Strategic Synergy, The Complete Gambler, and Tilt-Proofing

[Nick Rivers]

I have been a game player as long as I can remember. I was introduced to checkers and poker at age four, chess at seven, played competitive chess in my teens, and have played many, many games throughout my youth and adulthood. Hearts, Stratego, Go, Settlers of Catan, Magic: The Gathering, Risk, Scrabble, and myriad online and video games just to name a few. I am sure many other participants of these forums have a similar history with games, and I suspect that they have reached the same conclusion that I have regarding strategy in games: that the development of strategy in many games is synergistic in attaining expertise at any one game. Positional elements in checkers reflect those in chess. Card recall development in hearts is beneficial for one’s poker game. Structuring your play in Scrabble, turn to turn to build to a powerhouse score on a turn in the future is reflected in carefully building a pot street after street in hold’em to maximize your profits. These concepts could be enumerated at length, but these few examples should be familiar to some readers or analogous to other concrete observations that people have made regarding the strategic elements of games. With this concept of strategic synergy in games in mind, I would like to proceed next to the real thrust of this post: the creation of the complete gambler.

Most respectable poker authors advocate learning multiple games of poker in order to accomplish the goal of being the best poker player you can be. I wish to extend this beyond the realm of poker to that of general gambling. In his groundbreaking work on advantage gambling, “Beyond Counting,” author James Grosjean offers the following theorem to the reader:

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Theorem (Opportunity) There is an edge in every game.

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I believe this to be true, and I believe this is a powerful piece of insight that everyone serious about garnering positive expectation from gambling enterprises would be wise to consider. Beyond the direct profits of learning to gain an edge at a specific game, however, lies the benefit of strategic development through synergy. When one learns to find and exploit a mathematical advantage at one game, it further crystallizes for that individual the concept of finding edges in general. In devising and honing a strategy to win at one game, a person is sometimes exposed to new ideas which can be incorporated into the other games with which he is already familiar. Years of professional gambling on many fronts have verified Grosjean’s Opportunity Theorem for me and have opened my eyes to synergistic strategic insights and, even better, increased profits and efficiency.

What does this mean for you, the 2 + 2 forum-reading poker expert? In short, I believe that each of you who is serious about making money from gambling would do well to expand your gambling repertoire to other games. The easiest direction to go, of course, is blackjack, and the synergistic benefits to your poker game which are derived from mastering blackjack will be immediate and welcome. Not one of us is perfect in his play of cards, and we all have room to improve. It is one of the reasons we are here at this site! In my time as a gambler, I have encountered many players, successful and otherwise, who have been plagued by three very real, very common problems among poker players, which can be effectively countered by mastery of blackjack: problems with bankroll management, tilt and nerve.

I suspect that no gambling activity on the planet has more literature devoted to expectation, variance and bankroll requirements than the game of blackjack. While some information about this topic is available to poker players, most notably in “Poker, Gaming, and Life” and “Gambling Theory and Other Topics” (both of which you are all undoubtedly familiar), nothing drives the concepts of bankroll management, the Kelly Criterion and the interplay of expectation and variance home like playing blackjack. I am sure everyone here knows someone who is a great poker player and would be successful were it not for consistently playing in games above the level his bankroll allows. Maybe some of you have even been guilty of this yourselves, and maybe you just don’t know how to quantify these things, and just rely on your intuition. Nothing will sharpen your intuitive picture of the swings you will experience in poker like the mathematically quantifiable swings you will experience in blackjack.

Many poker players even at the highest levels are occasionally plagued by bouts of tilt. If you are one, you are certainly not alone. Sometimes it is tough taking a beating for hours on end despite always getting involved with the best of it until that last card hits the table, wiping you out. It’s not fun. This happens in blackjack, too but, when it does, there is little you can do but continue to press forward with your edges and make use of your optimal strategy. I recall many blackjack sessions I had where I lost staggering figures over extended periods of time, despite having a large edge (sometimes obtained through advanced techniques more powerful than card counting). Over time, I grew inured to such unhappy bouts of negative variance and learned to expect them as an inevitable consequence of gambling. These 2+ sigma obliterations I took in blackjack sessions taught me how to accept loss without being bothered and now, in poker, I am never fazed by losing, no matter how disgusting a beat I take. I say this with some measure of pride, because I know it is an area with which many players who are superior to me still struggle. Perhaps if they broadened their perspective on gambling in general, they would be able to out this deficiency in their game and achieve greater levels of profitability.

No matter how strategically sound your poker game becomes, there will be times when your resolve is put to the test, when the money is significant and you are pressing your edge into a tough, aggressive competitor. This is another area where blackjack will strengthen your poker game. Sometimes, when playing blackjack, the count soars and your bets keep getting bigger and bigger. You are putting it on the line, the pit boss is watching, other players are watching and suddenly you find yourself playing multiple hands to the limit your bankroll will allow splitting, resplitting, doubling and so on and, before you know it, an ocean of chips is out on the layout in front of you as you wait for the dealer to flip that down card and complete his hand. You know this hand could mean the difference between a winning month or a losing month. If you win, you may be able to step your betting level up but, if you lose, you may have to reduce your betting unit so as not to jeopardize your bankroll. The next few months of your gambling career will be defined by the outcome of this hand… your heart races, your stomach churns and you hold your breath as the next card is dealt. Yes, that is how it is sometimes. These moments test your nerve and resolve and harden you for those times when significant money (whatever that is to you) is on the line. It is analogous to being able to push your chips in at the final table of a no-limit tournament when an aggressive player has fired into you and you suspect your hand is the best and it is time to strike…but you can never be sure until the last card is dealt. Winning or losing the hand could mean ending up first or second or third in the tournament, with each result brining in a substantially different profit for your efforts. The weak player balks and does not make the optimal play. The player without the nerve to play with the required degree of aggression always falls short of the player who has that nerve. Learn how to press your edges on many fronts and doing so on any one play will be easier.

There are many other skills blackjack teaches the poker player such as deception, game selection and general awareness, but this post could get overwhelmingly long if I were to expound upon all of them. Furthermore, blackjack is but one example of a gambling undertaking which can be approached profitably. Sports is another obvious avenue, as is video poker but, if you believe Grosjean’s Opportunity Theorem (and I do), the creative, insightful player can approach any game with an eye toward profit. If nothing else, I hope this post has opened your eyes to the very real possibilities for improving one’s poker game which are present for the complete gambler who has a broad base of knowledge and experience from which to draw when deciding whether to check, bet or raise when it is his turn to act. For those interested in blackjack, Sklanksy and Malmuth have each published a good book on the subject worth reading, beyond which I would recommend “Blackbelt in Blackjack” by Arnold Snyder. Don’t be afraid to take up a new game on the order of Scrabble or checkers or whatever else you’ve been meaning to learn how to play, too, because you just never know where an invaluable nugget of insight will be found.