Just about sums it up

[peterbirks]

A post on the Gutshot forum:

Would you boys at the Gutshot be interested in a Team Tournament featuring the local poker clubs?
The Gutshot, The Western, Equal Chance, Full House, RiverCard etc could play each other home and away in a 10 man team to see who has the best poker players. No doubt we could get some sponsorship or each club could put up some money into a prize pot.

Sometimes you just sit here and wish that the fad for the game would end, so that the team players could go back to their football, leaving poker to individualists.

More interesting was a post on a blog about life in general. I can't remember how I arrived at the bloody blog, so I can't get the exact quote, but it ran roughly along the lines of:

Poker is for people who want the long run to have a chance. Real life is like playing $20-$40 limit on a $200 bankroll.

Wow, perceptive, or what? In an instant, you can explain that the reason that you play poker is because you are risk-averse, and that poker is the best way to exploit this. My own playing at a low level compared with my bankroll is just an extreme example of risk aversion within the poker fraternity.

But, think about it. People take massive gambles in real life, all the time, and they have no choice in the matter. And in these cases it often isn't a case of rebuilding your bankroll. It's "get it right first time, or you are fucked".

Comments

Don't buy it

[geoffchall.livejournal.com]

Not sure about this as a metaphor. People don't take massive gambles in life. What they are doing is making decisions. Gambling is a sort of binary thing, you win or you lose. Life involves taking decisions that have differing outcomes and you follow down the tree diagram of your existence.

Most of the time the differences between future existences are marginal. I never have real problems making decisions, people bring them to me all the time and I choose option A or B and live with the consequences.

So - life is like some bizarre game of poker where your bankroll starts at $200 and you know it will end with somewhere between $175 and $225.

Re: Don't buy it

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

I disagree. On the gambling side, a single bet can be (but is not necessarily) binary. However, once you throw in a sequence of bets, then any gambling game has degrees of win or loss, and so is not binary.

On the real life side, it might well be for you that you will end somewhere between $175 and $225, but I am reminded of the line in O Lucky Man!, where Ralph Richardson says that "the line between Wormwood Scrubs and The House of Lords is very fine". I think that, for a large number of people, single gambles (which they see as "decisions") have absolutely profound long-term effects, ranging from a zero outcome and a very large positive outcome.

I think that the main difference between a decision and a gamble is that one is thrust upon you (the decision, where a failure to take any action is one of your choices) while one is not (the gamble is a choice). I think that the bonary/non-binary dicotomy is illusory.

PJ

Re: Don't buy it

[(Anonymous)]

I'm with Peter on this one. In one week in 1995 I made a decision that had a profound affect on me. I was not happy at HSBC and wanted to move to another bank. I got an offer from a Japanese bank and was told by a recruitment agent that I was wanted by Bank of Boston. The agent knew that I'd been made an offer by the Japanese bank and I think he wanted to prevent me saying yes to them too soon. Having been told that it was a mere formality that Boston would take me, I was then told that the London office was having trouble getting the approval from the US end. I was strung along with a series of excuse for a few days and was finally told by the agent that they wanted to see me again. I decided that I had had enough and told him 'Looks like someone's been lying. I've had enough of this. After five days, I'm further back than I was before' and told him to forget it. Although at the time I thought it 60/40 that it was him who was lying, I now think it was closer to 90/10.

I took the job with Sanwa and it was a disaster. The Japanese guy who wanted me got transfered to a different department the day before I was due to start and the people I would have to work with didn't really want me there. They'd wanted someone with much more training and past experience. By contrast the Boston job would have started by giving me proper classroom training in US-standard credit analysis.

Was I too hasty in dumping the Boston job? Probably yes. But at the time I knew someone was lying and didn't want to stand for it. The point is that my life would have taken a totally different path if I'd held on longer for it.

And I perhaps wouldn't have wandered into the Barracuda at a loose end one night on the day I played my first poker tournament.

DY

Re: Don't buy it

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Your final point David, in a way, brings in the added element of chance - i.e., things happening to us, where decisions are made by us that we are unaware (and can have no way of knowing) will have a profound effect on our lives, but do.

If I hadn't gone to Heathrow Airport early one day in 1997, and been in a particular bar, my life would certainly have been very different. But how many times have I got into an underground carriage, and nothing has happened, but if I had gone into the next underground carriage, my life might have changed? We just don't know.

But these are "what ifs" that aren't really worth thinking about. However, decisions such as taking one job over another, making that follow-up phone call, choosing a partner, choosing where to live, making an investment decision (e.g., my decision to go into buy-to-let when I did) have greater long-term effects than any call on the turn in a $2,000 pot when you are 60/40 favourite.


PJ

Re: Don't buy it

[slowjoe.livejournal.com]

What happened in the bar in Heathrow, or is it classified?

Re: Don't buy it

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Kind of classified. I met someone, that's all. But it was probably a meeting that saved my life, because, indirectly, it led me to quit drinking (albeit a couple of years later).

PJ

Decisions, decisions

[geoffchall.livejournal.com]

But these aren't heaven and hell conclusions, they are just different outcomes. If David, you'd have waited on the Boston job then it might have come your way or it might not. If you'd passed on Sanwa and Boston had passed on you, you'd have done Something Else. It wouldn't necessarily have been perfect or been appalling, it would just have been different. You might have ended up with a fourth job even better or worse than HSBC, Sanwa or Boston

It does happen that you have apocalyptic chances to make. We had a choice to be in the World Trade Centre on Aug 11 or Sept 11 of 2001 and we chose August. And we were cross because the weather was poor.

But 99% of the time, all you are doing is creating different worlds and futures in which to live, where your happiness/contentedness is not actually dictated by the circumstances in which you find yourself but in how you deal with those circumstances. Your decisions can and do have a profound effect on the circs in which you find yourself, but it's the person that you are that determines the important stuff.

Re: Decisions, decisions

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Your decisions can and do have a profound effect on the circs in which you find yourself, but it's the person that you are that determines the important stuff.

Oh, honestly, Geoff, only a man with a house and a car and two lovely daughters could write that bollocks.

I think that you have a kind of attitude to life that has echoes of predestination, whereas David and I take more of a "random things can change your life immensely".

I mean, it's a bit hard to say to the bloke sleeping rough because he happened to be made redundant, so his wife left him (90% of women stated that financial security was an important factor in a partner...), so he had to sell his house, so he started drinking too much, so he couldn't get another job, and so on and son, that "it's the person that you are that determines stuff" and that what matters is "how you deal with those circumstances".

If you take that line, then no decision really matters at all, becaue you remain the same person. Clearly (I would think), this line doesn't hold. Therefore some decisions (i.e., gambles) that we take in real life are far more important than any big bet on the horses.

PJ

Re: Decisions, decisions

[(Anonymous)]

Hey - not fair. We've got two cars.

And I think that indeed, very few decisions matter at all. Surveys show that happiness is not a function of the material circumstances in which you find yourself. But then I don't think there's common ground here and besides which, I'm made the decision to go off on holiday in about 7 hours time.

Choose well and have a nice life.