Negating Poker's Shadow Side

Negating Poker’s Shadow Side

It would not be fair to consider poker without its negative side. Almost no thing is without it’s negative side, and certainly most popular things. In my view the negative sides of things are just the reverse of the polarity for which they naturally represent, and thus inevitably have. That being said, when the positive sides are taken to their limit and negative sides reduced to their limit the closest to a perfect reality is achieved. 

Many of these sites have their parallels in the real world. In my view they all have one pattern in common: being uncomfortable with reality as it is and so grasping at one that the guilty party believes they are entitled to. 

Arrogance

This is the shadow side of the possibility of having an unrealized advantage (eg from skill or intelligence). It’s not hard to see then that arrogance shows it itself when that advantage is not perceived to be realized. 

The arrogant party feels the world has not given them their due, and so claims it with words and actions. The irony is that, while they may in fact may not have their due, when they are arrogant where does injustice likely truly lay? They even become the bad guy. Is this action of arrogance better than due patience to let the world iron out truth? I would argue certainly not in clearly temporary examples.

To defeat this one it helped me to look within. Does arrogance actually serve me? I was arrogant that I perhaps was intellectually superior, or was I if I was doing stupid things like being arrogant and shooting myself in the foot? The only upside I could consider was that it made me feel good in the moment compared to the countless leaks it created in my life by alienating me from potential friends, giving away my edge, and living with my hypocrisy. Another irony is that often arrogant poker players are certainly not more intelligent than, for example, the recreational players that are successful in much bigger fields than poker. Considering this, where is injustice exactly? 

Degeneracy

This one I personally did not deal with much at least in poker, but I believe I did elsewhere. What is degeneracy? In my view it is at the root of gambling addiction and addiction in all its forms, but that the feeling of removing a short term pain and gaining a short term high is considered as more beneficial than long term peace and benefits that require patience. Almost ironically, a great responsibility in preventing it comes from those that have the power to enable it (I’m looking at you, poker community). 

My own degeneracy situation involved a heartbreak that no matter what I did I could not fill the hole it left in me over the course of years. The conventional advice was either to replace them with someone else (that did not work) or some vague bullshit to “love myself” by self-righteous individuals in usually superior positions. Perhaps this is what being a degenerate gambler or drug addict felt like, perpetually trying to escape a low pain and chase an incomparable high? And while feeling judged by no one who could understand and getting useless and impractical advice? 

I ended up perpetually chasing a high often having to decide between my work, what was good for me and that high. It helped that I was nudged to make more mature choices and to see the bigger view, it being that the possibility of that high as well as what came with it was not worth all the energy expended to achieve it. Slowly I’d come to grips with this and that I had to get over this problem if I wanted to be committed to my work. If someone else replaced this person or this feeling, wouldn’t I still have the same life leak lying in wait? Many people attempted to convince me to the point of exhaustion. As far as I could tell, the only viable solution came down to me and to decide to continuously stand on my own in system that was not always supporting me. 

The dynamic of my situation reminded me a lot of what drug addicts and degenerate gamblers experience. The good news for this one is allegedly only 3% of the population has this when we are talking about poker. I don’t totally understand it for poker other than I understand that people’s emotional highs and lows are not the same as everyone else’s. I’d like to investigate further on how it shows up in poker. 

You may guess that given this explanation I do not support the exploitation of degenerates. Poker players have an important role here actually to not entice the exploitation of recreational players, which I know many cash games are notorious for. That means sacrificing short term advantage for making sure VIPs have a positive experience and feel that they’ve net gained from the experience. It can mean exposing their leaks, cutting them off when they are not functional and not giving extra credit beyond their means.

Poker players complain that poker isn’t considered a sport, that recreationals don’t want to play. If recreational players are exploited for their money, is it any wonder they are safeguarded, looking at those who wish to protect’s point of view? Is it any wonder then that poker may be considered gambling by many, for which it greatly was so for many others? 

Cold Rationality

This one is one of the most insidious because it is so subtle and disguises itself as virtue. It’s not that rationality is a bad thing, but rather focusing so hard only on measurable outcomes (such as all forms of winning) via logic meeting energy is in fact a bad thing. It seems that logic, taken to its final conclusion by its own nature, leads to the ironic outcome that it cannot be held in the highest regard. You can see this one’s negative influence in cold, boring atmospheres often filled with bad energy, devoid of women in cash game and tournament environments today. Let me explain, and tell my own tale involving this one. 

It’s true that logic is supreme in poker and when achieving any measurable outcome. Once upon a time, I idolized it as the highest principle myself, as I demolished my opponents using, what I imagined to be, maximal logic and will to the point where my superiority was so blatant that I became complacent. Quite the ego trip for a bit of a weird guy who was semi-ostracized, and perhaps the other end of that duality huh. I even chose the avatar of the terminator, which represented cold logic applied to unrelenting will. 

Had there been options that lead to the forfeiture of my humanity in place of superior leverage at this time, I would have likely chosen them and perhaps become this terminator in reality. I personally think a large portion of humanity is currently heading down this path, desiring more and more measurable “success.” Incidentally, a large proportion of ultimate supervillians had this characteristic believing it would serve the greater good (or not) in various animes and video games such as Naruto, Mass Effect, Guerran Lagann, etc, which resulted in much destruction and colorless worlds. 

Just like in the poker landscape! Haha. Not exactly, but you can see this aspect play out a bit on the poker felt. What saves it is actually within the same bias that I discovered in myself: to be good. 

Why? I contemplated this deeply, since I seemed to have no biases aside from this one. The answer I have is that it is simply the inherent order of the universe, and actually the “purpose” of it.  That being said, it has to have this aspect at the most competitive levels, but if we ever want

Hidden Greed and Downsides of Duality

On further inspection of my situation, I wondered why I was trapped so much in places where gambling and vice flourished when I had no interest in them. I also lamented that so few women were around pokers’ situation. At some point it dawned on me that perhaps this one subtle aspect of the duality that I did not embrace other aspects of my emotional being