2020 年我从德州扑克中学到了这 4 点
Exactly two years ago, I wrote a post in which I shared the four things I had learned from poker the previous year. I have since played more and deepened my understanding of the game.
A friend's hutong apartment became a hub for recreational play. Local small buy-in tournaments saw my trembling hand making raises and shoving nuts hands. 2019 found me battling in small-field tournaments in Korea and the Philippines, with some small wins and big lessons. Had it not been for covid-19, I probably would have traveled to Taiwan and the US to play some tournaments this year. Alas, it's 2020.
I made final table in a field of 176 players.
The most memorable 2020 poker moment.
As a game that takes a moment to learn but a lifetime to master, poker's appeal never fades. No other game perhaps comes close to rivaling its sophisticated strategy. The more I play, the more I marvel at the depth of the game and the strategy associated with it. Here are my top four takeaways from 2020.
It in essence is a strategy game. You plot your strategy based on a multitude of factors: tournament type (deepstack, freezeout, satellite, turbo, etc), number of players, position, chip stack (relative to others'), stage of tournament (early, mid-way, late, bubble, in the money), different playing styles and propensities, table dynamics, board textures, table image (perceived and otherwise). Some of these are fluid and ever-changing. At any given point, you rarely have complete information needed to make theoretically optimal decisions. The very nature of the game means that you could always get better at it, no matter where you are now. Thanks to poker, I have been forced to fine-tune the craft of strategy design.
A list of questions for better decision making
by Annie Duke, author of Thinking in Bets
Discipline is a key component in poker. First and foremost, it means good bankroll management. Players with a solid bankroll strategy will be able to handle variance (downswings) well, be happier, and win in the long term. Yet the poker world also abounds with stories of top pros going bankrupt overnight, not because of skill, but a mixture of bad luck and poor discipline. It also means resisting the temptation to make rash decisions and refusing to be subject to tilt (emotional frustration). The best are those always mindful of their states of mind.
Patience is a virtue that can be overlooked in poker. In quite a few tournaments, for as long as two hours I was card dead (not having playable hands). Frustration swept me. Anger was on the verge of kicking in. Being mindful of the negativity, I immersed myslef in soothing music to relax my mind. For a while, I was a Buddhist monk. Eventually things started to turn around. As poker legend Doyle Brunson said, "Poker is war. People pretend it is a game." The poker table does feel like a Hobbesian world of war of all against all. To survive, you cannot always strike; you have to be patient, wait for your spot, and pull the trigger with the composure of an assassin and the presicion of a sniper.
And then there is the "playing the player" mantra. Poker is about two hole cards and their connectivity with the community board, but it is also about your opponents. At the early stage of my play, I was totally unaware of this. In hindsight, I was probably right by focusing on the mathematical side of the game (odds and board texture) than table dynamics (opponents). Once I got better and when opportunities presented themselves, I started to take a fresh look at my own play. The missing piece was put back to my strategy jigsaw. Players' propensities—whether they are aggressive or passive, whether they tend to bet or check with a drawing hand, how they play in position and out of position, how they play at different stages—began to be on my radar.
To say I am a poker aficionado would be a gross understatement. Aside from playing poker, I always tried to evangelize it whenever I could. A couple of weeks ago, I hosted a poker meetup, in which I taught Poker 101, in Chinese and English, to a group of absolute beginners from the Phenomenal English community.
Four hours felt like a split second. The poker tutorial was more like a seminar examining a series of poker hand cases. The girls asked one curious question after another, articulated their confusion and reasoning, and were exposed to the beautiful game. It might not be the most entertaining session, but when asked to summarize in one word at the end of the day what they learned about poker, they yelled "discipline", "strategy", and "fun", among others. What more could I hope for?
My love for poker will surely last well into 2021, and hopefully the same will hold true for the ladies as well.
P.S. Have you played poker before? How do you like the game?
孟庆伟 Justin
个人微信 ID：justinqmeng
现象级英语联合创始人
初中英语 70 分（满分 100）
两次获雅思写作 8 分，口语 8 分
题图：FALC freezeout tournament final table
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