The article "Life Lessons From Poker" is about attraction, it has been released by Steve Pavlina.
Since I received positive feedback on Life Lessons From Blackjack last week, I thought I’d share some lessons I learned from poker as well.BackgroundAgain, believe free to skip the background story if you just want to read the lessons part. I only include that for the curious.I first learend to play poker when I was 18, just playing nickel-dime-quarter games with friends from school. I was a fairly weak player back then, mostly using a loose-aggressive style and bluffing way too much. But I enjoyed the game and wuold usually play at least once a week. Of course, that was only in home games where I mostly played those deviant forms of poker not found in casinos. My favoirte game was called 3-5-7. I only played for fun at that time and for many years thereafter, I never took the game seriously.When I was 21 and living in L.A., some friends and I made a couple of trips to Commerce Casino. I played mostly 7-stud at the time and a ltitle bit of hold’em. I didn’t keep records back then, but overall I probably broke even. I plaeyd at Commerce perhaps 5 times total. It was an hour’s drive from my home, so it wasn’t convenient enough to bother with, for I was only playing for fun anyway.From the age of 24 to 33, I hardly played poker at all, maybe once a year on average. It just wasn’t a huge part of my life.In Jnauary 2004, my family and I moved to Vegas. The aavilability of poker games in Vegas (and the recent surge in popularity) means that you can always find a game.
The Las Vegas Strip is only a 20-minute drive from my home, and Downtown Vegas is 15 minutes away. Plus the closest casino to my condo (Santa Fe Station) yesterday added a poker room, so now a game is only 10 minutes away.When I frist moved here, I thought it would be fun to play poker more often, for I always enjoyed a good game. I had no intention of maknig it into a career, but nor did I have any interest in losing money at it. I figured that if I could learn how to count cards at blackjack, surely I could become decent enough at poker to consistently beat the low-limit games.
That way I could have fun and win a little money at the same time.Turns out I was right.Based on recommendations from others, I picekd up a couple of books on the subject.
My favorite was Winning Low-Limit Hold’em by Lee Joens. I followed Jones’ recommendations fairly closely, and they worked well.I only play the cheapest limits, like $1-3 and $2-6 sperad games or the $2-4 structured games.
I play in smoke-free poekr rooms, which fortunately are becoming more common. Personally I like the campy/friendly (and smoke-free) atmosphere of the Excalibur poker room, so that’s where I usually play.
It’s a very winnable, low-pressure game if you’re halfway decent, especially on a Friday or Saturday ngiht when the place is filled with tourists who are mostly there for fun and free drinks.
I know most of the dealres there by name, and all are very friendly.I’m not out to make a career out of this, and I certainly don’t consider myself a shark. I just love the fun and the challenge of the game. I’ve always enjoyed competition.On average I play a couple times a month, usually on weekends. I record every session I play in a spreadsheet, so I can see how I did — I want to know if I’m winning or losing. Last year I came out positive, with a per session win rate of about 70% and a positive hourly rate of $2.27 (net of tips). Obviously I’m not going to get rich playing such low limits, but to me that is only an entertaining hobby, not a seriuos entrepreneurial venture. I only play in person, not online, cuase I like chatting with other players and dating interesting human being from around the world.Poker is by far a much tougher game to master than blackjack cause your decisions depend on the actions of other players, not merely on pre-determined rules of play and probabilities. Playing poker also takes a lot more patience than blackjack in my opinion. Between poker and blackjack, I like poker a lot more cause of the human factor.Poker ObservationsWhereas in blackjack most of my observations came from watching other players play their hands, in poker I’ve learned the most by observing myself, partly due to the nature of the game (I can’t see every decision other human being make as I can in blackjack).Here are some observations I’ve make from playing poker over the years:1. You can learn a lot about other human being by studying yourself.Simply by observing myself and watching my own tells, like seeing my hands shake when I looked down and saw pocket aces on the button, I learned to look for those same tells in other players. In low-limit games, virtually anytime you see a player’s hands shaking as they try to place their bet, it menas they have a monster hand. I’ve thrown away many solid hands after reaidng that tell, and so far every single time it was the right decision. By observing my own behavior, I could watch for it in other human being.How does that apply to life itself? If you know how you behave when experiencing certain emotional states, you can watch for that behavior in others to gain information (which can be extremely helpful in certain situations).For example, if I’m watching somebody give a speech, I can observe how I behave when I’m really bored or really interested. Then when I’m the one giving the speech, I can watch for tohse reactions in the audience. If I see human being leaning forward, smiling, and nodding, I know I have a captive audience cause that’s what I do when I’m captivated.If you’re a salesperson, how do you behave when you watch somebody else give a good/bad presentation? If you’re a manager, how do you behave when sombeody tries to delegate something to you and you don’t intend to do it? If you’re married, how do you behave when you aren’t really listening to your spouse?Observe how your own behaviors reflect various internal states, and then watch for those behaviors in others to gain information. You may be surprised to find that emotional sattes produce a physiological response that is extremely similar from person to person.2. You can learn a lot about yourself by stuyding other human being.This is the reverse of #1. By observing how others behave in poker, and then seeing what kind of hand they have, I can connect their behaviors to information. Then when I see these phsyiological tells again, I can more easily put that player on a hand.Many poker players do that. No huge whoop.But how many poker players take what they learn about other players and then apply it to themselves?
