Poker, Gambling and Life

[Nate tha' Great]

Don't worry, not a book review. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

Last night I played my first poker in about six weeks. I hadn't planned such an extended absence, but there's been a lot going on:

- A heavy workload at my 'other' job, working for Baseball Prospectus. We're actually a lot busier when baseball games aren't being played, mostly in conjunction with the production of our annual book.

- Family shiznit for Thanskgiving, Christmas, and New Years.

- A relationship that's gone from somewhat casual to somewhat serious; this is a good thing, of course, but "honey, why don't you watch TV while I'm schooling the fish at Empire" just won't cut it.

And, yes, there's a burnout factor too. Taking a little bit of time off got me to realizing that poker, especially online, can be both fairly tedious and fairly stressful when played as something more than a hobby, and that led me to want to take more time off. I went through a long stretch where, roughly 98% of the time that I wasn't otherwise occupied in the evening (that is, hanging out with friends or working on baseball stuff), I'd play poker online. I have a financial incentive, of course, to play pretty often. But it's also nice to be able to relax once in a while, by renting a movie or reading or playing Yahoo! backgammon or what have you.

The conclusion that I've come to is that making a healthy sum of money playing poker (or doing anything, really) isn't much worth it unless you're using it to enjoy a higher quality of life. That means taking advantage of the 24/7 flexibility that poker provides for by not letting it interfere with the other good things that you've got going on in your life. That means making sure that your interpersonal relationships and your physical and mental health come first.

In my case, it also means spending some of my winnings. This will seem like a pretty, trivial complaint, and needless to say, a lot of people have the opposite problem, pissing their bankroll away as quickly as they accumulate it. But if you're just accumulating money without really doing anything with it, you begin to feel like the proverbial gerbil on the hamster wheel after a while.

I've also realized that poker isn't something that it's very easy for me to compartmentalize. I'm not the sort of person who is able to say "I'm going to play from exactly 7 PM to exactly 11 PM and call it a night". I'm inherently a tempermental, compulsive sort of a person, and poker is inherently a tempermental, compulsive sort of a game.

What I can do, I think, is to avoid playing poker when I don't feel like playing poker. This ought to be one of the luxuries that the poker lifestyle affords me. If it gets to the point where I don't feel like playing poker often enough to make a living out of doing so, that will create a problem, but I *do* enjoy the game, and I don't suspect that it will come to that. It's not a matter of moderation exactly but of balancing my various complusions in a more effective way.

So that's my goal for 2005: to use poker as a tool to enhance my quality of life. If that sounds awfully vague - well, it is, and I'm still fleshing some of this stuff out. But I think it's a lot more important than targeting some or another win rate, or some or another limit, or some or another tournament finish. If a side-effect is that looking at things in this way gets me to play *better* poker, that will be nice, but it is not the heart of the matter.

FWIW, I felt rusty and jittery in my first session back, but managed to post a reasonable win on the night [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img], while placing 25th or so in my first post- Harrington on Hold 'Em MTT. Would've made the final table if I hadn't run into aces at the wrong time, but that's poker. I should be back here pretty regularly and will get to the backlog of PMs when I can.

take care,
Nate

[FLooD13]

Thanks for your insight. I believe your view on poker is the proper view for anyone to have that takes their poker game serious.

[mr pink]

great post... good to see you back. i've been going through something of the same myself as of late so its nice to hear someone else's thoughts on the subject instead of my own bouncing around my head. good luck.

peace - jeff

[bisonbison]

Nate, I didn't realize you were Nate Silver from BP. I'm a huge fan of BP and your work.

Great post.

[Justin A]

Great post, welcome back.

[ QUOTE ]
A heavy workload at my 'other' job, working for Baseball Prospectus.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nice, baseball rules.

Justin A

[BottlesOf]

A great post, as usual, from you Nate. Your absence has definitely been noted, and I hope you continune to contribute here often, as well as enjoy plenty of quality time elsewhere.

[Michael Davis]

I thought you were dead.

-Michael

[MarkL444]

glad youre back. now i can continue to feed off your knowledge [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

ive never read BP before, but i plan to this year. when does it come out?

[Nate tha' Great]

[ QUOTE ]
ive never read BP before, but i plan to this year. when does it come out?

[/ QUOTE ]

Book should come out probably in the last week of February. You can order on Amazon now:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...s&n=507846

For a variety of reasons, I try and keep my baseball and poker separate, but I do think the book would be particularly appreciated by the analytical minds that we have in this group. And it's damned cheap if you get it through preorder, too. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

-Nate

[MarkL444]

consider it preordered, you filthy spammer. im looking forward to it.