What Poker Can Teach Us

http://chronicle.com/article/What-Poker-Can-Teach-Us/48641/

by riffer • 17 years ago

32 13 17 years ago

mattmaroon• 17 years ago

One thing poker taught me: don't ever sit next to the author of this article. Also, don't ever get caught in an elevator with James Woods. Both were for the same reason.

BRadmin• 17 years ago

Do you have a link to the James Wood anecdote from 2 + 2?

budman2• 17 years ago

I like to think of HN as being as far away from that atrocity of 2+2 as I can. Can't believe a simple poker article brings mention of that cesspool.

Anyway, Loved your blog back in the day Matt.

MarkPNeyer• 17 years ago

Here are some lessons I've learned from poker:

http://www.markpneyer.com/wp/?p=527

jpwagner• 17 years ago

While i despise the whole how-i-learned-life-from-poker flood of blog entries the last couple of years, it's refreshing to see someone stick to the social aspect here.

There's nothing worse than reading an article by someone who's played poker less than 1000 hours in their life saying: "you gotta know when to hold them and know when to fold them. I learned this the hard way when I started company XYZ and...blah blah blah..."

riffer• 17 years ago

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was thinking, too. I posted it because it's a very good piece in a genre that is crowded with mediocre essays.

electromagnetic• 17 years ago

What poker taught me, was that video poker sucks. That's basically the be all and end all of what poker can teach, beside perhaps the classic 'everyone is a liar'.

driekken• 17 years ago

I think the author makes an extremely far-fetched parallel between prominent people throughout history being excellent poker players. Could it be the other way round: being an extraordinary personality would make one good at activities that require careful reasoning/observation etc. ?

stanleydrew2• 17 years ago

I'm not sure he meant to imply that all these prominent people were excellent players. Just that the game provided a kind of training ground for decision-making and its analysis and an excuse for extended conversations with interesting people.

budman2• 17 years ago

Interesting? You obviously haven't played much poker in a casino environment. Now it doesn't apply to everyone obviously, but by and large the most shady, degenerate low lives I have ever met in my life collectively have come from my hours at poker. And most of the conversations involve shallow discussion of hands by ego maniacs or complaints of beats.

What this author (promoter) seems to either forget or ignore is that gambling, and poker in particular, is synonymous with hustlers, criminals and two-bit cheats.

stanleydrew2• 17 years ago

Poker taught me how to kill my risk-aversion. Or I suppose it taught me that I'm naturally not very risk-averse. You start to see your decisions in life as choosing a probability distribution over a set of outcomes. And then if you can reasonably assess the value of those outcomes (using whatever metric you choose, e.g. money in poker, or perhaps some more general "utility" in life) you can try to maximize your expected value.

Now don't get me wrong, you can be risk-averse and still analyze decisions this way. But poker helps you start to understand how you feel about things like investments and probable payoffs, and it helps you deal with loss. It helps you set up a framework for decision-making. After that you will relatively quickly discover how risk-averse you are.

hristov• 17 years ago

First of all given the popularity in poker in the US and how it is viewed as a sign of masculinity it is not at all surprising that a lot of successful men used to play poker. A lot of men play poker, period. So I am not sure being a good poker player should be viewed as a precursor to success. Even if it is, it is definitely not a positive one. If it is a precursor of success it probably means that good poker players are probably good at manipulating other people and lying, that's all.

Here is what poker taught me: - people can be bastards, and are generally not to be trusted. And I am not referring to the sanctioned lying that is accepted in poker (i.e., bluffing). There is a lot of shit behaviour in poker games outside of that narrow accepted form of lying. - never never drink alcohol and do anything important. In poker you quickly discover that even one beer can cloud your judgement even if you feel completely fine.

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What Poker Can Teach Us

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