It also turned out that the 2 on the river made a full house as well as a flush theoretically possible. Neither player would have gone all-in at that point. Thus, Dolly would have lived to play more hands. But that is second-guessing the river card. True, had he played it differently, Dolly had a way to drive Ungar out of the pot after the flop and a way to survive after the turn. I find the all-in bet after the turn worse than slow playing the best hand after the flop.
The excitement of this hand and the contestable analyses of it possible today highlight the connection of poker to our species being. Professional and recreational players unmistakably choose poker without the coercive elements presumably infecting nineteenth-century wage labor. In fact, poker players generally are prime examples of Marxism’s highest value: creative laborers who freely choose and are stimulated by their projects.
Marx relentlessly charges that under capitalism workers are at the mercy of the small number of owners. The capitalist holders of the means of production dictate what is produced, how it will be produced, and what will happen after it is produced. The worker becomes a mere appendage, an instrument of production whose creativity is suffocated. Such workers, enjoying few if any other opportunities, toil only to satisfy survival needs. Their species being shrivels from lack of nourishment.
Poker, though, is anything but alienated labor. Instead, it rewards creativity, presupposes freedom, and demands responsibility. Poker players experience their task much like absorbed artists. They fully invest energy as a means of self-expression and self-creation. To most committed players accumulating money is secondary to winning tournaments. Imagine a test. You can choose only one of the following options:
a) Win a tournament on the World Poker Tour but finish out of the money in the next event. You win a trophy and X amount of money.
b) Finish second in the first event, third in the next event, winning X total amount of money.
Ask any professional poker player to answer the question posed by this test and I would bet all of them would take the victory and the bust out. Almost all would go further and select option a) even if it produced less than X total amount of money.
Numerous professional poker players are indifferent to accumulating money as their highest priority. Chip Reese used to drop $2,000 on his monthly water bill. Although clearly an incorrect charge, he paid it without dispute. Jack “Treetop” Strauss often proclaimed, “If the Lord wanted you to hold on to your money, he’d have made it with handles on it” (p. 158). Sailor Roberts was so indifferent to money that “if he threw a hundred-dollar chip in the pot and it rolled off the table . . . he’d leave it there and just throw in another” (p. 88).
The elements of risk and tempting fate spice poker. And Luck is a generous goddess when she sits in your lap. Folks think luck is only outdrawing your opponents against long odds—the so-called miracle card appearing. But the more sublime visit by Luck is having the nuts (an unbeatable hand) when one of your opponents holds terrific, second-best cards. One night it was down to me and Howard The Vest. Howard was called “The Vest” because he played tighter than an accountant on Imodium. He wasn’t merely a percentage player. When Howard jumped into a pot—well, he didn’t jump, he moseyed—you’d better have a great hand. Although he could be bullied out of a pot early, once he was committed—and with strong cards he committed more easily than Liz Taylor—you couldn’t shake him with a pit bull and a Luger.
After Jimmy the Blade limped in prior to the flop, I raised the size of the pot with pocket K-K. The Vest re-raised on the button. Everyone else, including the Blade, folded with alacrity. One guy folded without even looking at his hole cards. I have never folded pocket K-K before the flop and probably wouldn’t have folded if The Vest flashed pocket A-A at me. I put Howard on A-A, Q-Q or A-K (Big Slick). Maybe he even had the other two K’s. He would never have raised that much with weaker cards. I called. The flop cascaded like manna from heaven, a rainbow 4-K-4. I had a sweet full house, K-K-4-K-4. I knew that Howard was not holding any fours. My main objective was to keep him in the pot, get him to commit, and drain all his remaining chips. I checked. The Vest went all-in. I knew then that he had either A-A or A-K in the pocket. I resisted the urge to kiss my lucky cornu and croon “There’s No Forgetting You.” Instead, I called. The turn and river brought a harmless 8-10 combo. I raked in the chips, while The Vest got a one-way ticket to Palookaville to play dominos with Ben Affleck. (Turns out that The Vest had Big Slick, the flop gave him K-A-4-K-4. He must have figured I held a K-Q or A-Q.)
At such times, the words of Texas Dolly resound, “It’s exciting. There’s almost never a dull moment in my life. And I can’t imagine anyone having a better life that the one I have right now.”2
Is Poker Exploitive?
Understood broadly, “exploitation” arises when someone uses another person merely as an object for his own benefit, when he ignores the humanity of that person by treating the person as merely a means to his own ends. Understood in a narrower, Marxist sense, exploitation transpires when one class, the workers, produces surplus value that is wrongly controlled by another class, the capitalist owners. This sort of exploitation does not flow from explicit duress, physical threat, or other noneconomic force. Instead, Marx claims, capitalists leverage their enormously superior economic bargaining power over workers—their ownership of the means of production and the absence of real alternatives for workers—to exploit their employees.
Capitalists siphon the surplus value produced by the labor of the working class. They purchase workers’ labor-power at its value, which is equal to a subsistence wage, and sell products at their value. Because the value workers create is greater than the value of labor-power itself, surplus value sprouts. But workers do not receive the labor equivalent of what they produce. Also, workers’ labor is “forced” in the sense that only limited and equally exhausting alternatives are available for workers who must satisfy their subsistence needs. Put simply, workers benefit owners; owners economically force, in the relevant Marxist sense, workers to supply that benefit, and owners wrongfully do not bestow equal, reciprocal benefits to workers.
