Poker and Philosophy

by Bronson, Eric

  For Dostoevsky, nothing could be more absurd. To begin, he notes that people who do such calculating “lose the same as we poor mortals playing without calculation” (The Gambler, p. 38). As any true gambler knows, in the long run the house always wins. But even if one could maintain a consistent winning streak through calculation, it is clear that Dostoevsky would reject such an approach to gambling. We see this when he has the narrator contrast the “Russian” attitude towards wealth with the “German” view. The narrator claims to have no use for the “German capacity for amassing wealth” and goes on to lampoon the German patriarch who hoards his money carefully and invests wisely so that he may pass on a fortune. By contrast, roulette (and by analogy all of gambling) is made for the Russian, who is “incapable of acquiring wealth . . . [and] even squanders it outrageously and for nothing” (p. 40).

  The Russian approach to gambling, then, views it neither as a way of amassing wealth nor as a means of amusing oneself (both activities consistent with rational self-interest). Rather, the narrator places the activity outside of any rational attempt to understand it, one intended to waste money for no real purpose. Such an explanation defies our rational understanding, but it is one that Dostoevsky himself endorses. In a letter discussing The Gambler he states that the narrator who takes this approach to gambling is no ordinary gambler, but “a poet in his own way.” We need here to call to mind the Greek understanding of the term, in which poets were literally out of their minds (the literal meaning of “ecstatic”) and beyond the realm of the rational. So, too, Dostoevsky’s gambler. And so, too, Dostoevsky himself, if we accept the view of his great biographer Joseph Frank, who describes Dostoevsky as “poet in both the literal and the symbolic senses of that word, [whose] poetry was proof that he found it impossible to subordinate his personality to the flesh-god of money, before whom, as he had written, all of Western civilization was now prostrate.”5

  This worship of money that Dostoevsky so despised he saw as a natural outgrowth of the view of man as dominated by rational self-interest. Against this Enlightenment ideal, the seemingly outrageous and self-destructive behavior of his protagonist (and of Dostoevsky himself) was a reminder that there were other values in life. In this way, The Gambler presents a vivid illustration of the theory of human nature laid out in Notes from Underground that “reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man’s nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole of life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all of the impulses” (Kaufmann, p. 77).

  Gambling and Existentialism

  So is poker an existential activity? If it is undertaken in the manner of Dostoevsky’s protagonist in The Gambler, advocating an engagement of the whole of one’s being and not simply an amusing activity or a way to amass wealth, then gambling is an existential activity. Pursued in this way, gambling places something higher than rational self-interest at the core of existence and rejects the Enlightenment view of man as a rational animal. This is consistent with the first characteristic of Existentialism, the view that reason is limited and unable to give an account of the whole of human life. To be sure, by the end of The Gambler the young man is ruined. But both Dostoevsky and Existentialist philosophers think this sort of “hitting bottom” is necessary for the full development of the personality. In this way, Dostoevsky is in line with the second characteristic of Existentialism, the view that despair and other negative emotions are part of the human condition.

  The Dostoevsky Kid

  Roulette is one thing, you might say, but poker is a beast of a different stripe: Less risky if played correctly, more amenable to rational calculation. As evidence of poker’s uniqueness, you might cite the fact that roulette, craps, and blackjack are all played against the house, ensuring that if you stick around long enough you will lose, while even in casinos, poker is always played against other players. You might add that it is possible to calculate odds in poker the way it is not, say, in slots. And so through rational computation it is possible to have more control over the outcome in poker than in roulette, craps, or even blackjack.

  A couple of points here. First, as mentioned earlier, Dostoevsky had no use for this rationalist approach to roulette, and we might imagine he would be equally dismissive of such an attitude towards poker, one which views the activity as a rational process (involving such things as the calculation of odds, study of opponents’ character traits and ticks, and so forth) aiming at a rational end (the acquisition of wealth). As we have seen from his critique of roulette, Dostoevsky rejects both the means, which he sees as hopeless (the rational calculator loses like everyone else), and the ends, which he dubs ridiculous (representing a defective “German” attitude towards wealth). Even if it is possible to play in this way, Dostoevsky never found it interesting and neither should we. It will not qualify as existential. But beyond the question of whether such an approach is Dostoevskean or not, we might consider the extent to which such a mind-set is at all appropriate to poker.

  In the classic movie The Cincinnati Kid, Steve McQueen stars as the title character, an up and coming young poker player who secures a match with the old master, Lancey Howard, played by Edgar G. Robinson. The epic game of five-card stud they engage in reaches its climax in a hand in which the Kid has two pair showing (kings and tens) while Lancey has four hearts. Both players having emptied their entire bankrolls into the pot, the Kid turns over his hole card revealing a full house. The camera pans to various onlookers who are all certain that the Kid has the winning hand. Lancey, however, flips up the queen of hearts, giving him the victorious straight flush. Later, someone mentions that Lancey had raised after the third card. Since the Kid had a pair showing at that time and Lancey had only three hearts, the rational thing to do would have been to fold. You don’t go chasing flushes against a pair showing. “You raised on a lousy three flush,” says the disbelieving observer. Lancey replies, “Gets down to what it’s all about, doesn’t it. Making the wrong move at the right time.”

