Fear - The Final Frontier

“Fear….the final frontier….these are the voyages of the good ship poker player…..its lifetime mission, to discover strange new games and play for huge amounts of money……to boldly go where he has never gone before”

OK so I am making a very cheesy attempt to copy the opening lines to every Star Trek episode since the days of Captain Kirk. But behind those opening lines and my rather silly attempt to merge science fiction with poker lay some very important facts about this little card game that we love so much.

Poker like horse racing or any other betting activity for that matter can either be the most boring pastime that ever existed or the most riveting and the difference depends on one little tiny factor….do you have money resting on the outcome or not?

If you switched on your television set and the 3.00 race at Newbury was just about to start, most of you would probably switch channels very quickly. But if you had a fiver resting on the outcome then those same passive uninterested individuals would become self possessed animals, pushing all aside in an attempt to get to the screen and see if their five pound (money that they don’t even need) will turn into an even greater amount of money or simply go up in smoke.

What a transformation and all because of money and I have witnessed this thousands of times down the years with numerous different gambling activities. Money however small has the power to radically alter a person’s behaviour. People lie, cheat, steal and even injure and kill in order to get it. In the modern world, money seems of even greater importance than it used to be.

Back in the days of the great recession, the overwhelming majority of the population were poor as a church mouse. We have all sat and listened to stories from our grandparents or even our parents if you are old enough about tales of poverty and hardship. Hardly anyone had any money and no one was in competition to better their neighbour because they were both equally poor.

But we live in a far better, far more wealthier and prosperous society these days (thankfully) where people even with low paid jobs have a far better standard of living than even middle class people of say seventy years ago. Money and status has certainly elevated in importance over the years and more and more people see the process of either acquiring more and more money or achieving greater status as their only goal in life and we have all met these people.

But it is because we place so much emphasis on money and all of the advantages that it brings that makes poker the game that it is. It has an incredibly alluring cocktail of psychological macho combat (why it appeals to men) coupled with the adrenalin rush of risking money.

In this modern era where poker is so widely seen on television, the internet, in magazines etc, people now see poker as a way not just to have fun and pass a few hours but to actually possibly provide them with the capacity to earn them money if they become good enough.

When a player realises this then a sort of seriousness sets in. They set out on a journey to educate themselves by either buying books, reading magazines, websites, joining forums and all the rest of it. But one of the major stumbling blocks for the vast majority of new players who come into the game is that they just do not think that poker is actually gambling.

Sure, it is a game a skill where skill under most normal circumstances will ensure that better players will get the money in the end. But the variance in poker is so big and the losing streaks can be so long that many new players simply cannot get their head around this natural part of the game.

Because many new players do not perceive poker to be gambling, they themselves can have strong inherently anti-gambling tendencies. This causes a conflict of interests within the mind of each individual. One the one side we have an activity like poker which intrigues untold millions of people worldwide and many of those do not even play poker. With its mix of psychology, mathematics, statistics, concentration, machismo, financial risk etc, is it any wonder why poker appeals to so many people.

On the other side we have millions of people who are seduced by this multi faceted pastime who deep down, are passionately opposed to risking and gambling money. So why do people who are strictly anti-gambling play poker and risk money? Simple, without repeating myself I have just stated the answer.

It’s a whole new world

We have all seen poker on television with players playing for highstakes as though it meant nothing to them. We have all seen and read stories of similar such events in poker magazines and on websites.

I mean, even a bog standard $30-$60 limit hold’em player could lose 100 big bets in a very short space of time and that means $6000. So are these people who play poker for these unbelievable stakes superhuman or just super rich? Well it all depends on the individual. Some players who play for very high stakes are bankrolled for those levels and have built that bankroll up over many years of play.

Other players share bankrolls and thus share risk and then there are players who play as part of a team and share results and risk by operating that way. Then there are the types who jump straight into playing poker at high levels because they are already rich and they want to test themselves against the very best. To them playing for low stakes just would not create enough of a buzz to them. Others have sponsors who share or in some cases accept the full financial burden for a player and some players share pieces if themselves with each other.

In games like Omaha for instance when big pots crop up then it is common for players to deal the hand out more than once to create less fluctuation in the game. Let me make one thing absolutely clear, losing money whether it is through a poker game, the stock market or anything else hurts like hell.

It is this fear that prevents people from playing optimal poker or playing above certain limits. I always think that many people’s outlooks towards not just money but many things in life have deep roots that originate from your earlier life and especially childhood. I suppose that one of the reasons behind why I wanted to write this article was because I wanted to talk about my own experiences and my constant war against just such this fear of risking money.

This is what an awful lot of players fail to take on board, many risk averse people are attracted to poker and yet poker involves risking money and in some cases, very substantial sums of money.

But poker is nothing more than a microcosm of life when you think about it for a minute. If you are cautious in life, you will likely be a cautious poker player. If you are aggressive then your poker play will likely be aggressive. Likewise if you are impulsive, rash, careless, opinionated, easily angered etc, all these personality traits will come across at some stage during the poker game.

You simply cannot switch off who you are at the door when you walk into the cardroom. You simply cannot stop being you!

Sometimes whenever I read about some of the really big names in poker and the scale of the games that they play and the proposition bets that they take, it is perfectly clear that I will never ever be able to emulate them.

I have reached my personal threshold and despite having full confidence in my ability, I only ever want to play poker for a certain amount of money at any one time. This is simply because I only ever want to lose a certain amount of money during any one session/week/month.

This is why it is sheer folly for the vast number of new players to attempt to emulate some of the players who play at these levels. If you could take the two richest people in the world (whoever they are) and got them to play each other heads up with the stakes being $1,000,000-$2,000,000 NLH with each player having $500,000,000 on table, then the chances are that this would not be a game of high technical quality.

