Monday, April 20, 2009

Why choose stress?

At one point, my daughter had wanted to do Family Law as a career. Thankfully, she is now planning on a different career path. As a parent, my immediate reaction was, why would you want to surround yourself with that much stress and heartache?

And so it is with poker variance. Why do we choose a pastime that in the short term is inherently stressful and highly likely in the bad times to affect our general persona through a variety of internal feelings? Presumably it must provide us with other benefits.

For me, I benefit from a heightened ability to make risk-based decisions at work. I feel more confident making significant decisions in a timely manner with incomplete information. I'd love to receive comments on what value you derive from your poker journey.

4 comments:

parttimebonuschaser said...

Interesting concept mate.

I think a lot of the benefit is in facing the challenge and winning.

I'm a competitive person by nature and always will be, always striving to be the best at whatever activity. With poker every hand is a competition, and providing i'm not losing in the long term I think i'm always going to enjoy it.

That being said, i'm sure if I was doing it for a living, or desperately needed the money it might be another story.

James P McAteer said...

I get the feeling you totally embrace the risk aspect of poker and relish the challenge. I think you have the right approach cause it seems like you enjoy the game more than most. For me its a struggle with controlling performance anxiety (self-diagnosed) - once I crack that I think things will improve. On recommendation I just ordered 'Poker mindset' form amazon...

PHLUKKE said...

tbh ......i think there is something very repressed deep down in me . i can go looking for a fight on the poker table and not get my arsed kicked like i would in the real world . LMAO . regards . L4

TiocfaidhArLa said...

Following on the theme of competition, it is always good to win. We used to have table-tennis in work and I'd take on all-comers and whilst competitive, I was never the best but well above average. I'd maxed out in terms of getting better. I just loved grinding each game for a few $$$s.

Now we have FIFA '09, which by the way is a big gambling game these days in Ireland. They even haggle over handicaps and give each other odds. Anyway, I am so far behind that I don't have the energy to catch up. The problem with a skill based game. Poker has sufficient luck to mask my inadequacies.

I think that in poker as well, we can find our level and the maths element (similar to Adam's comment) allows me to be a medium fish in a big pond. Remember, less than 5% of players are winners.