#7 Update; Is there a stereotypical poker personality?

2/1/2010 bankroll, $156.59
2/8/2008 bankroll, $178.79

+$22.20 for February.

Now that's more like it!

First, I must apologize for my previous post. It was poorly written, and in spots didn't make much sense. So if you're confused, reread it sometime. Sorry about that. Writing is like playing poker--I shouldn't do it when I'm tired.


After my first post my father posted a comment, asking if there was such a thing as a typical or stereotypical poker personality. He also wondered if others might post about how they got started as poker players.

For now at least, since almost none of my friends are poker players, this blog isn't really aimed at other players. I'm mainly describing my poker journey to my friends who don't play, so those kinds of things don't really come up, and I don't make posts that talk about what I was thinking when I had a medium strength hand against two callers and I had to decide whether to call or raise.

After a few months of playing almost exclusively online, I'm starting to play live poker again, and as I tell people about my blog my posts, and the comments, might change to reflect that.

As to the different poker personalities, I suppose that I could break this down a lot of different ways, but in my opinion there are two main categories: gamblers and nerds. I also see a third, increasingly important group that might at some point be its own category--the competitors. Let's deal with that one first.

1. The Competitor

More and more in televised tournaments I am seeing retired professional athletes. Watch day one of the World Series of Poker Main Event, and you'll hear the announcers saying things like, "Look, there's the former heavyweight boxing champion on table three, and a few tables away, there's a World Series [baseball] most valuable player."

Like a professional athelete struggling with whether to retire at age 40, these recently retired athletes are very competive, and their whole life has been about competing and winning. And some are now carrying that to the poker tables. And having already been succesful athletes, they now have the freedom and time to get good at the game, and the money to buy into $10,000 tournaments and compete against the pros. Also, those retired athletes can use their resources to hire pros to coach them, accelerating the process of becoming competitive against the top players.

2. The Gambler

Some of these are social gamblers, people that you might see at a bingo hall, or at the casino playing roulette before they wander over to the poker tables. Gambling is something to do, a way to socialize or to get out for an evening or a weekend. You won't find these people playing poker online, and you probably won't find them reading a poker book. (One noteable exception is Phil Ivey, who some consider the best poker player in a world. His massively losing craps sessions are as legandary as his poker results.)

Of course, there is the dark side of gambling, those that are addicted. To be honest, I struggle with how to think about that. I know someone (a family member) who has struggled with gambling addiction, and disconnection from the internet seems to have largely solved that problem (there is no casinso within 100 miles of where I live).

But I worked at a rescue mission for 12 years, and I also know that there are addictive personalities out there, to the extent that they will search for any kind of rush, thrill, or danger to feed their addiction. These are people that will use drugs to get high, drink alcohol to lose their inhibitions, or do just about anything to live dangerously or avoid conforming to societal norms. for example, making their money by running a con or selling drugs. Punching a time clock just isn't exciting enough.

To me and many other poker players, a skill game such as poker (more about definitions at the end of the post) doesn't seem like a reasonable spot to feed an addiction. I don't know to what kind of gambling games my family member was addicted, but I'm guessing that poker wasn't the primary problem.

3. The nerd.

This is my group. I love to read, and study, and learn. I am a former member of MENSA (I stopped paying my dues as there is no local group). But I'm a piker compared to some of the ubernerds at the top levels of poker.

On the TV show Poker After Dark, the usual format is to have a table of pros playing a week-long winner-take-all tournament. There was one notable episode that half the poker community seemed to love, and the other half hated it. The title was "Great Minds of Poker". There were nine players at the table. Eight of them had Ph.D.s. The ninth, David Sklansky, wrote Theory of Poker, the book which completely changed the theoretical and mathematical concept of being a winning player. They basically spent most of the episode talking about math--theorems, proofs, applications, etc.

These guys had their Ph.Ds in areas such as computer science, mathematics, and artificial intelligence. Some that have been full-time poker pros for many years are still published in academic journals. One was, as a student, a leader of the infamous MIT blackjack team profiled in the the movie, "21".

One of the most interesing members of this nerd group is Vanessa Russo, who was recently featured in the Sports Illustrated magazine swimsuit issue. Although as a touring pro she loved to talked about game theory and her mathematical approach to the game, until recently, she wasn't always taken seriously. That was a mistake.

Vanessa Russo graduated from high school early. She got an economics degree from Duke in 2 1/2 years. Then she fell in love with the study of game theory, and applied it to poker. The 2+2 poker podcast recently named her their female player of the year.

There is one interesting subgroup of nerds that I should include here--the gamers.

There has been a migration of players who are very successful playing other, less lucrative games, who wind up as professional poker players. In the last few years players who have made a career of playing video games such as Starcraft or World of Warcraft are now in the top echelon of poker players.

From the "About Dan Harrington" preface of the Harrington on Holdem series of books, here is a little about another player who has migrated to poker:

"Dan began his serious game-playing with chess, where he quickly became a master and one of the strongest players in the New England area. In 1972 he won the Massachusetts Chess Championship . . . "

"In 1976 he started playing backgammon . . . and in 1981 he won the World Cup of backgammon . . . "

"He first played in the $10,000 No-Limit Hold 'em Championship Event of the World Series of Poker in 1987. He has played in the championship a total of 13 times and has reached the final table in four of those tournaments, an amazing record."


Those are what the nerds of poker are like. I don't know if I will ever be on that level, but I am much better at managing my learning disability (ADD) now that I know what I'm dealing with. Poker is my job, I love my job, and with proper investment of time spent playing, studying, and improving, it will be the source of a very nice living.