Yet the money that was in this game and the stakes involved would be beyond any professional poker player in the world. With the greatest respect to the two individuals whoever they happen to be, they are not going to be great players and this is a game that nearly every single person on the planet would not be capable of playing in.

This analogy might be a little extreme but it does highlight a very important point about people setting their goals too high in poker. You have not failed as a player just because other people are playing for higher stakes than you. If you don’t want to drop more than $20,000 playing limit hold’em then you better not play any higher than $30-$60.

What Can Life Teach Us?

But in my opinion, the fear of risking and losing money not just in poker but in any field of endeavour can be overcome. In this instance I am going to use myself as an example. Throughout my life I have essentially been a very cautious person when it came to money.

Coming from a gambling related past, I have seen first hand what gambling and addicted gambling can do to an individual. Couple this with the fact that during the first half of my life, it was a constant struggle financially. This I think moulds how you think and behave in later life and in no way was I psychologically cut out to play poker for meaningful amounts of money during my early twenties and even beyond the age of thirty.

This was why I sought a financial backer for my first blackjack team and if I had failed to find such a person, then the entire thing would never have got off the ground. Simply because I did not have my own money and even if I had, would not have been prepared to risk it.

In a similar way, this was why I found limit hold’em so conducive to my personality when online poker first started to grow. The thought that I always had only a fixed amount of money at risk at any one time gave me some sort of comfort.

But there have been large changes in my mindset over the last ten years and fear when all said and done is basically a negative frame of mind. For instance, a good friend of mine is a firm believer in the supernatural and ghosts and spirits. She steadfastly refused at one stage to go to her own uncle’s house because she was convinced in her own mind that there was some type of presence there lurking.

This used to spook her enormously until we were sat in a pub a few months ago and I gave her my alternate view of the situation. I basically told her that fear in this instance was unfounded. If what she had sensed had been real, then surely this was not something to be afraid of but actually something to comfort you.

Most of us have lost people very dear to us at some stage in our lives and there will come a time for all of us when death is staring us in the face. Is it not then comforting to know that there is an existence beyond death or that our loved ones are just maybe somewhere else? She sat and listened for about thirty minutes to what I had to say and at the end of it all, had totally changed her outlook and now once again she regularly visits her uncles house….only this time without fear.

This point I think underlines that most fears are psychological in nature and it is the same with money. My partner likes to have a punt on the Grand National every year and she is a successful business woman and not short of a few quid. But yet she steadfastly refuses to place more than a pound on her selection. But yet she will think nothing of spending several hundred times that on a lavish evening out or a new dress.

But when it comes to losing money, surely this is a fear that for many people is purely psychological. Does it actually matter if you lose $600 in a poker game or $6000 for that matter. Well if that money is live or death to you then it might. But money is very rarely a matter of life or death though is it?

You could lose everything you had in some poker game and would still be able to rely on the state to provide you with something or to get some job to pay your way. But most people who lose money in poker are losing money that will not make any long term difference to their lifestyle or financial situation whatsoever.

Yet it is these same people who literally clam up at the poker table and play like it is their last $100 in the entire world. Fear of losing money is preventing them from opening up and playing their natural game in many instances. As I said earlier, there are repercussions to losing money in poker because losing hurts.

But there are also other repercussions as well that go beyond monetary issues. For instance if you lost to your mates, you may look foolish and feel silly if you made a bad play. Then there is the possible backlash from your wife or partner when she finds out (if you tell her that is).

Many players who play on television do so with fear. The fear of doing something silly in front of millions of people and I have observed this many times. It is difficult to do anything naturally when you are under so much scrutiny. But for me personally, my attitude to risking money has altered considerably over the past ten years for several reasons.

One of them being that I am more financially secure than what I was ten years ago. Another one being the fact that I have lost many people who were dear to me and some of those were of a very young age. This leaves you looking at your own life clock and wondering just how much of a future you actually have left.

This may all sound rather bleak and it probably is but it is reality and reality in many instances is rather bleak. I always think that life is one big balancing act, we strive to achieve a perfect balance in everything that we do. Whether it is drinking, smoking, saving money or whatever, there is always a dividing line that separates what is acceptable from what isn’t.

That can also be applied to risking money as well. If you lose £5000 in a very short space of time in several poker sessions then is that necessarily a catastrophe? Not if you already have £100,000 in personal savings it isn’t. But lets say that you only have £50,000, or £25,000, or even £10,000….is it the end of the world even if you lost half of everything that have?

At the end of the day, it is only money and money can be replaced. Do not get me wrong here, I am certainly not advocating that you start to risk much greater sums of money than you have ever risked before in your life all because you could be dead this time next week. But it is the value that we place on money that creates the fear of losing it with many people. It is this same fear that is present in many players when they first start out in poker.

But fear is not a bad thing in itself as fear can keep you safe and free from harm whether it is physical, emotional or financial. But once again we get back to that same dividing line that we talked about earlier because fear can prevent you from encountering serious financial harm in poker but it is those same fears that are then very difficult to shrug off when you are contemplating playing for large amounts of money.

It is something that even as a professional player of nearly six years, I still sometimes struggle to come to terms with. I regularly “spin up” (take shots at) in bigger games like at the $25-$50 NLH game for instance where there is nearly always $50,000 on the table in a six handed game. I prefer to do this rather than play at that level full time and this brings me many advantages when it comes to mentally helping me come to terms with the fact that I could lose $3000 in one hand of poker.

At the end of the day, to play poker beyond certain levels and be successful comes down to more than just reading books and analysing data from software and all the rest of the self tutoring material that is out there. Success in poker is quite often only achieved through achieving victory over one of the most difficult and demanding opponents that you will ever wish to meet…..yourself!