The owner-worker relationship is absent in poker and the element of luck is more pronounced than in the nineteenth-century capitalist workplace. In freeze-out tournaments that require an initial buy-in and prohibit further action once a player’s chips are lost, a rough equality is present. Vietnamese refugees such as Scotty Nguyen and educated math wizards such as Chris “Jesus” Ferguson are on equal footing with internet addicts such as Chris Moneymaker. Rugged individualism reigns. Massive initial wealth is not required. Johnny “The Oriental Express” Chan, for example, began playing in nickel-dime games while a student at the University of Houston. Because poker can be played in tournaments or home games at any monetary level, the vast inequality of bargaining power feared by Marx does not come into play.
Although poker does not embody the excesses of Marxist exploitation, it can be exploitative in the broader sense. But, then, we can say the same for any project involving two or more people. The question, again, centers on the way we view opposing players and how we treat them. The same can be said about love, friendship, business, and academics.
Don’t forget the element of luck, especially in no-limit tournament play. In the final pot of the 1979 World Series, Bobby Hoff raised with pocket A’s. Hal Fowler called with 7-6 offsuit. The flop was rainbow J-3-5. Holding top pair in the pocket, Hoff bet half his money. Fowler called with only a gutshot straight draw. The turn, of course, produced the 4 that gave Fowler the straight that soon broke Bobby Hoff. Why Fowler called the pre-flop raise remains a mystery. Whether calling the postflop bet with only a gutshot straight draw is sound depends on the probability of hitting the straight versus the amount of money in the pot and the amount needed to call. Usually, a player is uneager to risk an entire tournament on only about a sixteen-percent probability of filling a gutshot straight.
Does luck even out in the long run? Prob
ability theory says it is supposed to. In the short run, though, winners of major tournaments rarely win on skill alone. Putting your money in when the odds favor your hand is sound strategy, but Luck has a voice in whether you avoid bad beats in large pots, have the nuts when an opponent has a strong second-best hand, and win more than your fair share of races.
At the 1976 World Series, Texas Dolly and Jessie Alto squared off for first place. Dolly held suited 10-2, Alto enjoyed unsuited A-J. Jessie raised and Dolly, sitting on three-quarters of the total chips, called with his weak hand. The flop was A-J-10. Dolly held only bottom pair and three cards to a flush. Alto had flopped aces and jacks. Alto bet, Dolly called. When a 2 fell on the turn, Dolly moved all-in with tens and deuces. Alto gratefully called and was a huge favorite to win the pot and draw even on the overall chip count. With only four outs at the river, Dolly had about an eight-percent chance of hitting a full house. But luck conspired against Jessie Alto. A 10 fell on the river, giving Dolly a full house and the championship. Is it any wonder that Dolly observed, “You see, I’m a gambler. I’ll always be one. My life will always be filled with wins and losses. I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s exciting”? (Brunson, p. 2)
Does Poker Spread Capitalist Ideology?
Marx argues that the ways human beings think about, perceive, and experience their world (“ideological superstructure”) are “determined” by the economic structures that surround them (“economic base”). Economic structures, other than communism, are riddled with internal contradictions: they contain the seeds of their own destruction. These internal contradictions are conflicting requirements that an economic structure must fulfill to continue to survive. To forestall their inevitable demise, economic structures must invade the consciousness of the masses and present themselves as necessary and natural. Thus, the survival needs of economic structures mold much of how we think about, perceive, and experience the world.
Capitalism, for example, requires workers and owners who are competitive, economically aggressive within rules, and motivated by material incentives. Capitalism rewards such behaviors. Most people, responding to positive reinforcement, accept the goals of capitalism as their own. Our ideologies reflect what we observe. The dominant ideologies—spread by politics, philosophy, literature, popular media, and the like—bray the message that most people are naturally, perhaps inevitably, competitive, economically aggressive within rules, and motivated by material incentives. Once these views solidify into common sense, they produce a supposedly independent reason to cling to capitalism: only capitalism conforms to fundamental human nature.
From a Marxist perspective, poker players are capitalist entrepreneurs writ small. Poker provides a learning ground for accepting and praising capitalism as the only economic structure that rewards an illusory human nature. Poker cuts across class lines because it can be played by and weave its false consciousness around wealthy and poor alike. Poker presents itself as an independent past-time or profession. But, if Marxism is correct, poker is part of the ideological structure that flows from and reinforces the dominant economic system.
For Marxists, poker is part of the ideological superstructure that sustains advanced capitalism. Poker includes antes and blinds that lure players into protecting their economic investments and playing more pots. Poker defines winners and losers through zero-sum economic competitions. Poker rewards economic aggression within rules. Poker is itself defined in terms of economic incentives that honor self-interested behaviors. Because poker can be played for stunningly high or excruciatingly small (“penny ante”) stakes, everyone in principle can participate. Media promotions, especially through television and the Internet, are a crucial source of ideological dissemination, and have fueled the poker rage of the past five years.
