Phillips, Larry. Zen and The Art of Poker

34 ZEN AND THE ART OF POKER

cards, and they are cheerfully winning, and then you see them on another occasion and they are cheerfully winning, and you see them on a third occasion and they are still winning, but then you see them on a fourth occasion and they are getting destroyed. Given enough time, the bad habits all come to the surface at once.

It is not enough to rely on luck or hope to carry us past the weak parts of our game. These parts must be attended to. The system must be whole and complete.

Zen itself functions out of wholeness. It does not turn a blind eye to uncomfortable parts. The weak parts must be corrected, or disaster will appear.

A small leak will sink a great ship.

—Anonymous

POKER RULE #25: Operate out of wholeness.

If you had to describe your toughest poker opponent, who would that person be? What qualities would he have? Take a moment and envision him. (This is important because this is the person you want to be, so you need to have an exact picture of him and what his qualities are.)

The answer is that he is someone whose game is whole—some- one who seems to have a good hand every time he stays in the game; someone who plays aggressively and rarely loses; someone with a good-sized stack of chips and (apparently) unlimited money, who is unconcerned about calling a bet; someone who bluffs just frequently enough so others can never be quite sure of what he is doing; someone who knows all the exact values of the hands and can read his opponents well; someone who is unflappable and can’t be rattled; someone who is calm, good natured, plays tight, plays equally well against few players or a full table, has almost no discernible body language, and plays with civility and courtesy.

Visualize this player. Then try to be this player. Work on making your game whole in this way, and as an opponent you will be difficult to lay a glove on.

Imagine a boxer coming into the ring, expecting to meet his opponent face to face. Instead, he finds himself in a ring filled only with fog. He swings wildly, but makes no contact with anything. His force is dissipating, and there is little he can do.

—Arthur Sokoloff, Life Without Stress

5

The Road to Eventual Mastery

POKER RULE #26: Learn from your mistakes.

If you make mistakes during the game, go back in your mind and see what you could have done better, or differently. There is usually something to learn from every game. For example, did you stay too long on one particular hand? Did you play too aggressively, or not aggressively enough? Should you have raised or re-raised in a particular situation, but didn’t? Frequently this knowledge comes in the form of learning one more thing not to do.

Try to figure out what caused you to lose. Were you intimidated by somebody’s aggressive betting? Should you have folded in the face of someone’s aggressive betting, but didn’t?

File away mistakes, mentally, and resolve not to repeat them. (One cautionary note: Don’t use them to learn the wrong lesson, such as: “I’m a loser” or “I’m not very lucky.” This is a common error. Some players use mistakes to define themselves, to beat themselves up. Instead, use them to move on from. Learn the correct lesson, then resolve not to repeat it.)

It is never too late to mend the pen after the sheep is lost. —Chinese proverb

The truth is, mistakes don’t matter much if you learn from them. Analyze mistakes, use them to adjust and move on to better play.

Large mistakes, horrendous mistakes, are usually self-correcting. Generally when we make one, we will not do it again. Mistakes always seem like failures at the time, of course (and always feel like failures), but they are really not—they are really a step forward.

There is always more learning to do in poker, no matter our level of play. The education is never complete. The journey goes on, with endless course corrections and continual adjustments.

The way goes onward and contains its own correction. —Eugen Herrigel, The Method of Zen

Buddhism is not something one simply hears and grasps. It requires practice in which you rid the mind of impurities little by little.

—Suzuki Shosan, Warrior of Zen

The good player takes losses and errors as a constant lesson to readjust. The Zen Buddhist would say that when we factor past lessons in for future play, losses are not losses, but rather stepping-stones toward future correct play. Failure, by its nature, moves us in another direction, away from failure. We need to treat these lessons neutrally. Simply learn from them. Don’t take them too much to heart or put too much emotion into them.

If defeat has more to teach us than victory, then perhaps a defeat is a victory unto itself?

