All in to sin

The Gray Lady today with a pro forma bad beat story, aka as Gosh, People On The Internet Sure Do Stuff. A few points on what is a decent read anyway...

> There is something visceral about the need to complain about your own poor luck, but it is essentially masturbatory.

It basically is something you are doing to try to cover your own regrets. But regrets are, to a certain extent, just someone reliving the past for the sake of avoiding the present. You might have a good reason to avoid the present, but eventually, you're going to stop. So why not now? (Answer: because I'm still hurting. Pout.)

> Bad beats in online poker create conspiracy thinking.

When you get beat runner-runner (aka, the opponent gets the perfect two cards on the turn and river to come from behind and win) in real life, it's agonizing but understandable. After all, you were there to watch the cards come out, and the conspiracy thought of This Game Is Rigged goes against the fact that you were watching with your own eyes. If the dealer is crooked, you missed it. Whereas in an online or computer game, it's just the cards the computer decided to put out there -- an intrinsically shakier proposition.

Secondly, when you are the victim of a big comeback in real life, you also get to, at least, see the surprise from your opponent. That helps to sell the fact that what happened to you was random, rather than nefarious. (Assuming, of course, that your opponent isn't a complete tool about getting bailed out by luck.)

> There's a huge difference between playing online and playing via computer. (Well, duh.)

One place that I've played at recently lets players put cash in play, along with the chips. It adds a certain recklessness to the game that I'm not all that comfortable with, but the players are so draw-happy that the game is profitable, or at least has been for me in the past. It's also, well, not as much fun for me.

When you play with just chips, it's something of a sunk cost. (I don't ever expect to make money at a table, or even break even, though I do more often than not. If you are playing with cash you absolutely need, you've got a problem, and are probably coming to the game on tilt from the start.) Cash, even if it's the same amount you were going to put into chips, never feels like an entrance fee; it's just cash, sitting right there. Take it and leave, if you're smart.

Computer games go from that feel of cash on hand to cash nowhere. Purchases are made with plastic, and the money that can be lost is twice removed. So people can (and do) go all-in with a lot more regularity than you might see at a table game, and it's just a fundamentally different game... one that, well, is going to generate a lot more bad-beat stories. If you get beat runner-runner for all of your chips, it's just a much bigger story then if you suffered a 10% loss. (The latter is, well, just not a story.)

> No one ever tells lucky win stories.

Six months ago in my house game, I was holding King-Queen suited when the flop came out King, King, King. The room more or less stopped cold to see it, and I confess, I acted it up a bit on my slow-play check. When the turn card was an ace, betting happened, and I was able to get the size of the pot up considerably. The river was a meaningless low card, and my four kings took a very large number of chips from the poor guy who had a full house, aces over kings. It's the best hand I've ever had in a live game, which is why I remember it, really.

A week ago in a tournament, I held Ace-King suited to a flop that was Queen, 10, 6, with the Queen and 10 matching my hole cards. With 19 outs (the three aces, three kings, four jacks and nine suited cards) to a good hand, and with a table image that was hyper-tight (I had been getting weak cards and was at a very loose table), I went all-in, and got called by a guy holding pocket twos. Despite being nearly a 2 to 1 underdog and after making a bad read on my hand strength, my opponent's cards held up.

Now, which story do you think I've thought about (and, sigh, told...) more? Yeah, the damn deuces. It is how we are wired; the joy from a win is more than overcome by the pain from a loss.

And in this, as in many things, poker is an apt metaphor for life...