shipitfish | Are Poker Communities Possible?

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Are Poker Communities Possible?

I started working on another post about River Street (I promise, it's coming soon, salvelinus), and it got me thinking about poker communities. River Street made my poker life into a community. I honestly have never felt part of a community in poker since then. These days, I am in poker as I am in most things — an outsider looking in.

Poker has become a solitary activity. I do play mostly online at the moment, simply because the EV is better. But, even when I was travelling weekly to Foxwoods or playing a few times a week at the games in NYC, I was generally not part of a specific community.

As an outsider, I often wonder if the poker communities that I see around me are genuine. Are people really friends in poker? How much time do they spend together? How much time do they spend talking about the game? Are their friendships primarily outside of poker or is poker the central commonality that holds the relationships together? I admit that while I can often make great reads of people and their tendencies at the poker table, relationships — even those in poker — have usually remained completely mysterious.

My closest poker-playing friends are simply not as deeply into it as I am (e.g., W.D. and nick_marden), and our relationships are primarily defined in commonalities that are wholly outside of poker. So, I naturally wonder what I'm missing that these seemingly tight nit groups of poker players have. Do players in these groups have an edge over the solitary, self-motivated player? Is there more to be learned by having a group than going it alone? Is poker more fun and less lonely that way?

Oddly, I got seriously into poker primarily as a way to meet people outside of the computer science world and expand my horizons. But, ironically, I don't meet many people anymore in poker. Sure, just like on a plane ride, I meet the occasional “single-serving friend” at the tables, but I rarely ever see that person again. I am certainly not finding friends easily in poker anymore; I am mostly just showing up to take their money.

From time to time, I have thought about getting out there and just building a poker community myself. I was reminded of this when Howard Lederer talked on The Circuit recently about the group that came out of the old Mayfair club right here in NYC. They became some of the best in the world because they came together as part of a group that learned from each other. The NYC poker clubs of today are too transient now to make that happen. Nevertheless, the idea of forming a poker study group has crossed my mind more than twice. I wonder, though, if it would be worth the effort. I doubt that anyone in NYC but me is enough of a poker geek to show up regularly to sit around and talk about poker without even playing it. But, I'm still thinking about it, anyway.

As for online “communities”, like the 2+2 fora, such things aren't for me anymore. As a lifelong computer geek, I've already spent far too much of my life substituting online venues for real life interaction, and I resolved long ago not to do that anymore. It's real life or burst, at least in that arena.

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I have a group of people I chat with on AIM about hands and strategy and what not. It is nice to get immmediate feedback from players who are skilled. It is also important to seek out players who play better than you do, make friends with them, and learn from them. It is usually a give-and-take scenario where you have one aspect of the game you are good at and can help them with and they, in turn, can help you with another aspect of the game.

I also have a small group of people whom I email all of the time who are separate from the AIM group.

I think there are multiple problems with real life interaction. The first is that most people who play poker are not the kind of people I would like to interact with for the most part. The second is that if you interact with someone in real life, you may get into sticky situations where they would like to borrow money from you or something. The third is that it is a lot more difficult to find a highly skilled person in real life because there are less of them. The fourth is that generally people in real life are less available than people online. The fifth is that it is a lot easier to form a cohesive group of people online, through mailing lists or a chat room or something than it is in real life. The sixth is that you generally will be playing against your friend in real life, and if you are like me and have a certain way of playing at the table, it may interfere with it.

I think there are more, but I think on the whole dealing with people online is a lot better. At any rate, having a support group is important for when the times are rough.

Yeah, I have just spent so much time substituting online life for real life that I don't want to do it anymore. I don't really want to play against friends, which is why I think a study group is a better idea. I see your point about time availability, and about not liking hanging around poker players (I've written about that before). I guess sometimes longing for the unlikely or impossible is part of the human condition.

I picture forming a poker group like this:
I think the way to form a group would be best a combination of a home game and those same players going to clubs together. Maybe not playing against each other at the clubs, but maybe a few at this table a few there and two-three at that table etc...

Then at the home games, they would be more social and most of the talk would be about each other's play and the play of those at the club (or casino). And particular reads on a player's style, moves that work against one player but not another and why...
I don't think you're going to get a bunch of people to sit around and talk poker, but if you had an informal / social home game going on, broken up with group trips to clubs and casinos, it's likely that the majority of the table talk will be poker related, especially if you start the home game with the intention of making it for talking about play.

Damn, I wish I lived in NYC, I would be the second charter member!

I think this is really situational. I've been playing at Foxwoods fairly regularly this year and have become "friendly" with many of the locals in the NL games. I wouldn't say that I am friends with any of them though. I have a good work and personal friend who occasionally steps into the same game that I'm playing. To be honest, I don't like him being at the same table as me since my NL game is much stronger than his, and I have taken a lot of pots from him. He doesn't mind losing to me (I don't think), but I don't like doing that to friends. Just the way I'm wired - I'd rather win money from total strangers and spend time with friends doing constructive, fun stuff.

BTW - Get working on that Riverstreet retrospective! ;-)

Yeah, I don't like playing against opponents who are friends either, but it helps that I always have the deal with friends that after the game I'll tell them everything I had and what I was thinking and all that. W.D. and I have done this quite a bit and it has worked for us. Being “friendly” in my mind isn't the same as being friends (hence my note about the single-serving friend). Even if it is two or three servings, that's not what I'm talking about.