  Cincinnati played the hand reasonably, calculating his odds and raising when it appeared he had superior cards. And the reasonable thing to conclude was that he was going to win the hand, and the game. But Lancey triumphs by relying on something other than logic and good sense, something which I believe Dostoevsky would have understood. When the game is played in this manner, it is a truly Dostoevskean activity, for it reminds us that there is something other than reason, something that is in fact superior to reason that is the essence of poker. And just as the movie teaches us that reason is deficient to capture the truth of poker, so for the Existentialists it is unable to serve as the ultimate ground of a life.6

  ________

  1 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (New York: Knopf, 1955), p. 19.

  2 In Walter Kaufmann, ed., Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (New York: Meridian, 1956), pp. 345–369.

  3 Super System: A Course in Power Poker (New York: Cardoza, 2002), p. 12.

  4 Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Gambler (New York: Penguin, 1997), p. 39.

  5 Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 184.

  6 This chapter is dedicated to my brother, Richard “Fred” Vernezze. Cursed with as much luck at craps as Dostoevsky had at roulette, he is likewise possessed of the same indomitable spirit

  PART I I

  Dude, What Were

  You Thinking?

  6

  Thinking about Thinking about Thinking about Thinking (about Poker)

  JONATHAN ELLIS

  When I am getting ready to reason with a man I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say, and two-thirds thinking about him and what he is going to say.

  —Abraham Lincoln

  Remember that childhood game “Odds or Evens” you used to play in order to settle important disputes such as who gets the last slice of pizza? There was only one element of skill to that game: trying to figure out what the other person
would throw. But that wasn’t easy. If your opponent was savvy, that meant trying to figure out what he thought you were going to throw. And that sometimes meant figuring out what he thought you thought he was going to throw.

  Thinking about what other people think is something we do all the time, not just when playing games: You told your friend to meet you in the restaurant at seven o’clock, but when it’s 7:15 and she’s not there, you realize she must think you’re meeting in front of the restaurant. The way we anticipate and explain other people’s behavior is by anticipating and understanding what they think.

  Philosophers call this “thought attribution,” and top poker players are remarkably good at it. The ability to attribute thoughts to other people is especially important in the No-Limit Texas Hold’em tournaments that have, through television and the Internet, swept the globe in recent years. What’s required to succeed in this game is not merely attributing “first-order” thoughts to other players, but attributing to them thoughts about your thoughts about their thoughts. In fact, that’s the minimum. The kind of thinking done by the very best players (T.J. Cloutier, Howard Lederer, and Daniel Negreanu are especially good at it) is much more complex than that.

  Here’s an example. It’s the third day of the World Series of Poker, and you peer down at your cards to see handsome “Big Slick” (Ace-King) looking up at you. Your heart pounding, you raise three times the pot and get called by one player. When the flop comes 2-6-9 (or “rags”—no high cards), you face a decision. Should you bet in the hopes that your opponent will fold? Or will he reason that it’s likely that you raised before the flop with a high Ace and are now bluffing? As all good players know, some players are more apt than others to bet with Ace-King (AK) in this situation. Now, you’re a good player, and your opponent knows this, so he knows you’re aware that this is the situation. And you know he knows you’re aware of this. In fact, he’s already seen you twice in the tournament not bet in a similar situation. So perhaps he thinks you’d do that again. If so, then if you bet, he’d probably fold, thinking that you must have a pair. But, taking it one more level, perhaps he thinks you would think that he would think this, in which case your plan would backfire entirely. What to do!

  First, you scan your mind for anything your philosophical heroes might have said about this predicament. Didn’t Socrates say something about this in one of Plato’s dialogues? You seem to recall:

  SOCRATES: Good morning, Gyges. What brings you this early to the card room?

  GYGES: Hello, Socrates. I have been so wound up thinking about the argument you made yesterday that I could not sleep and needed to clear my head.

  SOCRATES: What troubles you, Gyges? Do you not agree that it is better to have more chips than to have fewer?

  GYGES: It is certain.

  SOCRATES: And do you not agree that if you’ve raised before the flop with Big Slick, and then the flop comes rags, then a bet could be seen as a bluff and would thus be imprudent?

  GYGES: By Zeus, you are correct. I must then check, Socrates.

  SOCRATES: Very well, I must be off to join Cephalus and Glaucon at the 2–4 table.

  While in truth it’s difficult to find ancient philosophical passages contemplating the sublime joy of hitting your set on the flop, philosophers have nonetheless had some important insights about thought attribution that should prove illuminating for poker players and fans.

