Are You Really Playing For Money

You've been playing poker for a long time, and you play poker at different times and in different situations. You know the fundamentals of good play, understand the importance of focusing your attention the game and the habits of your opponents. You know that poker comes down to two basic things: making good decisions, and maximizing the expected value of every hand you're dealt. There's nothing you can do about the cards you're given, or the cards that hit the board. You can only control what you do and how you do it. And over time, you hope that's good enough to achieve the results you're after.

Poker is about making money, pure and simple. Poker isn't about anything else. It doesn't matter who wins the most pots, makes the most friends, plays the longest without making a mistake, or shows down the best hands. There is no popularity contest at the end of the session. Nobody cares who looks most like a pro, can do the best chip tricks, or can tell the best poker stories. The player who wins the most money wins, period. He may or may not be the best player at the table. He may even be the worst player. But he's the winner for that session, because he won the most money. And that's what we're playing for, right?

Well, if we're truly honest with ourselves, that's not 100 true 100% of the time. At times during our poker career, there are times when we're% playing for reasons other than money. There is nothing wrong with this, provided you recognize it, and you accept the consequences. Before you tell yourself, "I always play for money," take a look at some of these other reasons for playing poker, and see if you recognize some of your own motivations in them. If you find yourself motivated by some of these factors at least some of the time, then you're not 100% devoted to making money with poker. Again, there's nothing wrong with this, so long as you recognize it, and can deal with the consequences. We'll talk about the consequences later. Let's take a look at the motivations.

Playing to be Social.

I run a small-stakes game for friends. We play on Friday nights, eat pizza and drink beer. The game is No Limit Holdem, but the blinds are less than a dollar, and most of the players only ever play poker in that game. Do you think I am motivated by money in this game? Of course not. I set up the game to bring my favorite hobby and my best friends together in the same room, and it is much more meaningful to me that everybody has a good time than whether I end the night a few bucks up or a few bucks down. So, I'm not playing for money in this game.

Although something interesting happens whenever I get stuck for two buyins in this particular game. Something snaps in me, and I start to give a damn. Not so much about the money, but I don't want to be the night's big loser. I become determined to get myself at least back to even with my third buyin, and more often then not, I do. So, without meaning to, I do become motivated by the money in spite of myself.

Playing for the Action.

If you've played poker for any amount of time, you've seen people who seem to want to be involved in every pot, whether they have a hand or not. They are clearly there to play their cards, and folding seems about as painful as root canal to them. They are "action players," and more often than not, they are losing players as well.

You know how to adjust to these players. Don't try to bluff them. If they like to bet, let them bet. If they like to draw, make them pay to do so. If they like to call mediocre hands on the river, give them a bet they can call a mediocre hand with. If they like to bluff on the river, check meekly and let them come at you.

But admit it, every once in awhile, you are the action player. Maybe you're a little bored, or playing below your usual stakes. Maybe you're at a table that's playing too tight, and you want to generate action just for the sake of doing so. So you call a raise with K-9 offsuit, or you pay too much to draw to your flush. You're gambling it up, keeping things exciting, and if you show down a weak hand, you are generating a reputation for looseness that can pay off when you do hit a hand. The other players are also adjusting their games to you, not bluffing so much, letting you bet into them, and responding to you.

Note that this may be a good strategy to adopt in the short term, but not the way to play for a whole session. But sometimes you'll do so anyway. That's okay, so long as you know it. Just be ready to deal with the consequences.

Relieve Stress or Boredom.

Closely related are the times that we play to relieve stress or boredom. This happens most often online. Did you ever take a bad beat at the 10/20 limit tables, and then move down to the microlimit NL tables and raise every single hand? You like to scare the hell out of the guys who play that those limits, while giving out a few beats of your own, while you calm down enough to return to your "real game." Are you raising every hand at .01/.02 to make money? Of course not. But as a stress reliever, if this is working for you, then do it. Better to drop a dollar or two here than to tilt off a couple of hundred at 10/20.

Or what if an NFL game is on, and you have one of the running backs on your fantasy team? You decide to play a little poker while you are watching the game, and waiting for the late games to start, so you sit down to a cash game. During the commercials, you are playing every hand. While the other team has the ball, you are playing 50% of the hands. While your boy's team has the ball, 25% of the hands. And once the late games start, and there are three games to choose from, you're down to 20% of the hands. Are you playing four different strategies, trying to vary your play to maximize your bankroll. No, you are just four different levels of bored.

Are these normal, rational ways to play online poker? No, but thousands of people play this way, including people who are reading this article. Just don't fall into the trap of playing this way all the time.

Playing to Show Everyone You Can Play.

Okay, here's another situation. You're at a table at a casino, and there is a guy across the table who won't shut up. He wants to critique every play from every opponent. "How can you call me with that?" "What are you doing raising there?" "Didn't you see the flush draw out there?" "Did you think your pair of kings was good?" You keep quiet, play solid poker, but all the while you are looking for a hand, a hand that will make him look stupid, and hopefully shut him up for good.

