Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Why play poker?

At one point, my daughter had wanted to do Family Law as a career. "Why would you want to surround yourself with that much heartache?" was the obvious parental response. Thankfully, she is now planning a different career path.

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? It is time consuming and as I am in a full-time job, that encroaches on family and exercise time. Presumably then, it must provide us with benefits too (or as rational creatures we wouldn’t do it).

Personally, 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. It is also a healthy outlet for exercising what modicum of intellect I have in a competitive arena.

What value do you derive from your poker journey?

3 comments:

James P McAteer said...

not an easy question to answer.

The intellectual challenge
The competition - prove myself against younger, fitter minds
Peeling the onion
The choice of game types. Anyone for SNGs?
The thrill of the win / lose
Watching my green line going up and trying to get my red line to behaves itself

The blindman said...

I didn't answer this post last month, so here goes:

I have a very competitive nature. I get a real buzz out of engaging in competitive activity, especially if it's something I can do reasonably well. I'm also slightly obsessive, and poker is my current obsession I guess.

I definitely want to prove myself capable of competing at a high level in poker, and ultimately I guess I mean tournaments (even though most of my time is spent playing cash at the moment).

The money is nice too, and it would be great to know that the time spent playing poker is completely justified from a financial point of view.

TiocfaidhArLa said...

Oops ... did I repeat myself?

I can see why we are kindred spirits given that our motivations and rewards are similar (apart from the Blindman being a consistent winner).

"Anyone for SNGs?" - I'd be up for trying to arrange a suitable time for a friendly S&G. This weekend would work for me. Sunday night, oz time, Sun am for you Laff?