Couldn't Be More True

[shipitfish]

Last year, a well-meaning relative bought me Phil Gordon's page-a-day poker calendar, that had exactly one good bit of non-obvious advice for the whole year, which I posted back in August. I came in to work this morning and turned the last page of the calendar, which was left over the long weekend. I found a wonderful quote for the weekend of December 30/31, 2006. I suppose ripping off the pages all year was worth it to find this wonderful quote at the end. I probably didn't read anything more true about poker for the entirety of 2006:

It's hard work. Gambling. Playing poker. Don't let anyone tell you different. Think about what it's like sitting at the poker table with people whose only goal is to cut your throat, take your money, and leave you out back talking to yourself about what went wrong inside. That probably sounds harsh. But that's the way it is at the poker table. If you don't believe me, then you're the lamb that's going off to the slaughter.

&mdash Stu Ungar

More people than ever now play poker “for fun”. Of course it's an enjoyable activity; I don't think any of us would have gotten into it in the first place if it wasn't. But, it's a predatory game in general, and NL HE in particular is the most predatory of all known poker games. I haven't gone all the way to thinking that you need the full-blown killer instinct to win at poker, but to play well, you have to be somewhat jaded about the predatory reality.

Comments

Captain Inconsistency

[(Anonymous)]

I thought that you thought that NL HE was a fad and not worth continuing with.

good poker players are open-minded

[shipitfish.livejournal.com]

Yes, my anonymous reader from Lockheed Martin (via General Electric's host, proxy3b.external.lmco.com), I do think NL HE has become a fad. But, where did I say that would keep me from playing? I do have a longer post that I've been working on that talks about this “fad” issue in depth, which you'll see in a few months if you keep reading. The general gist of that post is: often, good things that only a few people know about sometimes become fads, and their specialness is lost. Nevertheless, the hard core fans who have always been there don't like it any less, but do often lament the negative changes newcomers bring.

However, there's of course an ironic thing about this fad of poker: people play NL HE as a fad, don't realize that it's ultimately an incredibly predatory game, and lose their money. Thus, the reason poker games are so good right now, financially speaking, is because of this fad effect. It's a very strange situation for the avid poker player: more money than we could have imagined years ago, but the games are full of people disrespectful of the culture.

As for “inconsistency”, I can only quote Emerson at you and say that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. My opinions have changed a great deal since I started this journal; I am not so attached to them; I'm always willing to reconsider. If you actually took the time to know me and read what I've written, you'd realize that.

Indeed, I linked back above to those “killer instinct” discussions precisely because my position has moved a great deal since then; any intelligent reader would have noticed this. I still don't think the killer instinct is mandatory, but I certainly now understand that the game is substantially more predatory than I thought it was in July 2005. My position has become more nuanced on this subject.

I'm sorry that your ability to detect nuances is not so developed. Perhaps that will come for you with time. Anyway, if you are going to insult me, you should have enough gumption to sign your name.