—Miron Stabinsky, Zen and the Art of Casino Gaming

38 ZEN AND THE ART OF POKER

There are those who contemplate suicide in the bitterness of failure in life. But for a Buddhist this is pointless. When we fail, it is already progress to understand that we have failed. We train ourselves by making that failure a stepping-stone for a pace forward. The practice of Buddhism is to realize that the present success is the hundred failures of the past.

—Trevor Leggett, A First Zen Reader

6

Calmness: Prepare for the Worst-Case Scenario

Forewarned is forearmed.

—Anonymous

Let’s approach the idea of calmness from the other end of the spectrum first—impending disaster.

POKER RULE #27: Know all the ways you can lose big.

Heading off a bad night in poker is almost an art form. Knowing all the different ways you can lose is one way to guard against it (or at least to minimize it). Some of the ways you can lose include: a total drought of good cards all night long and being nickled-and-dimed and anted to death; second-best hands all night; second-best hands alternating with bad hands in between; hands that start out good but that don’t “finish.” And so on. Knowing these (and others) can give you some minor aid in heading off a disaster—at least you can begin to see its outlines ahead of time, before it appears in full force on the horizon. This is critical because how you deal with such occurrences can be the difference between having a bad night and having a full-scale, off-the-chart disaster.

42 ZEN AND THE ART OF POKER

POKER RULE #28: Know the range of what is likely to happen to you in a game.

In addition to knowing all the different ways you can lose, it is also helpful to know the general range of what you can expect to happen in a game—how cold things can get at their worst, how hot, and for how long.

For example, let’s say the general monetary range of the game you play in is +$300 to – $300. These are the outside parameters of what you can expect to win or lose on any given night. If you know this going in, you won’t be shocked and surprised by fluctuations that occur within that range. And this is important in keeping your mental equilibrium. It helps keep you in a state of Zen calm and composure. If you are familiar with these swings of fortune (– $300 to +$300), your behavior will be quite different from the player next to you who is down $200 and who is completely stunned, outraged, and indignant.

It’s also important to know the whole range of poker out- comes—not just the maximum losing and winning amounts. There are many other intermediate outcomes. These might include:

•playing for six straight hours and being up $3;

•playing for ten straight hours against opponents who are not very good and being down $120;

•playing well and skillfully against a table of mediocre players and being down $300 after twelve hours;

•playing against very good players and being up $47;

•playing for two straight days and nights and being even;

•and so on.

There is an infinite number of outcomes that exist along the spectrum. Be comfortable with these intermediate outcomes, too. Do not be frustrated by them or think that they are somehow unacceptable. (“It’s not possible I could be losing to this group of players”; or “It’s not possible that I could be up only $5 after ten

hours of play”; and so on.) You will note by observing the best players that they don’t have a problem with any of these outcomes. They calmly accept them as they cash out and leave the table. Possessing such knowledge of the whole is a necessary part of the Zen attitude of composure.

POKER RULE #29: Expect the worst— why gamblers are pessimists.

By expecting the worst, you have already mentally dealt with it. You are ahead of it—steady, calm, cool, and collected for the next hand. The optimist in such situations fares poorly. Cheerfully expecting to win, he is stunned when it doesn’t happen, and his agitation often carries over into future hands.

Thus, being a pessimist becomes a positive trait in poker. It allows you to forge ahead coolly. (And to look cool, too, which opponents often interpret as strength.) The ability to see the dark side—what can go drastically wrong—and to have this view of things always within easy reach become an advantage in poker.

POKER RULE #30: Don’t expect a certain card to appear.

Bad players do this all the time—expect the best possible outcome to occur—and then are crushed when it doesn’t. They are counting on a miracle card on the end to make their flush or straight or full house—their whole strategy depends on it—and when it doesn’t happen, it’s devastating. (A tip from more experienced players: Expect it not to come. You will probably be further ahead in the long run.)