished around my friends. They heard I liked poker and fished me out. Anyway, as I said, I appreciate the advice even if I don't agree with it completely. I haven't dismissed it out of hand, but I'm also not going to follow it blindly either.

[salvelinus.livejournal.com]

I'm also a scientist, (background in genetics and I work in the pharmaceutical industry). I more or less agree with Rory's position.

Here's an interesting story:
Mirapex, a drug commonly used to treat Parkinson's has been linked to the onset of compulsive, unstoppable, life-wreaking gambling in some people taking the drug. Many of these people had never gambled in their life before. Once they stopped taking the drug, desire to gamble ceased. Note that as we understand it, Parkinson's is caused by disruption of normal dopamine signaling in the brain. Dopamine involved in brain pleasure centre stimulation amongst other things.

[shipitfish.livejournal.com]

I think we have gotten as far as we can in this debate; we'll leave it to the lurking readers to decide for themselves. I did want to add a link to an article my co-worker (a lurker here) found to a story about the Mirapex issue.