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It’s late. I’m tired. And yet, I’m driven to make good on my goal to write one post every day in January.
I’ve been thinking about what to write all day and I settled on an article about the reason I play poker and I realized something. I don’t fully understand why I play poker. At least, I didn’t when I woke up this morning.
This morning I would have said I play poker for the challenge. The money I make playing poker is a long way from a livable income. There are other things I could do with my time if I just wanted to make money. In poker, money is just a way of keeping score and moving me up to more challenging levels.
But as the day progressed I started wondering why I didn’t play other challenging games. I don’t play chess. I don’t do crosswords or cryptograms and I don’t even know how to play backgammon. Why poker?
I think the thing that attracts me to poker is the variability of outcome. You can make the right strategic move in poker and still lose. That doesn’t happen in chess for example. Pawns don’t pull out a gun and shoot down the Queen from across the chessboard yet any two cards in poker have a chance at beating pocket Aces and sometimes they don’t even have to make the best hand to do it.
There’s so much to master in poker. You have to master your emotions. You have to master basic probability. You have to master your opponent. If you’re successful in one aspect and a failure in another, you won’t be a winning poker player and that’s why I play.
I play for the intricacies of the game. I play to get inside an opponent’s head and know what move he’s going to make before he acts. Board textures, betting patterns, table images, pot odds, reverse pot odds, implied odds; there’s so much information available. The fun is in learning to use it all.
Maybe I’ve been up too long and I’m romanticizing poker a little too much, but it’s a beautiful game when you consider all its facets.
This morning I would have said I play poker for the challenge, but now I’d say I play poker so I’ll always have a goal. No matter what I accomplish in life, I can always improve my poker game.
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