  Thinking about Rabbits

  Consider the following scenario first introduced by Willard Quine (1908–2000), and later discussed by Donald Davidson (1917–2003), two eminent American philosophers. Suppose we are in a foreign land and come upon an unknown tribe of human beings. We’d like to communicate with this tribe and so embark upon the project of learning their language. How would we go about ascertaining what they mean by their words? We would start, these philosophers say, by observing their verbal utterances and studying how these utterances correlate with what is going on around them. For instance, if we noticed that they utter “Gavagai” every time a rabbit passes by, we would form the hypothesis that what they mean by “Gavagai” is “Rabbit,” or “There’s a rabbit,” or something like that. Future observation could reveal that this is not what they mean, but starting with hypotheses like these is the only way to begin to determine what these people mean by their words.

  Now, notice that in forming the hypothesis that the natives mean “Rabbit” by “Gavagai,” we make a substantive assumption. In forming this hypothesis, we assume that when they uttered “Gavagai,” they believed (or thought) that there was a rabbit passing by. Of course, this would be a reasonable assumption to make: the natives appear to have good eyesight, and there was indeed a rabbit passing by in every case. However, if we made no supposition at all as to what the natives believe, we would have no reason to think that what they mean by “Gavagai” is “Rabbit.” The words that a speaker chooses to utter are a function not only of what she means by them but also of what she believes. Just as the classical physicist describes a moving object’s direction along a plane as a “vector” of its horizontal and vertical speeds, Davidson characterizes what a person says as a vector of her meanings and beliefs. One utterance could be the result of countless combinations of meaning and belief.

  Moreover, in forming our assumption, our own beliefs played a significant role. We didn’t just make any assumption about what the natives believed, we assumed that what they believed about their environment was precisely what we believed about their environment: that there was a rabbit passing by. Davidson pays special attention to this. In order to determine what a person means, we need to start by assuming that she and we hold many of the same beliefs. And if we do not hold many of the same beliefs, Davidson claims, we simply will be unable to determine what she means. This is true not only for ascertaining what someone means, but also for ascertaining what someone believes and thinks. Even to attribute to someone a thought that you think is absolutely false, you and she must hold many of the same beliefs. Take my friend’s conviction that the reason she’s having a bad day is that she’s a “Scorpio,” and Scorpios suffer when Mercury’s in retrograde. In order for me to attribute this belief to her (which I believe is patently false), she and I need to share many other beliefs, such as that people are born in particular months, that Mercury’s a planet, that people have bad days, and so on. Widespread agreement, according to Davidson, is the only possible background against which disagreement can be identified. (Scorpios suffer when Jupiter’s in retrograde, of course, not Mercury.)

  This thesis has been applied to a wide variety of philosophical issues—in ethics, in metaphysics, in epistemology—but it also has significance for poker. To see why, let’s return to that dilemma you face with Big Slick. Once again, the flop comes rags and you think to yourself:

  Maybe I can still win this hand if I get him to fold. This guy’s seen me twice in this tournament not bet when I had A-K and the flop came rags, so if I bet, he’ll probably think I raised before the flop with a high pocket pair.

  This initial line of thinking is already a complex one involving many different thoughts, including one second-order thought: so if I bet, he’ll probably think I raised with a high pocket pair.This is a thought of the second order because it is a thought about a thought. Notice that this second-order thought is not about what your opponent thinks but about what he would think if you bet. In poker, we are often trying to influence our opponent’s behavior (to get him to call, fold, and so on). And a primary way to influence someone’s behavior is to influence what he thinks. A central part of poker is thus figuring out what you can do to get your opponent to have whatever thought you think would lead him to do what you want him to do. Really, poker’s about trying to place false thoughts in other people’s minds—when you’ve got a good hand, you want them to think falsely that you don’t, so they’ll call. (For the ethics of this, see Chapter 12 in this volume.) Still, to figure out what someone would think, you have to know a good deal about what he does
think, as we shall see.

  Sharing Thoughts at the Poker Table

  Let’s return to your predicament with Big Slick. Before you throw some chips in trying to move your opponent off his hand, you remember that this is T.J. Cloutier you’re up against, who writes, in a moment of quiet self-examination, that he has “got more moves than a mongoose.”1 So, careful not to breathe or fumble your chips in such a way as to betray the weakness of your hand, you retreat once again into your own mind:

  But T.J. probably knows that I know that he remembers that I didn’t bet with A-K twice before. In which case, if I bet, he might think I’m just betting because I think he’ll think I must not have AK. In which case, he might call or even raise.

  This is another complicated line of thinking, now involving a thought of the fourth order: you have a thought in which you attribute to T.J. a third-order thought, namely, that you’re just betting because you think he’ll think you must not have A-K. This thought that you attribute to T.J. is a third-order thought, because it’s a thought in which he attributes to you a second-order thought, namely, that he’ll think you must not have A-K. Confusing, I know. Adding subscripts to keep the orders straight, your fourth-order thought again is: