Showing my work

I've been trying for a week to write this post about the incredibly smooth run I've had playing poker in LA this past year (my previous time in casino poker in Vegas was just as smooth as well).*  It was supposed to be about how running good for so long has its own set of challenges.  But everything I wrote felt long-winded and inauthentic. Apparently, it takes a lot of mental gymnastics to try to frame running good in a negative light.  That's why they call it running "good".  Yes, there are psychological attachments that need to be guarded against, and it's not all free puppy dogs and red balloons, but mostly running good is pretty sweet. 

What this piece really needs to be about is what it's like to run good when lazy and reliant on a unique skill set.  I was lukewarm on poker when I moved to Madison in 2009, and I decided to coast on my poker skills while I pursued more interesting subjects like counseling.  When Black Friday hit, I knew I had to put the brakes on my counseling path and spend more time playing poker, but I wasn't sure whether I just needed to shuffle my priorities and move poker to the forefront in terms of study and improvement.

I can think of probably two dozen players who play in my games who I would like to tag in to make my check/bet/call/fold/raise decisions during hands.  I don't think I'm particularly good at this aspect of poker, and I think most if not all of those two dozen players would agree with me on this assertion.  I don't really know what to say about this.  I have a decent brain in my head, and I could probably get really good at the k/b/c/f/r stuff if I wanted, but times when I enjoy thinking about that stuff are fleeting.  When I moved to LA, I realized that I might have to spend some time on raw strategy study just to regain competence at a form of poker I hadn't played in 4 years, so I begrudgingly put time into that stuff for a couple months.  This probably helped me start winning at a decent clip, but it also really wore on me.  I was away from home, I was putting energy into something I didn't really enjoy, and I spent most of my time in a toxic casino environment.  By Thanksgiving, I almost completely stopped studying strategy and re-focused on stuff outside of poker (I'll write about that in one of my next posts).  I was content to leave my k/b/c/f/r skills where they were.  The poker skills I developed since then are mostly higher-level operational skills (as opposed to the tactical k/b/c/f/r skills) and are mostly psychological in nature.  This happened naturally... when left to it's own devices, my mind typically splits time evenly between figuring out how minds work, boobies, and imagining what it's like to be Jack White. 

So this is the part where I say my poker results during my first 12 months out here would almost certainly fit right in with the aforementioned 24 players.  That my results are comparable with an "expert's" expectation would, I imagine, be surprising to many of these players.  For all but a few extreme cases (e.g., extreme tilters, world-class zen master types), I think poker players believe that skill level in the k/b/c/f/r tactical arena is the primary factor in determining a player's true win rate.**

(By the way, I imagine plenty of players are now clamoring for their LOLSampleSize Pitchforks and Torches)

Here's the center of the matter.  I would really like to take credit for my results this year.  I have an ego that needs feeding.  But anyone with an understanding of statistics would be quick to point out that a player with a true win rate half the size of my actual win rate has a ~4% chance of having similar results over this sample (statisticians say that number has to be under 2.5% to be 'significant', though the distinction is pretty arbitrary).  I think most of my peers would point to this tail of the distribution curve and use it as the primary explanation for my results.  I have to concede that I have been probably been somewhere between lucky and astronomically lucky this year.  This is the trump card that can be played on any claim I make from here on out.  In return, they would probably concede that my stronger operational skills probably plays some sort of role.  As almost always when we seek explanations for results in poker, "It's probably a little bit of both."  

I'm going to let my ego state its case for "Why operational skills are marginalized and undervalued."  I'm doing this because:

1)    A year is a long fucking time to constantly tell myself "I know you think you 'earned' this money, but really you just 'won' it." Sometimes I slip up and let my ego convince me I'm earning what I'm winning

2)    Sometimes I actually think my ego has a good point

3)    Fuck everybody anyways

 The tactical skill sets are definitely the biggest barrier to entry for poker players.  Any player who can't be bothered with studying and understanding stuff like FTOP, preflop strategy, pot odds, etc. isn't going to make it longterm.  And this stuff isn't easy for most people.  In order to even jump to Level 1*** as a poker player, you must have some vision to comprehend the underlying math/logic that drives the game.  It's a necessary (but insufficient) skill set to be a winning player.  That comprehension is part of the poker gene.     

