Gambler or Gamer

I prefer tournaments over cash play.  I’ve been thinking about the reason for this and I think the answer comes down to the fact that I’m a Gamer not a Gambler.

I used to play poker with a woman I’ll call Gertie.  Gertie was a gambler.  We played  1 / 3 pot limit.  Gertie loved to “gamble it up” more than anyone I ever knew.  When I first met her I thought she was the worst poker player I’d ever seen.  Also the “losingest”.    She got into the local poker room for over 30 grand and had to sell one of her rent houses to pay off her debt.  I guess she had the money to lose.   In time I got to know Gertie and found out her problem was that she was an adrenalin junkie and loved the rush she got from the bluff.    The problem is she didn’t bluff very well and she did it way to often in her regular game.  I believe you could call down Gertie in every hand and come out ahead in the long run. 

I am the opposite of the gambler.    For me it’s the intellectual challenge to beat myself.    Whether it’s poker or the game of Zuma that I play compulsively on my cell, I am always working to improve my game.  I’m looking for the strategy that will take my game to the next level.

Poker is a game with so many options available that I can always find a place for myself.  I can study it to my hearts content.  I can watch endless hours of poker on my television.  I can play it 24 /7 in my home on my computer.  I can play it for money or for free.  I can move up or down in my buy in.  I am totally in control of my own game.  I can never beat the game but there always is the next challenge.    I don’t get an adrenalin rush from throwing my chips in the pot with nothing to back it up.  I get abject fear and I don’t like that.  I get my adrenalin rush from making a great play and knowing that play is a result of hours of studying and absorbing the wealth of information out there about the game.  I get my adrenalin from raking chips and knowing that I earned them.

To get the maximum benefit I can from poker I have to play on a level playing field.    That is why tournament play is right for me.  In a tournament everything is equal.  It doesn’t matter how much money the players have in their pockets.  Everyone starts at the same place with the same number of chips.

In every game there are roadblocks to reaching the eventual win.  In Pacman it was little purple ghosts that rushed around eating up all the Pacmen it could find.    In Zuma that roadblock is the clock.  Eventually it will run out and I’m back at square one.  In poker the roadblocks to my getting all the chips are my competitors.  It is up to me to determine what type of competitor they are and what it will take for me to outplay them and get all their chips.

The great boom in poker the last couple of years has been credited to everything from Chris Moneymaker to WPT on TV.  One aspect that has gone unnoticed is that a whole generation of gamers came of age.  They are the kids who grew up on video games and have now progressed to the granddaddy of games, Poker.  These are the Young Guns of Poker.   For the most part they are perfect for the game and have spent a lifetime preparing for it.  They have little or no financial responsibilities.  They are morally opposed to working a J*O*B.  They are able to exist by crashing on someone’s couch and consuming nothing but Taco Bell and Red Bull for long periods of time.  They are intelligent, intense, and able to totally consume themselves with the smallest nuances of the game.

Just as with everything in life there is a continuum in force here.  On this continuum pure gamblers like my friend Gertie are on one end and pure gamers are on the other.  Everyone who plays poker falls somewhere in between these two points.    What is the difference between players that put them at different places on that continuum?  I guess that is a question for another day.