How playing poker shapes your view of the world
Some of the more subtle ways it affects thinking in everyday life.
Poker is a wonderful game that I played professionally for 16 years. Here are some of the more subtle, less obvious ways it influences our thinking away from the tables.
1. Encourages a statistical view of the world.
As someone who is very health conscious, I have regular checkups. I find it pretty frustrating that doctors are notoriously reluctant to give confidence percentages for their diagnoses. I understand their rationale – people generally don't think in terms of probabilities. It's challenging to predict how someone might react to a number like 5%. For some, it might mean obsessing over the issue, while others might dismiss it entirely (and be shocked when it comes back to bite them in the ass). We all react to these numbers differently.
A gynecologist told a friend of mine that due to a condition she has, there was a risk she could become infertile. She decided to get pregnant soon after. The timing for a baby was far from perfect, to say the least. What's interesting is that my friend couldn't specify how likely the risk was. All that mattered to her was that a risk was present. While this is a fair approach to the situation, it's different from how an average poker player might see it. To them, the key question might be, “When you say 'risk', could you quantify that for me?” or “Is it 1 in 10 or more like 1 in 1000”? I think most poker players when making a life-changing choice would want to know the rough numbers beforehand. Even though the stakes are high, a calculated risk might be taken if the odds are deemed favorable.
For poker players, probabilities are deeply ingrained in their decision-making, because the game forces you to recognize the substantial influence percentages can have. Sometimes, the same decision can be fantastic or terrible, depending on the odds. In addition, working with probabilities helps you gain an intuitive understanding of how something like 5% “feels” in reality, and how often it actually occurs, since people can have subjective impressions of what it means to them.
A 2022 survey among machine learning researchers found that 5% believe the impact of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) will be "extremely bad (e.g., human extinction)". Now, 5% might not seem like much, but throughout their career, a poker player encounters 5% probability events thousands of times. This experience might make them more concerned about the perceived likelihood of a world-ending threat.
2. Prop-betting grounds beliefs in reality.
If you've been in the poker world long enough, you've certainly participated in a prop bet or two. Prop bets (propositional bets) are wagers that can be related to the poker game (e.g., the color of the next card to appear on the board) or completely unrelated, in which case you can bet on any random event you'd like.
Some of the more notable and crazier prop bets that we have seen include:
- A $2,000,000 bet that Gus Hansen would abstain from sex for a year (the money was not enough for Gus to endure the cruelty of celibacy)
- A $100,000 bet to spend 30 days inside a completely isolated, pitch-black hotel bathroom with no internet, TV, clock, or music (Rich Alati stayed in the bathroom for 20 days before both parties settled to award him $62,500)
- $1,000,000 for Phil Ivey to become vegetarian for a year (Phil bought out for $150,000 after 9 days)
- A spur-of-the-moment $300,000 bet to run 70 miles (112 km or nearly three marathons) on a treadmill within 24 hours; Ashton Griffin won this bet on 4 hours of sleep while playing basketball and attending a concert the night before.
Poker players also like to bet on mundane events for smaller amounts, such as whose elevator will arrive first or whether your mutual friend believes Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide. Betting is so ingrained in the lifestyle that whenever there is a disagreement between two poker players and each side is confident, their minds often wander to find ways to prove the other side wrong while earning money in the process. This can lead to spontaneous wagers that are objectively silly, and one side can be laughably wrong (I've been on the receiving end of those quite a few times), but there's something very pure about the concept of putting your money where your mouth is. Anyone can have strong opinions, but putting skin in the game is a sure way to verify how sure you really are.
If someone is extremely confident, the poker world will be quick to create terms to verify that belief with a prop bet (assuming, of course, the statement can be verified). This discourages foolish certainty, because if you decline the offer, the community will surely ridicule you for it ("so you're 100% sure, but you won't bet $50 on it? lol"). Rightly so, I might add. That is why, while we have our fair share of idiotic opinions, on average, a seasoned poker player is less likely than a completely random person to confidently make outlandish claims publicly.
3. Increases sense of agency.
Poker is a wonderfully egalitarian discipline. It doesn't matter where you come from or what your level of education is. There is no one you can ask to put in a good word for you and help you advance in your career. Even your financial situation is almost irrelevant, as most people learn the game by building up from the smallest stakes (or even freerolls - free to enter tournaments with small prize pools). As long as you have an internet connection and are located in a country that hasn't banned poker you have the necessary tools to embark on this journey.
