V: Plugging leaks

Caution: Annyoing psychological insights ahead

As Douchebag and I were saying last night, when things click, it feels like it will stay that way forever, like you've finally figured it out, but that never seems to be the case. So far at least, Douchebag and I are prone to the same rhythms of dramatic swings both up and down (granted, his swings up are both longer and upper). For sure I at least vacillate between tight controlled poker that makes me proud to have a seat at the table, and the card-table equivalent of sitting in the sandbox and smearing myself with my own droppings.

So, lo and behold, maybe this exercise and this blog are actually doing what we'd hoped they would do: make us really focus on our leaks and get to plugging them. I've always known mine was impatience -- that's no surprise -- but I am starting to realize the many forms that impatience takes. I always viewed it as the ill-timed bluff when I am bored, or a late-game tendency to get wildly over-involved in pots where I am a sure loser. And that's part of it. But it's also betting way beyond value in the hopes of taking down a pot then and there, thus cheating myself of possible value while overexposing myself in the event that things don't go as planned. It's falling in love with my cards because I don't want to do the difficult work of arriving at a considered judgment that takes the board, position and the simple humanity of the other players into account. It's resorting to all-in rather than value betting. And so on, and so on. I realize that I have an extraordinary amount of work to do, but this insight is a start at least.

For Douchebag, the big leak is apparently lack of confidence, and for Badger, a strong tendency towards passivity (a close cousin but not an identical twin). The problem too, of course, is that, while identifying leaks is hard enough, plugging them is much, much harder. Quite obviously so, because they wouldn't be leaks if they were so easily fixed. Being both a literary geek and a Freudian-minded Jew, I am inclined to think about the deeper psychological roots of why I fuck up, inspired in large measure by an essay written by the playwright David Mamet, who was himself a very strong player.

In "The Things Poker Teaches," Mamet wrote:

Poker reveals to the frank observer something else of import--it will teach him about his own nature. Many bad players do not improve because they cannot bear self-knowledge. The bad player will not deign to determine what he thinks by watching what he does. To do so might, and frequently would, reveal a need to be abused (in calling what must be a superior hand); a need to be loved (in staying for "that one magic card"); a need to have Daddy relent (in trying to bluff out the obvious best hand), etc. It is painful to observe this sort of thing about oneself. Many times we'd rather suffer on than fix it....

The same is said of Go, of chess, of any great game truly worth engaging with: whatever your personality, its strengths and most definitely its flaws, are mirrored right back at you if you are only able and willing to see them. And at least as far as I go, Mamet (and others) was spot on, though I'll spare you the details.

This all is perhaps deeper and more uncomfortable than a jokey poker blog is supposed to be, but, well, making people uncomfortable has been my speciality since the mid-1970's. Besides, I think about all those hours I spent plumbing my own murky depths on the psychologist's couch and figure "hell, why shouldn't they suffer too?"

Something to consider, at any rate. Who knows? Maybe we'll all emerge from all this slightly better people and not just slightly better card players.