Poker probably does sustain dominant capitalist ideas to an extent. Many of the virtues of the Über-capitalist are rewarded in poker: material accumulation fueled by investment and risk-taking, rugged individualism, ruthless competition, and the like. To the non-Marxist, though, nothing is wrong with this. Even to a Marxist, we could argue that the worst flaws of exploitation and alienation are absent in poker, while creative labor vivifying our species being abounds. Maybe this makes poker an especially pernicious form of false consciousness, but I would bet the under on that proposition.
What kind of poker player would Karl Marx have been? He was invariably reckless with money, a relentless self-promoter, arrogant, brilliant, and rattlesnake mean. He would combine the aggressiveness of Gus Hansen, the poor sportsmanship of Phil Hellmuth, the analytic calculation of Chris Ferguson, and the penchant for playing on tilt of Mike the Mouth Matusow. He would eventually go broke—he always did—but would supply Pokerpages.com blogger Mike Paulle with a lot of colorful stories along the way.
________
1 Amarillo Slim Preston, Amarillo Slim: In a World Full of Fat People (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), p. 264.
2 Doyle Brunson, Super System (New York: Cardoza, 1978), p. 2.
3
Knowing the Unknowable: Aristotle, Sklansky, and the Humility of Wisdom
WILLIE YOUNG
The clock strikes midnight at your weekly poker game. As the flop comes 4-7-A, you study the table:
There is $85 in the pot: $10 small-blind, $20 big-blind, and you called before the flop. The flop has given you a pair of 7’s, as well as a chance at a flush. As the bet comes to you, off Two Pair’s check, Dynamo has just bet 25—one fourth of your dwindling chips. As The Prof, who folded, checks ESPN’s Sports Center for scores from the early baseball games, you must decide what to do. Yet, how can you know? As David Sklansky writes, the best play is to do what you would do if you knew what all the cards were; this is, as he describes it, the “fundamental theorem of poker.”1 While you can never do this perfectly, the fundamental theorem serves as a rule to guide your play—and, over the long term, if you can play closer to this rule than your opponents, you will be successful. If Dynamo holds 5-5, you could raise, to try to force him out. If Dynamo holds pocket A’s, then you fold. Or, if you knew that the turn and the river would give you a 7 and a Q, then with a full house you could go all-in. What’s more, if you knew he was bluffing, then you could call or raise, and force him to fold.
Of course, if we knew what the cards were, there would be no game. Not-knowing creates the challenge and competition of poker. Poker, then, raises important philosophical questions about how we can act when we don’t have full knowledge of the reality we inhabit. To play well requires seeing what you can’t see, or knowing what you can’t know. What will the turn and river cards be? Is my opponent bluffing? Will Two Pair raise if I call? Does my hand beat theirs? How can I see what’s invisible, or know what remains unknowable?
In the hand described above, two types of knowledge shape your judgment and action. Both types of knowledge have been the subject of extensive philosophical discussion, particularly as each requires being able to know something that you cannot directly perceive. The first is knowledge of particulars, or knowing how to read the event appropriately: which cards have been dealt, which hands could beat you, the number of chips in the pot, and the betting patterns of your opponents. Aristotle’s concept of phronesis, or “practical wisdom,” is central to the cultivation of excellence, and closely resembles the knowledge of particulars that poker requires. The second type of knowing is to know what your opponents are thinking. This requires seeing their thoughts, which seems impossible (without ESP—and, with the characters we play with, this could be frightening!). Nonetheless, in his phenomenology (the study of how things appear to our consciousness), Edmund Husserl (1859–1930) explored how we could know about other minds, through our shared experience of the world. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) and Husserl provide the philosophical foundation of Sklansky’s theorem. Disciplining oneself to see what others can’t is good strategy, long after the poker game has broken up for the night.
There is another part of poker, though, that complicates this
picture—bluffing. It guarantees that our knowledge of the cards will never be certain. Therefore, we’re also going to have to address how bluffing requires rethinking both Aristotle’s and Husserl’s approaches to knowledge. What, philosophically, does it mean to say that deception is our best way to know the truth?
Playing a Mean Game: Excellence in Poker
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics explores the nature of human virtue, and is one of the founding texts in the field of ethics. However, morality does not exhaust what Aristotle means by virtue; the word for virtue, arete, can be more broadly translated as “excellence.” The Ethics lays out the conditions for human excellence in any field. Virtue is to excel in a field of activity, from morals and science to politics and sports. While ethics is not our focus, in terms of poker three features of Aristotle’s discussion are especially important: 1) habituation, or the cultivation of character; 2) knowledge of particulars, so that one understands the action properly; and 3) voluntary action, in which one intends to accomplish the action.
Aristotle thinks of excellence primarily as a state of character—an ingrained ability to do what is good. It is, then, a habit, or a pattern of activity developed over time, through repeated performance of excellent actions (what he terms habituation). Virtue is action in accord with a rational principle, and one displays the rationality of one’s actions through consistent action over time. Like a poker player honing his skills on the computer night after night, virtue grows through its performance.
Poker and Philosophy Page 4