Because poker is a game of skill where you're not competing against the casino, but against other competitors and this playing field is even, you end up in an environment where your results are exactly proportional to the quality of your output. The better your decisions are at the table the more money you make, no other way around it. This is in stark contrast to the realities of almost any other job where a hundred other random variables will determine the trajectory of your career.
As a result, successful poker players have an ingrained sense of agency that is well above average. This can become a bit delusional when they move into, say, business ventures and often assume that the world will fall into their laps, but for the most part, a strong sense of control is a constructive mindset to have in order to maximize one's chances of success.
4. Numbs emotions, for better and worse.
One of my therapist's favorite phrases is 'Don't tell me what you think, tell me what you feel'. Stuffing emotions deep inside can have various causes, but playing a game professionally for 16 years that disincentivizes strong emotions is certainly a contributing factor. Anger, fear, sadness, or even happiness are not the most constructive tools for making decisions in the game. So much so, that if a player is expressive at the table, you can assume that he/she is probably not very good. Not being stoic has become synonymous with amateurism. Now, much to the detriment of fans, the game has evolved to the point where players resemble cold, statue-like figures.
That's not to say that we don't feel intensely. It's difficult not to when the financial swings can be so volatile. Poker is one of the few jobs where you can work very efficiently and still lose money, and it can go on for months.
It's an incredibly mentally draining process, made worse by the fact that no matter how beat up you've been in the last dozen sessions, there's no certainty that fate will treat you any differently next time. This leads to "tilting" - being overwhelmed by negative emotions and making subpar decisions as a result. So poker players learn very quickly to condition themselves to suppress those feelings of hopelessness or rage. Almost every emotion you feel goes through the filter of whether it's helpful in making decisions. If you spend most of your time in an environment where you force yourself to put your emotions aside, it's easy to feel awkward when the poker session ends and you go to a party, because suddenly the incentives are reversed - letting go is encouraged, stoicism is not. It's also not surprising if you find, as did I, that you have trouble figuring out exactly what you're feeling in your day-to-day life, since putting emotions aside is what made you successful.
5. More likely to view time in terms of money.
Poker players are obsessed with expected value (EV for short). The EV of a decision is how much you'd make on average if you repeated it indefinitely. In poker, you're not always rewarded for making the right decision, so EV is a useful metric for tracking whether or not your strategy is actually making you money.
EV changes our relationship with time. We spend years thinking of ways to optimize our hourly rate. A poker player is more likely than the average person to outsource daily tasks that cost less than their hourly rate. This might mean getting a catering service to save up a dozen hours a week spent grocery shopping and cooking. It might mean hiring a maid to do house chores. If the cost is lower than their hourly rate, then they can make more money in the meantime.
This, however, can lead to a vicious cycle. A common trap that many high-stakes professionals fall into is to start questioning whether non-poker activities are worth the opportunity cost. A person who earns $100 per hour might start to wonder whether going to a party is worth the $500 he/she could have made if he/she spent that time working. There might be guilt associated with missing out on either option. All of this forces you to answer an interesting question: How much money are various experiences actually worth to you in your life?
6. You gain a nuanced perspective on people and money.
In the poker world, people hand, borrow, or bet money with no formal contracts. It's convenient. If you don't have cash on you, this can allow you to play a game either way if people assume you're good for it. If there's a good betting opportunity you don't have to wait weeks to formalize it. Often, this ends in chaos when both parties have to scramble later to figure out the exact amounts or terms. And, as you might imagine, it's not uncommon for people to welch, they don't honor their agreements. Precautions can be taken - people vouch for each other, they use escrows. But even that often fails. As a matter of fact, it's difficult to find a poker player who wasn't severely screwed over at least once. Yet most of them still put themselves in vulnerable positions. But they do so knowingly. If a poker player lends money, they know that there is a chance they may never see it again. But quite frequently they do it anyway. It's a calculated risk.
All of this helps pick up a more nuanced perspective on the relationship between people and money. This is valuable insight outside of the poker tables as well. You become more consciously aware that people are fallible. If a close friend or even a family member asks you for a large sum of money you realize there is a possibility it might not be that easy to get it back. Not necessarily out of malice, but often just out of carelessness. It may still be worth lending the money, but what is really useful is having a clearer understanding of the situation beforehand.