What thoughts cross your mind when you hear the word “gamble”? Even though I am not a mind reader I am almost 100% certain that the word will conjure images of casinos, betting houses, horse and dog racing, not to mention poker and dice games. Your visions I am sure will be somewhat formed by what religious views you hold which may or may not preclude a person from viewing the gamble as an artifice of the prince of darkness himself! No I’m not referring to Ozzy here.
Before I proceed with this exposition, I would like to state upfront that I am neither pro or against gambling per se. The gamble makes part of our daily lives, we live with the consequences of several gambles we take during the course of our existence. We gamble on what path to take in our careers, what restaurant to choose over another, what partners and friends we choose to share part or all of our lives with. The list never ends. We learn, without calling it “a gamble” that most things in life are about 50/50 decisions. Any form of competition can be considered a gamble, even a marathon runner is gambling that his body can take the strain and that he can endure above all others…yet things can go wrong. The runner may hit a nasty snag on the ground come crushing down on his face and break a limb! Believe me such a scenario is not as far-fetched as it may sound. A football team may gamble millions on a top class footballer basing their purchasing decision on potential future goals and league trophies that could be won. Yet even here that top class player may suffer an injury and for months on end if not for the entire duration of a contract, that team will suffer the ill-fated outcome of their initial investment gamble.
So what’s wrong with gambling per se? Nothing, nothing at all, we thrive on gambling even when we opt to choose one brand of product over another at our local supermarket. Yet there is an aspect of gambling that is wrong, that twists the spirit of the gamble turning it into an uncontrollable addiction that can snap a spirit turning even the brightest of men into mindless automata.
While gambling is inherently present in most if not all of our daily decision making processes, they (the decisions) are never (or one hopes at least) taken without an adequate hedging of possible outcomes. The hedging can be attained in many ways. You may study, and I mean study, statistics to determine what outcome might be marginally if not significantly more probable. You may delve into accessing information that might give your decision making process an edge over other fellow gamblers. You may have gone through enough iterative gambling cycles to deduce possible outcomes almost instinctively.
I have seen the aforementioned mechanism of study effecting outcomes even in the way poker games have evolved over the past decade. In No Limit (aka NL) Texas Holdem which became incredibly popular thanks mainly to the introduction of televised poker games and tournaments, the game concepts evolved dramatically. In the early days of the poker boom for instance, the recommendations for play favoured tight-aggression. A player was invited to be highly selective in his choice of pocket cards but then to play the right cards very aggressively. The method worked, allowing players to get their noses wet before swimming with the sharks so to speak.
Yet the internet and in particular internet poker rooms threw the proverbial wrench in to the system by speeding up the gameplay and allowing players to experience hundreds if not thousands of hands in a relatively short period of time. This exposure to such intense gameplay resulted in a thorough analysis of the way in which tournament NL Holdem is played and eventually to the methodical exploitation of a weakness inherent in tournament structures.
With all things being equal, most tournament players today now know what positional play is all about. They also know what tells are and what “table image” can do for your game plan. They have learnt these things from publications by Caro, Helmuth, Negreanu, Malmuth, Sklansky not to mention the legendary Doyle Brunson. It’s almost expected as being a given that the moment you sit down at a poker tournament you at least know these facts. Essentially the amateurish play of bygone years is almost never tolerated if not outright ridiculed at the table. The new generation of players have learnt to use the power of their chip stack as a weapon, to play marginal holdings in position to attack old-school tight-aggressive players. These same players have learnt how to mask their “tells” to varying degrees and to manipulate pot-odds to favour their stronger hands as necessity would dictate.
So in these tournaments, where the only investment is the initial buy-in particularly so in freeze-out tournaments, where does the gamble feature and how is it being espoused by all participants? Even with the huge online archive of information available to all contestants at the touch of a button, Holdem still relies squarely on the gamble, the luck of the draw. The truth is that these younger players are testing their mettle in a sanitized situation; I would not be surprised to discover that among those final table tournament players one would be looking at future business men and decision makers. The gamble is teaching these youngsters the importance of studying your opponents, in gathering information, in playing your odds conscientiously and in the virtue of controlling your own emotions while manipulating those of others. It teaches them competition in a scenario that is not that far removed from the cutthroat world of modern markets and trade.
The real risk lies not with those who approach the gamble knowledgably, but with those who bring to the table a plethora of misgivings, superstitions and ignorance. The gamble for these players is a bane. They are not gambling but rather waiving any ownership over thought and control opting instead to burn their wagers at the altar of chance. When a gambler does this, he cannot win in the long term. Surely he might win in the short-term but when this happens his lucky streak will eventually dry up to be replaced by a deep chasm loss, debt building and serious financial and social problems.
Regardless, I feel that the gamble itself, the structured risk taking it fosters, should not be demonized. If tackled appropriately, it can offer significant lessons in matters pertaining to everyday life. Additionally, the live play variants that engender face-to-face contact between participants also offer socialisation, recreation and why not fun! As with all things in life, moderation is the name of the game. Learning to segregate game time from work and other duties guarantees that none of the areas within one’s life will suffer.
The greatest example to all I have said in this brief discussion comes from a televised Poker show called the Million Dollar Challenge. In season one there was Father Andrew Trapp, a Catholic priest who played poker on the show to help his church in Garden City, South Carolina in the United States. I admired the fact that he not only played great poker in my opinion, but that he also found an opportunity to try and make something good out of a favoured pastime. Still the lesson to be learned here was that it’s not so much the gamble that can be bad but the way the gamble is approached.
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