Poker News

John Vorhaus

There’s a time and a place for everything. Usually when you’re playing poker, it’s easy to figure out what the proper time and place are: If you’re sitting in a cardroom or a home game, and there are chips and cards in front of you, that’s the right time and the right place to be playing poker.

The line gets a little blurry when you start to contemplate internet poker, though. The place is the place, right? That chair in front of your computer. But what is the right time? First thing in the morning? Last thing at night? Every freaking waking minute in between?! Thanks to the always-there, always-on nature of online poker, it’s getting harder and harder for the average player to draw the line between his poker-playing and non-playing time. This can cause problems.

These problems exacerbate if you have a sexy little sub-notebook computer with wireless internet capability, as I do. Thanks to this tiny beauty, I can play online poker anywhere: in hotel rooms; at Starbucks; even, literally, standing in line to board a plane.

Is this a good thing? You tell me.

Poker, as we know, requires concentration, discipline, focus. What are the chances that I can bring these things to my internet play when I’m A) telling the maid to get lost, my room doesn’t need cleaning, or B) spilling hot latte all over my lap in my haste to get in a sip before the next hand starts, or C) fumbling for my boarding pass? And if my focus isn’t there, what are my chances of making a decent profit in the game?

Not bloody good, I can tell you that.

So why do I do it? Why do I insist on cramming five minutes of internet play in between two business meetings or even (and yes, I’ve done this, too) in the back of a cab across town?

Because it’s damn entertaining, that’s why. Given a choice between reading a book, say, or plunking down real money in an internet poker game, I’ll pick the poker game every time. I simply can’t think of anything I’d rather do with my spare minutes.

And there’s the rub. What start out as spare minutes become minutes I can barely spare and then, eventually, minutes I can’t spare at all. What began as a diverting recreation becomes a monumental time sink that — win or lose — I can’t afford to have in my life. When poker is something I use to while away idle minutes in the back of a cab, that’s fine, but when I tell the cabbie to idle because I haven’t finished my latest (my last, I promise!) sit’n'go tournament, then I have a problem.

How about you? Where do you stand on this edgy precipice? There’s a time and a place for everything; this we know. It takes a sensible, disciplined person and player to have the strength to say, “The time is not now and the place is not here.” Or, to put it another way, always remember that you play poker — poker must not play you.

Filed under: Poker News