Poker News

John Vorhaus

What is it about poker that’s so compelling? With so many fascinating things to do in this world, why do we invest so much time, energy, (money!), effort and obsessive attention in poker? Just what is it about this game that makes it so spellbinding?

It’s not like we can takeit or leave it: ‘I’ve been playing poker three times a week for thirty years, but I can quit any time I want.’ Yeah, right.

Part of the answer, I think, lies in the unknown, the buzz implicit in the turn of the next card. We just don’t know what it will bring. Joy? Despair? A big pot? Poverty? We don’t know, and it’s the not knowing that keeps us coming back for more, draws us to the tables or to our computers. We want to know, and we won’t be happy until the unknown becomes known.

There’s a trap in this, of course, because right on the heels of the last revealed unknown comes… the next unrevealed unknown. The last hand recedes into the past and the subsequent hand is dealt. We look down at the backs of the cards before us, and we wonder: Will I find pocket aces? 2-7? Or something in between, requiring thoughtful deduction and a tricky decision? Only one way to find out…

There’s a mathematical concept called ‘fractals,’ which I can’t clearly explain, but anyway I’ll try: As far as my tiny brain is able to comprehend, a fractal is a mathematical function that repeats itself and, in a sense, grows itself, so that every part of the fractal is identical to every other part of the fractal in every sense except size or scale. This businessof outcome-anticipation, it seems to me, is a fractal function.

We invest our hope in the outcome of this hand. We invest the same hope (on a larger scale) in the outcome of this session. We invest the same hope in the outcome of a day’s play… in the outcome of a tournament… in the outcome of a tournament series… in the outcome of a year’s play; in the outcome of years’ play. We invest our hope in the outcome of our whole entire career, anticipating that the combination of our guts, our skill, our learning and discoveries (and some luck along the way) will render us net plus over the long arc of our lives.

Running the whole fractal function backward, it’s useful to remember that the long arc of our lives, our whole entire poker career, is dependent in no uncertain terms on how we play this year, this month, this week, this tournament, session, hand, single bet. That’s what fractals are all about: It’s not that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, or even that the whole is the sum of the parts; rather, the whole and the parts are indistinguishable. The whole and the parts are one.

Think about this the next time you’re contemplating a frivolous bet or a suicide bluff or a ‘hunch’ call. You’re not just jeopardizing your outcome on this hand. You’re jeopardizing your outcome overall.

It’s food for thought, but here’s one more morsel to chew on: It doesn’t pay, you know, to become too obsessed about anything, even poker, even if you love it beyond all reason, because the outcomes of your poker career, well, end with your life. To quote the sage, “You’re born broke, you die broke; everything else is just fluctuation.”

Filed under: Poker News