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Communication
Jun. 8th, 2007 08:02 amOne of the things that strikes me in my never-ending world of alienation is how inarticulate most people are. This varies from the inarticulate thick to the inarticulate intelligent.
This isn't a criticism of the inarticulate intellegent. Since Wittgenstein concluded (before he got stupid and changed his mind) that inarticulacy is endemic to language, one can hardly blame people for finding it hard to express complex concepts.
One of the reasons (of the many) that I started to write was an almost obsessive desire to break down my own feelings of alienation, in that it is clearly very hard to communicate what is going on inside to those who are not inside (i.e., the rest of the world). But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try.
In poker and in music and in maths, one of my greatest frustrations is that people who are talented at the game/art/science are rarely sufficiently articulate to express the reasons for their talent. This is probably reason 1 for the adage that 90% of advice is shit. Just because people are good at the game/art/science, that does not mean that their self-analysis is strong. The reasons for them being good at poker might be completely different for the reasons they think they are good at it. And, even if their self-analysis is good, that does not mean that they will be able to express themselves in a way that those who are less talented will be able to understand.
I always found this also to be a fault shared by music teachers and maths teachers (because, as we know, the two are very closely linked). Perhaps there should be some kind of law against people who are naturally talented in these two fields from teaching it to anyone bar others who are naturally talented in the field. Because, for the naturally untalented (like me),there is just too great a chasm.
One of the reasons that I am a good financial writer (and a good teacher of younger journalists coming into the game) is that I am not naturally talented. It's all come about over a long time of hard graft. The same is true of poker. There are no "easy routes" for me, so the best teachers of people like me are the not particularly talented guys who got where they got through hard work, not the geniuses. Geniuses, when it comes to imparting knowledge, are invariably a waste of space.
So, when things start going badly at poker (yep, I had a crappy session this morning -- one of the reasons I stick to lower stakes. It would take a hell of a lot of bad beats to annoy me at $50NL) I don't have the natural ability to analyze it in the way the naturally talented do. I can see obvious bad beats, for sure, but in other areas (did I price this bet right? Did I make a mistake earlier which gave me a tough decision, or was the move right, and I was just unlucky?) I just flounder. I look at Noble/NoIQ and I see that I am now two buy-ins down at $50 NL over about 12,000 hands. Does this mean I'm a loser? I don't know. At $100 NL, I'm up two buy-ins over 1,000 hands. At Party, I'm up (but over a lower sample), At Stars, I'm up (but over a lower sample). And yet, it nags at me that I'm down over 12,000 hands (although the deposit bonus and rakeback more than make up for this, obviously). I feel that this cannot be down to bad luck, pure and simple. But then I analyze the hands (which is slow, and boring) and I can't specifically define mistakes. (Well, one or two, perhaps). Mainly, it just seems like shit luck.
This is the most worrying thing of all. It would seem to indicate that I am intrinsically bad, rather than unlucky or with minor flaws. It seems to indicate that my play is so fundamentally weak that there's nothing I can do about it. In a way, that doesn't seriously piss me off. As I've written before, it's the hope and uncertainty that I can't stand, rather than the absolute knowledge that something is wrong.
And yet, and yet. I'm not broke. The profit still shows an upwards trend. If I look at it that way, I am good. I've seen many many players whom I know to be more talented than me go broke. They have testosterone-filled problems about dominating the table, "beating" the other guy (I want the other guy to go away happier, but poorer). They have no bankroll management. They mock my playing at lower limits given the size of my bankroll. They are, in their own way, filled with certainties (as opposed to my life filled with doubts), and those certainties stand them in good stead, until it all goes tits up.
At that point, I can look at them and smile, and say, as is the case with work, as is the case with the poker table:
"I'm still here".
+++++++++
Top quote of the day, from Pokerworks: ZeeJustin had just won a big 45/55 (why do I never win those?) to go to 1.5m in the 2K NL Hold'Em.
"Several other ZeeJustins, eliminated earlier, are on the rail sweating him".
