Have a Hobby

I clearly recall my first 21+ trip to Vegas. I was so excited to be here, at the center of the poker world, ready to hit the tables and build my poker fame and fortune. Actually, I clearly recall my first 20- trip to Vegas too. I was about 10 or 11, and we stayed at the Luxor, which was pretty new back then. We rode the rides to find the lost obelisk (since retooled completely; I think one of them now features Leslie Nielsen as a pirate, which is weird). The Fremont Street Experience had just been created also, and I remember not clearly understanding what my dad meant leading up to the trip when he told me they’d put a giant LED ceiling on an entire street. Really, that’s also rather weird.

Anyway, fast forward back to when Smokinokun and I rolled into the Extended Stay America to begin our first summer in Vegas. We both had a fair amount of experience already, both online and in person. The first rush of the poker craze hit when I was about 14 or so, and XP nights (Xbox/Poker) became a weekly event. Our XP crowd usually played dealer’s choice, nickel and dime kind of games. I was partial to Follow the Queen and Low Chicago (still am, to tell the truth).

I can sit for hours and hours at a time, focusing on every minute detail of a poker game and its participants, but when I write about the same experience, my mind wanders over every last aspect of the game it knows. Well, I’ll call it context!

The point to which I’ve been leading (on an admittedly roundabout path) is that when we got here, we were both so excited to finally be living the dream, that we didn’t do much else at all. We were in the casino seven days a week most weeks, and when we were at home (which was an actual home after the first couple weeks in the Extended Stay) we spent much of our time playing online tournaments.

We didn’t have a hobby. We didn’t have much of anything in our lives besides poker. I can’t speak for how that affected Smoke’s mindset, but for me, it was a problem.

I had no recourse. Now, and in the time since that first venture, when I have a bad session, or beat, or run, I use that to fuel me in other areas. Having a hobby on which I can spend time when poker’s got me down (which definitely happens to me, and will happen to you too) is a great way to rebound from these bad turns. Otherwise I just get mopey and unproductive and sit around feeling bad.

When I’m feeling out of control from a game of poker, I write. In fact, that can often be when I do my best writing. Often (though not always), it’s even about poker. Come to think of it, I came up with this article after a bad turn of fortune in a tournament recently. I took a walk down the Grand Canal, stopped for a beer, and wrote away in my 3x5” pocket notepad. I felt a lot better afterward. Maybe in some weird way, writing about poker gives me back that feeling of control. And writing about something else (like time travelers or magical global empires beset by faux dragon attacks) gives me an escape. I need both, and I presume most other people do too.

Note that when I tell you here not to do just poker, I don’t mean as it relates to your income. Those reasons are both myriad and deserving of their own blog post. Actually, they’d make a good one; but I’ll get to them in due time. For now I’m focusing on non-monetary incentives to spend time on things away from the poker table. With a hobby, find a task where what you get out of it is firmly under your control and thoroughly unrelated to sustaining yourself or your way of life.

You need something in your life that is fun, rewarding, and most importantly, controllable. I write, but your hobby can be just about anything you enjoy. In poker, you influence the outcome, but you don’t control it. That simple fact is a big part of what gives poker its thrill, but it can mess with your head. Really mess with it. You’ll develop a pretty thick skin if you stick with poker over the long haul, but nobody can keep from being shaken up indefinitely. Imagine the following scenario:

You’re sitting at a table for hours, patiently waiting. You make the occasional play at a small pot, and everything goes fine, but you’re bored. You’re seeing trash hand after trash hand, and with the few marginal, barely playable ones you see, there is a bet, raise, and reraise in front of you every time, so you have to throw them away. The table’s not exactly full of suckers, but there are a couple big donkeys and you’re just waiting to take them for a ride. You’ve given yourself the perfect table image to do it, too. Now all you need is the right hand.

Finally the spot comes, and your strategy works perfectly. You get all in on the flop vs some dummy who has a 3% chance at runners to win the hand. He gets it, of course, and you die a little bit inside.

That’s really not such an unlikely scenario. I’d probably take a five minute walk to clear my head and come back into the game ready to wait for the next spot. But what if it happens again, and again, all in one session? What if 10 hours and 4 buy-ins since you sat down, you have nothing but a smaller bankroll and stories of bad beats to show for your effort?

Those are the situations that will, I promise you, mess with your head. So have a hobby, and make time for it.