Poker Psych: The Courage to Be Imperfect
By: John Carlisle, MA, NCC
In one of his more well-known speeches, Psychologist Rudolf Diekers talked about the courage to be imperfect in our society. He stated, "We can all say that perfectionism is rampant today. A great many people try so hard to do right and to be right." In work, at school, and (of course) in poker, so many of us set the lofty and unachievable goal of being perfect. Although I'm risking sounding a bit like a university Philosophy professor, I have to openly wonder what perfection in poker really is. I know that I've won tournaments in the past while playing decidedly poor hands along the way. Likewise, I have felt that I have played outstanding poker over stretches and still watched by bankroll dissipate due to bad luck and bad cards. Poker is an art, not a science. Inherently that means there are no absolutes when it comes to correct, incorrect, and perfection. There is no way for us to honestly and accurately state, "I played that hand perfectly." Who is to say that there was not a way to extract another bet from your opponent? How can we be certain that we could not have done something better? Put simply, we can't. With that in mind, the drive to be perfect is a part of that what drives us to be great. At the same time, it is part of what makes us occasionally tumultuously neurotic. We are comparable to a dog chasing his own tail. We work tirelessly to achieve impossibility. We obsess over poker, trying to hone and improve our games all the time. We try to achieve perfection, so bad beats and bad playing sends us into emotional whirlwinds.
Diekers also talked about topics that we poker players deal with daily, mistakes and critical self-evaluation. "Now that brings us, then, to a crucial question for those who are so concerned with self-evaluation. The crucial question is the problem of mistakes --- making a mistake. Perhaps we first have to state a little bit clearer why people become concerned, badly concerned, with the danger of making a mistake." Have you ever made a call, a relatively foolish call, while playing online, knowing with 100% certainty that you'd have never made that same call in a live casinos. Most of us have played looser and more erratically online, as we feel less vulnerable to being called to the carpet for our errors in judgments while beneath the cloak of the computer. You see, Social Psychologists understand that we largely view and judge ourselves through how others see us. If our tablemates in a live casino grown and laugh as we call off $100 in cash with bottom pair, it affects our self-perception whether we want it to or not.
Online, that effect is nearly completely masked by the anonymity of the net. Our fear of mistakes is also often what handcuffs us to the small-time poker that we get stuck within. Some players reach a ceiling at $2/4 or $4/8 limits of poker. I often see that it is not their bankroll that holds them to years at this limit. Instead, it is their own insecurities that do so. They fear not being good enough. They are deathly afraid to take the risk to put themselves out there. They worry that they will be beaten, embarrassed, and will feel less worthy. They'd much rather feel like they are King of the $2/4 table than the chump at the $10/20. They do not really fear losing the money as much as making mistakes. Accepting and overcoming our errors can be a brutally difficult task. Most of the top-level poker pros that I know have that ability. The greatest poker players took a chance and exposed themselves to some tough poker situations, and they often paid for it by losing their entire bankroll. What they did not lose, however, was their confidence, drive, and hunger. They learned from their mistakes, knowing that mistakes can be more valuable than the chips that have been lost. Is your quest for perfection holding you back? Do you have the courage to be imperfect in a poker world that is driven for perfection?
John is a National Certified Counselor (NCC). He has a Master of Arts degree in Counseling from West Virginia University, and a Bachelor's degree in Psychology with a minor in Sociology from Lock Haven University. You can find out more about the psychology of poker from "the Poker Counselor" at carlisle14@hotmail.com.
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