Brilliant. For the non pokerati out there, I'll explain it later, unless some other reader cares to do so first.
PJ
This isn't a criticism of the inarticulate intellegent. Since Wittgenstein concluded (before he got stupid and changed his mind) that inarticulacy is endemic to language, one can hardly blame people for finding it hard to express complex concepts.
One of the reasons (of the many) that I started to write was an almost obsessive desire to break down my own feelings of alienation, in that it is clearly very hard to communicate what is going on inside to those who are not inside (i.e., the rest of the world). But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try.
In poker and in music and in maths, one of my greatest frustrations is that people who are talented at the game/art/science are rarely sufficiently articulate to express the reasons for their talent. This is probably reason 1 for the adage that 90% of advice is shit. Just because people are good at the game/art/science, that does not mean that their self-analysis is strong. The reasons for them being good at poker might be completely different for the reasons they think they are good at it. And, even if their self-analysis is good, that does not mean that they will be able to express themselves in a way that those who are less talented will be able to understand.
I always found this also to be a fault shared by music teachers and maths teachers (because, as we know, the two are very closely linked). Perhaps there should be some kind of law against people who are naturally talented in these two fields from teaching it to anyone bar others who are naturally talented in the field. Because, for the naturally untalented (like me),there is just too great a chasm.
One of the reasons that I am a good financial writer (and a good teacher of younger journalists coming into the game) is that I am not naturally talented. It's all come about over a long time of hard graft. The same is true of poker. There are no "easy routes" for me, so the best teachers of people like me are the not particularly talented guys who got where they got through hard work, not the geniuses. Geniuses, when it comes to imparting knowledge, are invariably a waste of space.
So, when things start going badly at poker (yep, I had a crappy session this morning -- one of the reasons I stick to lower stakes. It would take a hell of a lot of bad beats to annoy me at $50NL) I don't have the natural ability to analyze it in the way the naturally talented do. I can see obvious bad beats, for sure, but in other areas (did I price this bet right? Did I make a mistake earlier which gave me a tough decision, or was the move right, and I was just unlucky?) I just flounder. I look at Noble/NoIQ and I see that I am now two buy-ins down at $50 NL over about 12,000 hands. Does this mean I'm a loser? I don't know. At $100 NL, I'm up two buy-ins over 1,000 hands. At Party, I'm up (but over a lower sample), At Stars, I'm up (but over a lower sample). And yet, it nags at me that I'm down over 12,000 hands (although the deposit bonus and rakeback more than make up for this, obviously). I feel that this cannot be down to bad luck, pure and simple. But then I analyze the hands (which is slow, and boring) and I can't specifically define mistakes. (Well, one or two, perhaps). Mainly, it just seems like shit luck.
This is the most worrying thing of all. It would seem to indicate that I am intrinsically bad, rather than unlucky or with minor flaws. It seems to indicate that my play is so fundamentally weak that there's nothing I can do about it. In a way, that doesn't seriously piss me off. As I've written before, it's the hope and uncertainty that I can't stand, rather than the absolute knowledge that something is wrong.
And yet, and yet. I'm not broke. The profit still shows an upwards trend. If I look at it that way, I am good. I've seen many many players whom I know to be more talented than me go broke. They have testosterone-filled problems about dominating the table, "beating" the other guy (I want the other guy to go away happier, but poorer). They have no bankroll management. They mock my playing at lower limits given the size of my bankroll. They are, in their own way, filled with certainties (as opposed to my life filled with doubts), and those certainties stand them in good stead, until it all goes tits up.
At that point, I can look at them and smile, and say, as is the case with work, as is the case with the poker table:
"I'm still here".
+++++++++
Top quote of the day, from Pokerworks: ZeeJustin had just won a big 45/55 (why do I never win those?) to go to 1.5m in the 2K NL Hold'Em.
"Several other ZeeJustins, eliminated earlier, are on the rail sweating him".
Brilliant. For the non pokerati out there, I'll explain it later, unless some other reader cares to do so first.
PJ
