Out of Body Poker, extremely long and possibly ridiculous.

[Monty Cantsin]

Ok, so in the spirit of "Poker as a Martial Art" I have a theory about how to improve your game and take some of the suffering out of poker, sounds good right?

The theory is that we have way too much ego invested in the game. Moreover, this excess of ego is the root of a lot of our mistakes and most of the pain we feel when we lose.

One of the essential conceptual skills needed to be a winning player is the ability to de-program some pretty deeply embedded mental habits concerning cause & effect and action & result. It can be extremely counter-intuitive to think in terms of long-range statistical patterns and overlapping possibility fields instead of the solid surfaces and either/or realities of the material world, but this is a necessary part of expert play.

The idea of Out of Body Poker is that ego-centric thinking is another deeply embedded mental habit that needs to be overcome.

I don't just mean ego-centric in the sense of selfish or arrogant. I mean the completely natural, normal human sense of individual identity that we carry around with us on a day to day basis. You know, the feeling that you are a separate, discrete entity, with its own little private package of being.

Ok, maybe it seems like an overly ambitious project to transcend what is, after all, pretty much the bedrock of human consciousness in the interests of improving your poker game, so let's take a step back and look at some more obvious places to trim back the ego's influence on us.

We've all encountered players for whom every bad beat is a personal affront to their honor, players who carry grudges and enact pointless vendettas and fume and rage against other players at the table. And, as we study the game and improve our understanding we've learned to pity these poor idiots. They represent the quintessential aspect of ego-based poker - just as they are too wrapped up in short term results to see the long term patterns, they are also too wrapped up in themselves to to see the big picture.

A more subtle but just as a destructive type of ego-based poker can be seen in numerous two plus two posts in which players ask "was I wearing a skirt here?", "did I behave like a little girl?" While they are clearly struggling to overcome one form of ego (fear), they fall into the trap of another form (pride). For them, success at poker is a test of their manhood, a measure of their courage, a guantlet to be run, a kind of elaborate personality profile.

But if the most important question is "what is the best play in this situation?" then answers that have to do with your virility, your bravery, your strength of character, or in fact any aspect of your personal identity are misleading distractions. How others perceive you may be crucial, but how you actually are is completely irrelevant.

It is extremely easy to fall into ego-based play. To get caught up in pissing matches and ego duels. To steam with indignation when our strong hand is busted by a ridiculous long shot draw. To feel insulted and disrespected by the actions of other players. To invest our psyches so heavily in the pots we play that by the end of the hand our ability to make clear, objective decisions is completely distorted.

Ego-based play is embedded in the very language of our hand histories, each one a tiny fable about bold heroes and sneaky villains.

Out of Body Poker is a drastic (and perhaps impossible to achieve) alternative to ego-based play. Here's how it works.

Fire up your online Poker client and find a table with an empty seat. Click on the seat. Do you see the avatar or the nameplate or whatever little representative icon that appears in the seat?

That is not you.

The big blind comes around and you post it.

That is not your big blind.

The cards are dealt. Two of them are sitting in front of you.

That is not your hand.

Wait, what? What am I talking about? Of course that's your hand!

No, no it isn't. Those cards don't belong to you. That isn't "your" hand. You don't own it, you didn't make it, it doesn't belong to you, it doesn't reflect or express anything about you. It is simply two cards that you can see.

Your job is not to love or hate this hand, not to discard it, not to invest in it, not to nurture it, not to grow it from a tiny seedling to a mighty tree, not to protect it, and then at the end of a gruelling struggle proudly, or meekly, reveal it.

Your job is to find the best play in this situation.

Picture yourself hovering over the table, floating above all the players. You can see two of the cards and you get the opportunity to choose the best play for that player. You aren't going to win or lose the hand. You aren't going to drag the pot or not. You are simply given the opportunity to find the best play for the situation and that's it, that's the whole game. That's Out of Body Poker.

You no longer view the game through the narrow perspective of your own, tiny, private worldview. You see the whole table, all the cards, all the players. None of them belong to you and you don't belong to any of them. You're given a certain amount of information and you seek the best play and you win the game by finding it. Actually, forget that. You win the game by looking for it.

While the rest of the players are snorting and jousting and posing and strutting you are simply looking. Looking for the best play.

You are not tight or weak or loose or aggressive or brave or frightened or anything else. You just look. Every hand is like an animated, real-time hand history in which you are given a lot of very detailed information. It's not your hand, it's not your pot, it's not your game to win or lose. You're just looking at the whole situation and trying to find the best play.

I wish I could do this, even a little.

/mc