My ego wants to argue that this basic trait that is present in every winning poker player influences the collective poker belief system more than we would like to admit.  Tactical strategy is one ingredient that can be manipulated, tested, and proven right or wrong.  This appeals to that part of us that was capable of grasping Level 1 concepts during our poker infancy.  In a psychological sense, this ability to understand, predict, and control aspects of our environment is important in establishing our identities.  The first question out of our mouths when we meet someone new usually is "What do you do?"  That's not an accident.  For most people in our culture, choice of occupation is the single biggest aspect of their identities that they control.  For the sake of our identities, it makes sense to focus on the more controllable, measurable variables within the profession (in poker's case, this is tactical strategy), since it offers the best evidence that we are "good" at what we do.  Putting work into tactical strategy offers consistent positive return on investment... it is hard to get measurably worse or even measurably stagnant at tactical strategy through study. 

Most of my work this year has been in areas much less measurable.  I have different criteria for game and seat selection than what is commonly accepted.  I have thought long and hard about what makes a losing player stay at the table longer and what I can do to foster that attachment.  I have a better idea of what I want people to notice and not notice in regards to my play, and I have a better idea of how to elicit the desired notice/don't notice response.  I am (and always have been) a great quitter.  I think I'm great at neutralizing hostile table environments and eliciting more docile, predictable play.

For the most part, operational strategies are too chaotic to measure.  Because I can't really measure stuff like how much longer a losing player stays at my table due to my efforts to emotionally engage him, my identity as a poker player is put into a tenuous position.  My focus is on a lot of shit that most players don't focus on.  I'm tinkering with new ideas and concepts with no real way of measuring whether the old or the new idea works better.   All I can go by for feedback is my results, and every poker player will tell you it's dangerous to read too much into results, especially over a sample like 1500 hours of casino poker.  Honestly, it sorta sucks this is the case.  I'd love to point to my results as proof of concept.  But I know I can't.  Even if these results hold up for a sample deemed to be significant, it still proves jack shit.  Working within the unmeasurable human element necessarily dismisses the entire concept of proof and scientific method. 

I would really like to not give a shit about this stuff.  Why should I need to prove that my efforts are good?  I know I'm not "supposed" to care.  The fact that I wrote this piece shows I haven't fully bought in to the Poker is Art paradigm.  Artists don't try to sort out cause and effect.  They don't try to understand what it is about them that makes them successful.  They just do what they do until they can't or don't want to.  I guess that's probably what I need to take from this.  Maybe I need to just trust the process.  Trust the inner voice that guides me.  Trust that the universe is playing out the way it needs to.

 *Worst downswing in 3 years: 200BB.  # Of losing months: 1 (-50BBs).  The typical professional player in today's environment will experience troughs in the 300-500BB range, with several instances of players having 500-1000 bet downswings.  Worst months (out of a 36 month sample) typically weigh in at -100 to -300 bets, and losing months typically occur at least once per year. 

 ** Maybe it's more accurate to say they believe many skills besides k/b/c/f/r are crucial to success, but that they also think there is much less disparity amongst pros with respect to skills such as quitting, game selection, and table talk. 

*** In poker parlance, a player at Level 0 never considers the perceived strength of his opponent's hand when making decisions.  A player at Level 1 considers the strength of his own hand and the perceived strength of his opponent's hand in decision-making.  A player at Level 2 takes into account how strong his hand looks to his opponent; a "I think that he thinks my hand is strong/weak" dynamic.  Levels 3 and up are iterations "I think that he thinks that I think....." cycle