In poker, like in life, image is a particularly important. In any game except perhaps the lowest limits, how people perceive you is a big influence on how they play a hand against you. A raise from someone who believes you to be a tight player who only bets ultra-good hands means something quite different than a raise from someone who thinks you'll bet anything. With the exact same hand on the exact same board you could therefore have two completely different reactions to these two players--namely fold in the first case, re-raise in the latter. When the cards run well enough, one can even create an image and then exploit it, bluffing more often with a tight image or waiting for a big hand if one has a wild image.
This is not a new idea to most people reading this blog.
I've found the idea of "image" extends beyond the poker table to other aspects of an avid poker player's life. If you tell someone you're are a serious poker player (or, if they find out through the grapevine) than often enough, it seems, they develop a mental image of you as a person. This idea, also, is not new as most people develop images of most other people and most people know this.
The image developed of a poker player, though, seems to elicit more emotional (and/or, perhaps, engrained) responses. When I was a student and told people thusly, the information was usually received by the listener with bored politeness. "Oh yeah?" (Everyone's a student or was at one point) "What do you study?" (Polite conversation starter) "That's interesting." (you're only the 543,678th person I've met in my lifeteme who studied that).
When I work at a boring ol' 9-to-5, the conversation is almost exactly like the student conversation verbatim. Everyone works; everyone's job is in some specific field; 99.7% of jobs are boring.
Poker, however, is interesting. At least, it's interesting enough that during my six-month stint supporting myself solely through poker, any time I answered the question "what do you do?" with "I play poker," I invariably got dragged into a long conversation about "what it's like." At first I couldn't wait to divulge--I mean, heck, I love to talk about poker--but I soon realized that most people weren't listening to what I was saying; rather, they were waiting for me to say something to reconfirm their preconceived beliefs.
I've had these exact same two conversations:
1) Me: "Yeah, poker can be boring. There's a lot of just sitting around and folding, sometimes for hours, waiting for a decent hand. Then you can sit there and play flawless poker for days, even weeks, and do nothing but lose money as the cards don't go your way. There are no benefits, no pension plan, no sick or vacation time. You show up, put in your slow hours at the tables and then go home."
Other person: "Yes, but isn't playing poker for a living so exciting and romantic?"
2) Me: "I win at poker by taking advantage of other people's mistakes. First is only playing hands that have a reasonable chance of winning, and only continuing on in hands with a (often mathematically determined) reasonable chance of having the best hand or making the best hand. If, compared to the average player, per hour, I make one fewer call than that average person would make when I'm beat, then I'm saving that one bet per hour over the average person. Conversely, if I bet one more time per hour when I have the best hand, getting called, that's another bet I make per hour over the average player. It's a small edge to have--we're talking about one or two bets per hour, if that--but it adds up, and so in the long run, I'll be up that much more over the average player."
Other person: "So, when you're losing at your gambling, do you go max out your credit cards and keep playing thinking that you're going to win eventually?"
Those two conversations are the polar extremes, but most conversations I've had fit the pattern: people's responses are rarely to what I've said, if they've even heard it, and mostly to what they believe to be true, even if what I've said completely contradicted what their belief is. Maybe the problem is with me, but never have I changed a mind and rarely have I enlightened.
The first conversation is an obvious result of the other person sensationalizing and romanticizing--and any other -"izing"s you want--poker and the poker life. The second conversation highlights the other reason many people have such a strong feeling about poker: it's gambling. And gambling is bad. Gamblers are addicts, always, and they always lose. If I had a dime for every time someone worried that I was a gambling addict (this is while I was playing 20-30 hours a week to support myself, mind you), I'd be a rich man. Are you addicted to your 40-hour-a-week job?
It's hard, even, to to present a positive image to those few open-minded newcomers I run across. After a casino trip, I talked about how I did to a family member, who knew next to nothing about poker and had only recently learned of my poker career.
FM: "How'd you do?"
Me: "I lost a little."
FM: "But you said you win."
Me: "I do, but it's impossible to win every time. You win some, you lose some, and, if you're good, you win more than you lose. Over time it can add up to quite a bit."
FM: "But you lost."
Grrr.
Playing at a casual home game with friends, this one person who knew I was a "professional" player, but had never before played a hand of poker innocently but seriously remarked, "I'd think the professional would have more chips."