Meanwhile, I'm curious about the NL games at Foxwoods. I took a mini-vacation there recently and was surprised that the level of play in the $2/$5 was quite good and they weren't easily beatable games (compared to the NYC games and online games). Is that typical or are weeknights just not good?

I generally don't like to disclose my hands after a game to a friend (or foe) for two reasons. 1) They'll get valuable insight on my play and might beat me next time :-) and 2) The friend might get upset at me and themselves because I forced/tricked them into laying down a winning hand. I just don't like to deceive real friends, especially when money is involved - even if it is a game. Emotions can run high when you're involved with a friend for $2000-$3000 pot. If the friend is on a long-running bad streak, I feel even worse. But, I do enjoy discussing OTHER people's play after a hand or after the game folds up with the people who I am "friendly" with. I also do like to hear what my poker "friendlies" are up to in their personal lives. I guess that's as close to a poker community I'll get. Riverstreet certainly had some characters who I enjoyed playing with and talking to. I still ask about a few of them from time to time. I'm not playing that much these days though, so I've sort of slipped out of the "community" that I moved to later - the Loft.

In general I'm finding that the $2/5 game is harder to beat than it was a year or two ago. There are more and more Foxwoods regulars that have found their way to $2/5 seeking easy prey. A month ago, I ended up playing at a table with six(!) regular grinders for ~8 hours. That was a tough situation to make a profit from. That said, if you adjust your play, it can be done - many of the regulars generally play ABC, and can be run over with agressive, tricky play and bluffs - if you are careful and pick your spots and set them up properly. Definitely a tougher game though.
In contrast, the weekend before last, many of the regulars were not there (some went to Vegas for the WS). The game was as juicy as ever, and I walked away up $3500 in less than 14 total hours of play, similar to what a good weekend of $2/5 at Foxwoods used to be like for me a year ago. During the week, it is definitely tougher sledding, with many regulars and fewer tables running. Friday night to Sunday is my favorite (and most pofitable) time to play.
If you have the bankroll, the $5/10 (capped buy-in at $1500) plays at about the same skill level as the $2/5, and often worse.

You should have come to Vegas. If you're skeptical, read this report from the first Vegas gathering in December 2004:

http://www.kebzweb.com/2004/12/afterglowthought_1.html

As I hinted at above, I've never been that much in the poker blogging world. My blog is this strange anomaly, mostly read by the old River Street crowd and a few LiveJournalers who found me. In general, the bulk of my regular readers are people whom I knew in Real Life before the journal. Meanwhile, yours was actually the only blog I ever really read of someone I didn't know until recently.

Indeed, I am so disconnected from the proper “poker blogging world” that I frankly didn't even know there was was a blogger tourney in Vegas until I saw that you won it in your blog (strangely, googling for it can't even seem to turn up an official detail page about it even now). If I had known, I probably would have tried to plan my WSoP tournament (since I could pick any $1,500 event) around it. But, I was out of the loop.

I think that maybe I just don't have the amount of time for online pursuits that others do. I don't follow lots of blogs carefully; I read backlog every few days when I get a chance. But, just following the few NYC poker blogs that I have subscribed to is far too much content already. I'm just not immersed into the world, it seems.

The other factor here is the disdain for online communities that I've gained over the years. I was involved in online communities when most people didn't know there was an “online”. From 1985 on, I was a BBS guy, a Usenet guy, and so forth. Like most geeks my age, most of my childhood, teenage years, and early adulthood was spent interacting with people primarily through a computer screen. Not much good came of that for me; I ended up in high school and college as deeply socially awkward and spent years trying to recover.

Now, I see this strange world where online social networking has become the trendiest thing ever, and I am totally burned out on it after decades of feeling like it is part of the reason I'm such a social misfit to begin with. It's hard to describe how this feels to someone who didn't grow up on and out of BBS's and Usenet, but perhaps you can imagine. I just have this deep sense of really really bad timing; I loved doing everything on computers back when I got made fun of for it, and now I want out of that world just when everyone wants in it..

So, the idea of building community around the blogging seems so wrong-headed to me (at least at first glance). Particularly so with poker, because I go more seriously into poker originally as a way to get out and meet more people in real life in the first place.

Yes, I see the point that getting out and going to one of these blogger events would be exactly the right thing to bridge the gap — turning the blogging world into a real human connection. But, the fear of it all going wrong is strong, especially when you've spent a lifetime trying to bridge online life into Real Life and failing. Trying it again seems like an obvious mistake.

Anyway, I long ago promised myself and my readers to keep my blog free of narcissistic self-pity (heck, I even avoid telling bad beat stories), so I should stop there. I apologize to my readers that I even took this much of a detour into it. At least it was only in a comment.

It's hard to describe how this feels to someone who didn't grow up on and out of BBS's and Usenet

Um, except that I did. =D From 1993 on. First RL bridge from an online community in 1994 - it was a usenet newsgroup for fans of the "Ultima" line of computer RPGs; about as dorky as you can get.

Anyway, I just say "dive in" and don't think too hard about it.

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