If you’re like me and you’ve gotten swept up in televised poker, you’ve probably seen the commercials: A well-known pro will intone, “Poker, like a lot of things in life, is all about _______” (fill in the blank with “strategy”, “taking risks”, etc.) They’re on the cheesy side, I’ll admit, but then, sometimes so is life.
I’m a sucker for poker: for its terminology (”all in”, “bad beat”, “drawing dead”, “flopping the nuts”), the psychology (reading the other players, guessing how they’re reading you), and the pleasure of finally realizing that I have a competitive streak. I’ve never been athletic or very interested in sports. When I was younger, I “played” softball, which meant picking daisies in the outfield. I mean that literally: I would sit out there with my glove in the grass beside me and pick daisies. If a ball managed to pass the infield, I’d rely on parents from the sidelines to shout which direction it had gone and then I’d start searching. I think a part of me has been a little proud to not care about things like that, to have no ego investment.
Upon reflection, I suppose I just didn’t want to try and fail. It seemed worse to want to win, and then to lose. It seemed far better to pick daisies when I encountered something at which I wasn’t naturally gifted. But lately, poker tells me that I really want to win. And I like the feeling of wanting it, even if I risk looking like I’m taking the game too seriously. I even like that I hate losing. My favorite poker term of late is being on tilt. It means that once a player has a bad beat—meaning, he had the best hand statistically, played it well, and should have won but loses to another player’s luck—or has a losing streak, he loses his judgment for a while, too. He plays hands he should have folded. He tries outrageous bluffs. He gets desperate to win a big hand, to prove himself.
I can say, proudly, that the other night, I went fully on tilt. I did an ill-advised bluff, got called, and became the short stack. Then I played aggressively, idiotically, sulkily, until I had no stack. Why am I proud of this? Because it’s good to treat things like they matter. It’s good to be immersed in a pursuit, to do something where you can learn and get better and sometimes feel things strongly and stupidly. If we never let a run of bad luck or a bad decision affect us, if we never go on tilt, not even for a moment, maybe we’re not trying hard enough. Maybe we’re not caring enough. Sometimes I liked picking daisies, but I imagine it would have felt really, really good to catch a ball.