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My parents met across a card table, over a game of bridge,
when my mother’s regular game needed a fourth. I
guess, given the inception of my parents’ romance,
competitiveness and a love of cards was bred into my
brother and me. From the moment we entered the
world, we had a desire to win and our parents
encouraged that desire. Nature and nurture
worked in perfect synergy to create children
who wanted nothing more than to win at our family’s nightly
card games.
My father was a ranked regional amateur tennis player.
If anyone needs an insight into the crazy competitiveness
of the household my brother Howard and I were brought
up in, they need look no further than a father who wanted
to win at all costs, even his health. During the humid New
Hampshire summers, he would go to the finals of his
regional tennis matches and become dehydrated, his electrolytes
totally out of balance. My father, cramping and
barely able to move without extreme pain, would finish
every match, grimacing as he ran for every
ball, fighting through the pain to win, no matter
what. As soon as he finished, we would
rush him to the hospital to get poked with
IVs until his body came back.
Until I started playing poker, the desire
to win bled into everything I did. When
I played games with my family, I would
generally lose. My sister was too young
to play, so I was always the youngest in
the game. I never seemed to outsmart
my elder brother or my father, and the
evenings would invariably end with me
throwing a tantrum, whipping the cards
against the wall or overturning a game
board, in tears.
When
it came to relationships, I was
the same way. I had to win at everything,
win every argument, no matter how
insignificant. I always had to be right. I
had to have the best grades among all
my peers. As you can imagine, this attitude
did not make me too popular. That
strong a desire to win is not a recipe for
healthy and long-lasting friendships or
relationships. If the goal is always to win, it is difficult to sustain
a healthy friendship, because a healthy friendship requires
give and take.
I think most people would assume that being a professional poker player would
increase one’s competitive desire. Poker, after all, is competition in its purest
form. There is no team, no cooperative play. It is every gal for herself; and
crushing your opponents is not only part of the game, it is the goal itself.
But poker teaches you that winning isn’t everything, at least in the
short run. Poker teaches you that what matters is making good
decisions and, if you do that, everything will work itself out in
the end.
When I first starting playing in Billings, Montana, I
would become so upset by losses that I would drive home
in tears, and immediately call my brother to moan
about my bad luck, how nothing went right. My
brother pounded it into my head that I had to stop
this, that that kind of reaction to losing was counterproductive
to winning at poker. He worked
with me for hours to calm my competitiveness,
the desire to win every hand, every session,
the tendency to become veritably unhinged
by losing.
We all know we make the best decisions
when they are unemotional. Becoming
unhinged by losing a hand puts you in an
emotional state and if you carry that into
the next hand, or worse, the rest of the
session, or even worse than that, the
next session you play, you will be playing
a lot of hours under circumstances
in which you are not a good decisionmaker.
It was my competitive streak that
unhinged me when I lost. I had to learn
that making good decisions and getting
my money in pots with the best hand
were my real goals. I had to learn a longterm
view, an understanding that winning
at a particular moment, winning a
particular hand, is not what it’s about. The
goal is to win in the long run by playing
well and understanding that part of the game
is that you will lose sometimes.
At limit poker, you will lose somewhere
between 40 to 45% of the time if you are a very
good player. That is enough to make money.
It is also enough to derange a person who cannot
stand to lose…ever.
So I learned to lose at poker. I learned to let it all go.
I learned to always look toward the long run and only get
upset when I played badly, win or lose. That made me a
much better player and allowed me to maximize the number
of hours I played while emotionally steady, under the best circumstances
for making good decisions.
And so I learned to lose in life. I learned that these principles do not
apply just to poker; that allowing your partner or your friend to win is a
good thing in the long term.
I learned that I don’t need to win every argument; I just need to win the ones
that are really important to me.
I could never have done that without the lessons poker taught me. And I’m so thankful
for that, as my life is so much more complete and happy because of the wonderful
friends I have.
Being less competitive is poker’s gift to me.
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