... And So It Begins

[shipitfish]

I have decided to begin keeping an online journal. I have spent much time struggling whether or not to do so, as I have, in my past, lived too public a net.life, and I have not been particularly happy with the ultimate outcome in those cases. I am not much of a fan of carefully managing friends groups and creating (what I heard called at a Free Software conference this past summer) "Live Journal Drama".

I have come to realize that one area of my life, namely my poker life, is fit for public consumption. This was not, in fact, an easy decision, and I am happy to explain why.

There is this strange tendency in the poker world toward secrecy. In fact, it reminds me deeply of a secrecy that I found in another world I occupy: the software world. In both realms, everyone is constantly terrified that they'll release some "crown jewel" of a secret technique or idea that will make them lose their edge on the "system". People imagine that if someone knew their secret knowledge about "their game", then their pocketbook would be adversely impacted. The suspicious nature is just about the same in the software world as it is in the poker world.

Yet, I just don't think that way. Maybe if I made my living at poker I'd feel differently. But, from my point of view, I am playing poker to learn about people. I want to know what makes people tick, how they think, how they handle stressful situations, how they face adversarial processes, and how they persuade others to come around to their way of thinking (in the poker sense, this is usually "how they convince others they have the hand they are representing", but the examples extrapolate). I want to understand my world more, and I have chosen, for some reason, to use poker as a method for doing this.

So, why not let people know my thoughts about what I've learned about myself and others while playing poker? Why not share that information with others, and increase the depth of human knowledge about poker. One can make an argument that poker isn't worth studying in depth, but for those of us that love it, why don't we do so? Because someone might read our thoughts and learn what makes us tick and take a few extra hundred, or even thousand, bucks off us over our lives? Our bankrolls can take the losses. And, anyway, how is this any different from the opponent knowing something because she figured it out herself. The response in both cases is simple, and it's something we should be doing anyway: we just have to improve our games.

Personally, I think these thoughts were all settled when Doyle Brunson wrote Super System. Telling people about how to play poker might marginally make the games a bit tougher, but it also challenges us serious players to make our games better, and raises the level of play overall to make the whole poker world more interesting.

So, what you are going to start finding here, in my journal, is not my political opinions (of which I have many), nor my radical Free Software politics (which flow deep), nor the soap-opera-style play-by-play of my personal relationships (which we all have anyway). This is going to be about poker. Of course, like every blog on the planet, it'll be a bit too narcissistic for its own good; after all, I'm going to talk about my poker game, my wins, my losses, my plays (good and bad), and my analysis of the poker world. But, in the end, always remember, dear readers, that this journal is about just and only one facet of my life: poker.

So, here it goes. I'm sure I'll regret this in one way or the other, but I think it's worth it to me and maybe it will be worth it to you.

Names will be kept to first-name-only (for live play) and username-only (for Internet play). I don't think I'll anonymize much further than that, although for the live home games I play, I may conceal a bit about who hosts them.

Finally, please note: I may end up backdating some entries when I bring in some text from journal notes I've made. You may want to check back and see the old entries in a few weeks, as they won't appear on your friends pages or other RSS mechanisms (at least I don't think).

Comments

Great blog

[(Anonymous)]

I found your blog listing on the about.com site. I consider myself a writer and, as such, was pleased to find another writer/poker player. As I'm trying to infuse a more literary sensibility into my own blog, I'm happy to find another online journal that seems to be so well written.

I wanted to read your first post just to see where your head was when you started. I have a great deal of catching up to do!

Adding you to my Bloglines.