1. What are the implications of both my self-ratings?
2. What should I do differently? List the specific actions you should take to increase your self-control.
Discuss your answers with someone you trust and take good notes.
3. Winners Make Good Trade-Offs
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
—Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate in Economics
Professor Friedman certainly wasn’t the first person to say that, but he frequently repeated it. He knew that many people believed that they could have free lunches, such as more government benefits with lower taxes. They couldn’t accept that somebody must pay for everything.
As far as I know, he never played or wrote about poker. He concentrated on the disastrous effects that believing in free lunches had on political, social, and economic policies. But the same belief devastates many poker players. They try to get everything—profits, fun, relaxation, challenges, status, fame, and so on—because they deny the reality that winning poker demands painful trade-offs.
The actions that satisfy some motives will frustrate others. If you don’t understand, accept, and work within the limitations created by this reality, you’ll make some very bad decisions. Good trade-offs sacrifice lower priority motives to satisfy higher priority ones. To make them you must:
• Know what you want.
• Analyze the costs and benefits of each alternative.
• Select the alternative that offers the best cost/benefit ratio.
Why Do You Play Poker?
Your long-term success depends on complex trade-offs that involve at least four factors:
1. Your motives
2. Your talent
3. Your readiness to work hard
4. Your ruthlessness
Start by analyzing your motives because they affect almost everything, including your readiness to work hard and your ruthlessness. Many losers don’t analyze their own motives, nor do they think in terms of trading one satisfaction for another.
Some motives hardly affect or even reinforce each other. For example, wanting to play this hand very well increases both your short- and long-term profits. The desire to develop yourself is closely related to the desire to challenge tough players.
Many poker authors assume that players have only one motive—to win the most money, but it’s a ridiculous assumption. Since most players lose, there must be other motives; otherwise, the losers wouldn’t play. And everyone—even the most profit-hungry professional—takes many profit-reducing actions.
Even if they don’t assume that your only motive is to make money, many authorities insist that it’s the only one you should have. But their insistence ignores a psychological reality: you want what you want, not what other people say you should want.
Don’t kid yourself about why you play poker. Instead, try to assess the importance of various motives by completing a little questionnaire. 10
The procedure is quite simple: Just divide your total motivation (100%) into as many pieces as you think are correct. For example, if your only motive is to make money and you treat poker as just a job, assign 100 percentage points to “Make money.”
If your primary motive is to make money, but you also enjoy socializing and meeting people, like to test yourself against competitive challenges, get a little kick from gambling, and want to pass time, you may rate Make money 40%, Socialize 20%, Competitive challenge 20%, Excitement of gambling 10%, and Pass time 10%.
If you really don’t care about making money, if the chips are just scorekeeping tokens, you may assign all your points to other categories.
If you have motives other than the ones listed, write them in the blank spaces and assign numbers to them.
Use a pencil or a computer so that you can make changes, and make sure that your numbers add exactly to 100%.11 After completing the following questionnaire, copy your answers in the identical questionnaire on pages 259–60.
| Why Do You Play Poker? | |
| Make money | ___ % |
| Socialize, meet people | ___ % |
| Relax | ___ % |
| Get excitement of gambling | __ % |
| Test yourself against tough competition | ___ % |
| Develop your skills | __ % |
| Get sense of accomplishment from winning | __ % |
| Get status and fame | ___ % |
| Pass time | ___ % |
| Other (specify) | |
| ______________________________________________________________________ | ___ % |
| ______________________________________________________________________ | ___ % |
| ______________________________________________________________________ | ___ % |
| Total (must be 100%) | ___ % |
Note that this procedure automatically forces you to make trade-offs. To increase the points for one motive, you must reduce the points assigned to others. Note also that the higher your score for “make money,” the more likely you are to sacrifice other motives. The opposite is also true. The more important other drives are to you, the more frequently you will take profit-reducing actions. From a purely economic point of view, it pays to want nothing from poker but profits.
Specific Trade-Offs
Now that we have an overall picture of your motives, let’s look at some specific trade-offs. Each one is followed by a seven-point rating scale. Rate yourself by circling a number. Then circle the same number in the How Do You Rate? Data section starting on page 260.
Profits vs. Fun
It’s the most basic trade-off, and many losers won’t make it. They want to have fun, but still win. They just can’t accept that they have to sacrifice fun to increase profits. So they play too many hands, chase too long, and make other enjoyable, but costly mistakes.
I once wrote: “One of the most fascinating poker questions is: Why do so many people play so badly? . . . The answer is surprisingly simple: it’s more fun to play badly than well. Of course, winning is more fun than losing, but trying to maximize our profits would force us to do lots of unpleasant things. In fact, profit-maximization makes such extreme demands that only a few extraordinarily disciplined people play their best game most of the time, and nobody always plays it.”12
The biggest reason that many people lose is that they do what they enjoy, not what it takes to win. Sacrificing fun is part of the price of success, and you won’t win without paying it.
Indicate where you stand on this trade-off by circling the appropriate number:
Profits vs. Avoiding Frustrations
Many decisions will increase both your profits and your frustrations. For example, if you increase your profits by playing against certain kinds of weak players, they will frustrate you by giving you bad beats, talking too much, not knowing what the action is, delaying the game while they order drinks, and so on.
Indicate where you stand on this trade-off by circling the appropriate number:
Rewards vs. Risks
Economists have discussed this trade-off for centuries. To increase profits, you must normally take greater risks. Poker winners understand and apply that principle, even if they have never read an economics book.
The critical issue is whether the probability and personal value of greater