Transference

Bluff kindly gave me a kick to put up a new post, so you have him to blame. I really enjoy 2+2. Not in any productive way, to do with actually playing poker and improving my game, rather just all the shit and patheticness and noise. It seems very similar to a pornography addiction, without worrying about being caught out by the wife. The HSNL forum is a sewer. Most posts revolve around people guessing what the other posters will say and posting it first, or alternatively copying the poster above them, adding no text or value whatsoever. Or alternatively copying the poster above them, adding no text or value whatsoever.

(Who says there isn’t a rich seam of humour in what I post? Oh, hi Wintermute :-)

The PLO forum has got better. Okay, it has got *more*. Most of the posts are still mediocre at best, and the majority of folk there are probably in what David Young would christen “they can count past 13 stage”. BTW for PLO fans Bluff did post an interesting drawing hand problem. I didn’t necessarily agree with all his answers, but I did agree with the point he was getting at. Worth a serious look.

What has really got me very amused recently is a *serious* post on “what I should do with my life” issues. It seems that earning $200K+ isn’t enough for these young kids today, they want to be entrepreneur Captains of Industry too. And surely their skills of fleecing WPT worshipping donks will easily translate into broking/real-estate/CEO stardom? In true 2+2 GroupThink style, responder-after-responder genuinely believed that this question had some validity and was not the product of a too-much-too-soon insanity.

The short answer, would be grow up. I mean this literally. Life is the best teacher and no amount of “I am sure it’s a transferable skill” will actually replace *doing* the damned thing in the first place. You want to work in finance. Well do it. Just don’t think that knowing what a continuation bet is will be a worthy substitute. But there’s more. First off, don’t suppose that because you are a winning player today that you will be a winning player in ten years time. The game we play is almost unrecognisable from that I learnt almost a decade ago, except for the pasteboard bit. The good players evolve line is nice, but some players are just right people in right time and right place beneficiaries, no matter their winrate. There used to be a lot of marsupials on this planet, and they used to be very successful, until they met up with placentate mammals. How many marsupial lions have you seen recently?

The most ridiculous assumption is that poker success has an underlying set of traits or characteristics that would transfer to business success. Now for some real world players this may be true. Some of the skills and meta-game understandings that folk that understand Gary Caron’s old RPG aphorism of “being in the entertainment business” may be of some use en route to the Board Room. But being able to 8 table for 12 hours without going on tilt or insane? Profitable, yes. Transferable, no. Business will always be about people and how you handle them and unfortunately those fleshy, carbon-based things will always a key component. And saying “lol, u suck” may not be the best way to engage with them on the path to wealth and success.