These other conversations reveal another downside to having poker as a "known" skill. In, say, basketball, if player A is clearly superior to player B, then player A will beat player B just about 100% of the time. The skill is obvious and almost immediately quantifiable. In poker, if player A is clearly superior to player B, then, well, player A can still easily lose ten hands in a row to player B. Where the skill is, is that player A will win more in the hands he wins to player B than player B would win, and will lose less in his hands he loses to Player B than player B would lose. The skill is very subtle and can only be measured over a quite long sequence of hands, so it can pass completely under the radar of someone without much or any poker experience to draw upon. Often, how they see you do in the 15 minute snippet of your life to which they were privy can very well determine how they view you as a poker player and poker in general.
So what does all this mean? Simply put, that talking about poker with someone who isn't already into the game on some level seems to be much more trouble than it's worth. You'll create an image for yourself in their head--often inaccurate--and, unlike at the poker table, it's an image you just can't control.
excellent post and something i've grappled with since leaving my job. i'm almost to the point of wanting to lie when people ask what i do now.
Posted by: iggy | January 14, 2005 at 19:01
Thanks for the kind words. (Also, thanks for the pimpage on your own site--the traffic on my site literally tripled).
It got to the point for me that I started telling people I was "unemployed and looking" rather than a poker player. That wasn't a lie so much because I was sort of looking for a job--I felt like I should get something since poker probably wouldn't last forever.
Since I did get a job in December, I now have a nice answer to that question, even though poker is by far the larger source of income for me.
Posted by: poker_wannabe | January 15, 2005 at 13:24
I'm not a pro by any means, but being a student first and player second, all my spare time goes into the game. So any free moments (bus ride home, waiting for class, etc.) I would be reading a poker book, etc. and that would get me questions. I didn't mind of course, but they would be similar to the conversation you described. "Well, I won last night, but overall I'm down". "But I thought you said you won." "Yes...but...oh...just shut up!!" LOL Kinda like Iggy, I'm at the point where I want to be like the little kid hiding the comic books in the textbooks in while he reads them...I'm certainly not ashamed of anything I do poker-wise (I mean, I put it all out there for the world to see) but so many just don't get it.
Posted by: April | January 15, 2005 at 13:39
Hey.. the romantic version could work out for you one day! Hey baby, im a Poker Player. heh. I like the blog. First time I have read it. I am facinated with people who make a living doing this. I am a tweener - not sure if I would ever want to take that leap. I started out in poker doing too well playing .50/1-3/6 with nary a losing session. I then found out yes, you can lose, and it can seem like forever. It was and still is a great lesson but it definatly takes the shine off doing this for a living.
Posted by: SirFWALGMan | January 17, 2005 at 15:10
Thanks for the kind words, guys.
April, great blog. A fellow Austinite, too. Do you ever play at games around town? If so, we might've played against one another.
SirFWALGMan, I found the same pattern when I first started out. I'd win for weeks and feel on top of the world. Then I'd lose for weeks and feel like the biggest idiot in the world. I found that what was happening was I was simply playing way too lose online. It's easy to sit there and with the click of a button call and see what comes. That K9o can look quite inviting when one hasn't been getting any cards for the longest time...
I'm far from an expert, but playing limits from .5/1 to 3/6 seems to be quite a large spread. There is a huge difference between the two. .5/1 is filled with lots of people who have no idea how to play, whereas 3/6 is populated with lots of people who all have at least some idea of what they're doing, and then there's a small (and growing) contingent of hardcore multi-tablers who literally make a living at that level.
I generally play at a level I'm absolutely comfortable at (currently 5/10) and if I can't find something at that limit I like (for example, when I'm whoring at a site without a whole lot of traffic), then I go *down* in limits--3/6 or even sometimes 2/4 if it's a really sparsely populated site. The worse thing someone can do to their bankroll is have a good streak at a certain level and then immediately jump up to a higher level without being properly prepared.
My current strategy is to only move up when I'm uncomfortable *not* playing that higher limit. I was uncomfortable not playing 5/10 a month ago so I did it...but currently, I can't imagine myself being uncomfortable not playing 10/20 for a matter of many more months, and many more tens of thousands of hands at 5/10.
But anyways, you know your situation much better than I do; maybe I'm just misinterpreting your remarks...those were just the few thoughts I had reading your response.
Posted by: poker_wannabe | January 18, 2005 at 17:09
Wow, we have quite the Austin poker blogger scene going on here! Cool! I haven't played around town yet, Slayre keeps trying to get me to join him for an APL tourney, but I haven't made one yet. I keep promising to go though.
But hell, at this rate, we've got the makings for a serious home game!
Posted by: April | January 19, 2005 at 16:34