First of all, it will never happen. Guys like that may lose a pot. They may look stupid. But shutting up for a few minutes, much less for good isn't in their makeup. The best you can hope for is to squeeze a compliment out of them, and even that may be asking for too much.

But recognize that you're after more than money now. You're playing not to become the subject of one of his comments. You're playing not to look foolish. But most of all, you're playing to teach him a lesson. You may be forgetting about the others at your table, who in turn may be doing the same thing � focusing too much attention on the lout who is dominating the game with his obnoxious comments and constant remarks. But you need to understand that it's not just the chips that you're trying to collect. You're after a bit of one-upmanship as well.

Playing Not to Lose.

Let's look at yet another situation. You're playing in a bigger game than you're used to. Maybe that's the only game that is open. Maybe you're in a casino for the first time. You're sitting down with a huge percentage of your poker bankroll, maybe all of it. You'd like to win some more, but most of all, you want to avoid losing it.

You are watching the money, all right. In fact, you're watching it a bit too closely. Instead of treating the chips as a way of keeping score, you are thinking about what the cash value will buy. You think about how long it took to accumulate those chips, either in your lower-limit game or in your life outside of poker. The funny thing about poker players is, their ability to separate the chips from their value at the table actually helps their game. Unfortunately, many of them aren't able to make rational decisions with money when they're not at the table, and that's how you see $10,000 prop bets. But if you are sweating out whether to call a $60 raise because your car needs a new fan belt, you're not making a good economic decision either.

Playing to Learn.

But do these situations where we play for reasons other than money have to be all bad? I would maintain that none of them are necessarily bad, when done in moderation. But here's one that I think is always good. Sometimes, when we first sit down to a new game, there is a period of adjustment where we place a premium on learning. We don't expect to win very much. We may not expect to win at all. But we want to keep our eyes open, and to learn the game, our opponents, and what strategies work in what situations. We want to learn what traps we can set, and what traps to look out for. And we want to get this learning period over as quickly and cheaply as possible, so that we can resume our winning ways.

Note that by "new game," I don't necessarily mean a different form of poker. There are different ways to play No Limit Texas Holdem too. If all you've played in is a full ring game at the Taj in Atlantic City, what's going to happen when you sit down to a tournament at the Bellagio in Las Vegas? A no-cap game at the Bike in L.A.? A six-handed table on Full Tilt? Even moving up from 1/2 NL to 2/5 NL will give you a different game, and put you in Learning Mode for a certain period of time. There's nothing wrong with this. But recognize that you're after knowledge during this period, and not just cash.

Consequences and Suggestions

Okay, so let's say that you are in one of these situations, where you're playing for more than just cash. Or you admit to yourself that you're playing for one of these reasons instead of cash. Fine, if you can admit this, and your bankroll can afford it, do it. No problem. But here are a couple of things to keep in mind.

1. Understand that you will probably lose money. After all, if money is not your primary concern, you will probably lose it. Unless you are just plain lucky, or just plain better than most of your opponents, you are more than likely to lose money. If you cannot accept this, then stop playing, and don't sit down again until you can devote yourself to playing for purely profit's sake.

2. Make sure you get whatever it is that you're after. If it is fun, have fun. If it is stress relief, get some relief. Make sure that you identify what it is that you are after, and that you get it. Otherwise, you are wasting time and money.

3. If you are tracking results, take this session off. If you are serious enough to track your results, then you should be serious enough to know when you are not playing with a mind toward profits. Decide in advance not to count this session, and don't, no matter what the results are. Even if you show a profit of twice your usual hourly take, if you aren't counting, you aren't counting. And don't use this as an excuse to retroactively ignore a loss because you were "just fooling around."

4. Don't put your bankroll at risk. If you want to play for reasons other than money, fine. But don't risk your bankroll to do it. Stick to smaller games, or make sure that you are well-financed before you move up to bigger ones. And keep reasonable stop-loss amounts, so that you can walk away from losing sessions before you do serious damage to your bankroll. Take the biggest risks in those games where you are going headlong after the money. When you're going after something else, try and do so on the cheap.

5. Finally, watch out that you don't turn into an "always" player. If you find yourself occasionally playing for pure social value, or to relieve stress, or to stay in action, that's fine. Just make sure that it doesn't become the main focus of your game. If you want to play profitably, you're going to have to watch the bottom line, and most of your sessions will have to be about the money.

The truth is, poker is about more than money for nearly everybody. Even professionals play for fun sometimes. And yes, some of them consider playing Chinese at $1000 a point to be "fun." But for the rest of us, we often play poker for reasons other than financial gain, and there's usually nothing wrong with it. If we realize that we're doing it, and accept the consequences, we should be fine. And we're that much sharper when the serious cash is on the line.

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