Life Lessons from Poker

So, while I was down in Cali, during the day we’d go hiking, swimming, sailing, or just loafing on the beach. At night in the cabin, the available activities changed. You can read, play board games, talk, or play poker.

Now I was never much of a poker fan. I tried playing it a bit the last time I was in Cali, but I didn’t take to it. Well, somehow seeing Casino Royale got me more interested. So I gave it another chance.

As I played it and had the rules/tactics of the game explained to me, I started to see strong parallels to life. And I wondered if that was coincidence or if the inventers of the game planned it that way.

I’ll write down the rules/my impressions:

- You play, make your decisions based on the hand you’ve been dealt, and based on what you presume other people have (but you really don’t know, and more often than not, you never will know).

- And in turn, other players are making decisions based on the hands they’ve been dealt and on what they presume you have.

- You also don’t know which cards will turn up from the dealer.

- Early in the game you have the option of checking what other people will do, betting money, or folding (backing out).

- Sometimes you have to bet before you even know what you have in your hand.

- Later in the game, there comes a point where, once you’ve put a good amount of money on the table, you lose that option of folding. (I was not entirely clear how strong this rule was, but in any case it was strongly suggested that it was not in my interest to back out after so much was put into the pot, not just by me, but by others).

That last rule was especially profound to me.

I asked my friend ways I could improve in the game (since I always lost). He mentioned that it’s better to be more of a realist than an optimist. If you keep getting stuck on one possibility that you want rather than being open to letting some hands go, or finding other options, you won’t win in the end.

This is simply because you don’t hold all the cards. You have no control of the cards that are dealt to you, nor what others will decide to do with the cards they have been dealt, nor what cards the dealer will turn up. You can only control what you do with the cards given to you. But that hardly counts as control at all when it comes to the big picture of winning the game.

One of the biggest problems I had when I played was that I always had this strong desire to know what cards the other players were holding and/or what cards the dealer would turn up.

And while I could play it out, put more money on the table, and eventually force people to show their cards, sure I would then know what people had, but to what end and for what purpose? You just look like an idiot when you don’t have anything good in your hand, you generally won’t win if you play that way, and other players who want to win the game get annoyed when that’s done as it detracts from the main goal of winning the game.

I asked my friend, “Doesn’t it bother you not knowing what cards the other player(s) had?” He said something to the effect of, “Yes, it bothers everyone.”

Well, if you know me and/or you follow my blog, you can probably guess that I don’t like this game and its rules. But it certainly gives insight to the post I wrote on the life we choose. And I realized that if I don’t play by these rules, I can’t win. Or at least, it’s unlikely. I suppose you can play your own way, but perhaps not many people are going to want to play with you, certainly not the ones who want to win.

But I guess the analogy to life can only be taken so far. As complicated as this game is, it’s nowhere near as complicated as things in life, where there are different versions of the game (within a country and between countries, but I’m not getting into that).

I wonder if I can win this game. We are not all dealt the same hand, so we are not all living the same life. And with little control, there is no guarantee you will win in the end.

But…what is it to win the game? That’s what I have a hard time seeing. I consider also the lyrics in the song by Sting, “Shape of my Heart”, where there is some unwillingness to play by the rules.

And I’m also uncertain if in life we are really stuck in the confines of similar rules as in poker. I don’t know.

I used to think I had control. The only thing that didn’t go my way was I didn’t make it into the military. In everything else, I got what I wanted…maybe not in the amount of time that I would have liked, but I thought persistence, patience, and optimism got me there eventually. And I’m reluctant to give up that notion.