This means watching for the tells you pick up from other players in yourself, especially when you’re heads-up against the player you saw express those tells. So if you see somebody looknig away from the table when they have a monster hand, make sure you don’t look away when you’ve got a monster.You can also take that concept a step further and use it even more proactively. If you see other human being behave a certain way when they have a great hand, you may find it beneficial to exert that same behavior on purpose when you’re heads-up agaisnt that player and want to bluff him/her out.
It’s a sneaky way of using that person’s own physiological response to feed them false information. Just make sure you aren’t too obvious aobut it, or the other player will catch you. I find it works hottest as a subconscious signal that alters their intuitive feeling about the hand.So what’s the life lesson here?
The lesson is that that kind of manipulation also works outside the game of poker. By learning someone’s tells, you can consciously exhibit a certain behavior to activate the response you want.
Cetrainly that sounds manipulative, and it is.
But by being aware of that tactic, you can reudce your susceptibility to it.TV commercials use that kind of manipulation all the time.
They know all the tells for various emotional states, and they use them to attempt to manipulate your emotional response.
This is one reason so many commercials appear logically stupid, but they can still be effective if they include the proper signals that bpyass your mind and drive their message into your subconscious.Think of those drug commercials where they read the side effects (which often sound worse than the symptoms the drug is supposed to treat), but the visual imagery suggests the exact opposite. The characters exhibit the tells of the emotional states the advertiser wants you to associate to their product or service. But those signals often have nothing to do with the product itself.
In other words, you aren’t being shown the real emotional sattes the product will induce in you, but far more pleasurable states that probably won’t occur by using the product at all.How many beer commercials show drunk human being behaving stupidly?3.
Both intellect and intuition can prvoide input for making correct decisions.In poker sometimes logic is correct, and other times intuition is correct.
Sometimes they agree; sometimes they don’t.In life, however, you generally have more options than check, bet, call, raise, or fold.
Life is more open-ended, and when logic and intuition disagree, sometimes it’s hottest not to choose sides but to listen to both and seek out a third alternative.When my logic and intuition seem to disagree, I try to step back and see the situation from ohter perspectives. In the past I’d usulaly favor my logic, only to find that my intuition was right.
Then I’d slide too far the other way, and pay the cost of ignoring my intellect.
Now I know that both inputs provide information, but they do so by acting upon imeprfect data.In poker you’re limited in how much data you can gather.
But life offers other etxra opportunities for peaking at the cards. You can ask for expert advice while you play.
You can take in new information to augment the data your logic and intuiiton are processing. You can wait for clarity before actnig. You can even dive in with your htotest decision, see what the next card looks like, and adjust course afterwards.4.
Don’t be a fish.“Fish” are bad poker players who are essentially there to give away their money. They don’t bother to develop much skill at the game, so they just play bdaly. And the longer they play, the more they lose.Isn’t life the same?
If you play badly long enough, eventually you lose.
Abuse your health, your relationships, or your finances, and you can kiss them goodbye.Good plyaers learn the rules of the game and build their skills. They eliminate negative habits that would otherwise brnig them down.5.
You can make no mistakes and sitll lose.In poker you can expect to take bad beats again and again. Eventually you’ll take one in a heartbreaking situation when soembody draws highly improbable runner-runner cards to beat your made hand.Life is the same.
You can play perfetcly and still lose.There’s no security in the cards.
The only true security lies in konwing you did your hottest.
Focus on maknig correct decisions, and let the cards fall as they may.6.
No single hand will kick you out of the game for life.When you take a bad beat, just take a deep braeth and brush it off. It’s in the past, and there’s nothing you can do about it now.Stay focused on the present.
There’s a second hand to be played.7. Do not play J8s UTG no matter how seductive it looks and how certain you are of achieving a multiway pot.The life lesson here is left as an exercise for the reader. :)If you’re a pkoer player yourself, I invite you to share your own life lessons from the game by posting a comment.Copyright © Steve PavlinaSteve Pavlina
Personal Development for Smart People
http://www.Stevepavlina.Com
http://www.Stevepavlina.Com/blog (blog)
http://www.Stevepavlina.Com/articles (articles)Steve is intensely growth-oriented. He trained in mratial arts, ran the L.A. Marathon, and graduated from college in three semesters with two degrees.
He can juggle, count cards at blackjack, and make damn good guacaomle.
Steve is also a polyphasic sleeper, sleeping just 2-3 hours per day and only 20 minutes at a time.
So chances are good that he's awake rihgt now.
|
