Photo by Thomas Broening
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Full House
By Richard Lederer, July & August 2005
Closer families, warm friendships, a sharper mind. For poker players, it’s a whole new deal
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My three children—Howard, Annie, and Katy—grew up in a house of
games. Almost from the time each of them could sit up straight in a chair,
their mother, Deedy, and I taught them to play verbal challenges, like ghost,
hinky-pinky, and Scrabble, and board games such as checkers, chess, and
Monopoly. Mostly, we sprawled in the TV room and played card games: war,
spit-in-the-ocean, go fish, oh hell!, and hearts. Within that bonded circle
gleam some of our most enduring memories as a family.
Let the child psychologists curse us: Deedy and I never faked losing so that
the children could win. For years they could never beat us, and they sometimes
burst into tears and threw their cards at us. But as time stretched out, they
began winning often. We grew awestruck by their insights into the nature of
games and gaming.
Now two of my children—Howard and Annie—are national poker
champions. They're the only sibling pair to ever reach the final day of a
World Series of Poker, and they've won a trophy case of international
tournaments and millions of dollars.
I'm button-burstingly proud of them. In fact, in Las Vegas's
McCarran airport recently, I couldn't contain my pride when I came upon a
colossal vodka billboard with elegant drawings of my son and daughter—and
a caption reading "Cheers, Annie Duke and Howard Lederer. Cheers, the
first siblings of poker."
"See those pictures up there! Those are my kids!" I screamed. A
few passersby clapped, and luckily no one called security.
The opportunity for this public parental gloating was due not only to
Howard's and Annie's amazing abilities but also to the current poker
craze that's whipping across the country. The old saloon and family-den
card game has recently become one of the hottest leisure pursuits among all
generations, from teens on up. Millions of couch potatoes are yelling
"Call!" or "Raise!" on random nights that used to be spent
primarily clicking through cable TV.
In 2004 an estimated 70 million Americans played poker. The number of
leagues and home games has almost doubled in the past few years. What's
more, online poker has revolutionized the reach of the game. Thousands of
people worldwide play poker for "funny money" or for real cash; an
estimated $180 to $200 million is bet online every day, according to
Pokerpulse.com.
The allure of poker is nowhere better illustrated than in the number of
players who each pony up $10,000 to enter the annual World Series of Poker in
Las Vegas. Back in 1971 that competition drew six players. Two years ago the
number of seats was 839. In 2004 that number exploded to 2,576. This July the
tournament is expected to attract more than 6,600 players—with prize
money topping $60 million. Considering that all winning bets in Las Vegas for
the 2004 Super Bowl had a total payout of just $75.4 million, $60 million is an
amazing sum for a one-time event.
As with the Super Bowl, television has greatly increased poker's
visibility. The game's popularity soared after the Travel Channel launched
the 2003 World Poker Tour using tiny "lipstick" cameras that let you
see each player's hidden cards. This voyeuristic view transformed the games
into a riveting reality show. Celebrity matches are now aired constantly.
My children's incredible talent in making poker a transcendent art form
is the pride of my life. I only wish that their gift for games rubbed off on
me.
Actually, it has, a little bit. And in some of the most meaningful ways. I
have a lot of fun playing in weekly poker games around my neighborhood in San
Diego. I'm energized by poker. I like feeling the way I felt back in my
youth, when I played football and basketball. I no longer can play those
sports, but I do play poker. In mental games, age doth not wither us nor custom
stale us. You and I can never drive a golf ball like Tiger Woods can, or serve
a tennis ball the way Andy Roddick does, but we can, on occasion, make a
stone-cold bluff in the manner of a Howard Lederer or Annie Duke. I'm 67
years old, and I take encouragement from the knowledge that this past fall
Doyle Brunson, at age 71, recently outlasted 666 other players to win the
Legends of Poker Tournament.
Wild Bill Hickok held aces and eights (and the jack of
diamonds) when he was shot while playing poker in 1876. That hand became known
as the Dead Man's Hand.
It's no coincidence that poker is one of the finest exercises for
keeping gray matter active. The evidence mounts that doing pushups of the mind
and aerobics for the brain helps keep us mentally fit. The long-term brain
benefits that poker offers may be, frankly, the best reason to pull up a
chair.
"Poker involves mathematics, planning, and strategy—all
complicated mental processes, and these are exactly what imparts the benefit of
producing more brain neurons," says Paul D. Nussbaum, Ph.D., a
neuropsychologist and an expert in Alzheimer's disease at the University of
Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Further, a regular activity must be both novel
and mentally challenging to prevent dementia, and poker can provide both forms
of brain stimulation. "Poker will always involve an element of complexity
because it involves playing people of varying skills, and your strategies must
change," Nussbaum adds.
And, unlike crossword puzzles, poker builds our neurons while we socialize.
This offers incalculable benefits.
Indeed, I'm most attracted to poker because it's a deeply human
game. In our high-tech times it's not who's the best chess player in
the world. It's what's the best chess player in the world. The answer
is the computer; no human chess player can match IBM's Deep Blue.
That's because chess is a game of perfect information. Everything is open
to be analyzed. But poker is like life itself—a game of incomplete
information. Unpredictable betting patterns and other psychological ploys are
not only the very things that make poker exciting; they blow the gaskets of any
computer that thinks it can hold its own at a poker table.
The human element of poker may have helped spur its current craze. We're
inundated with technology on a daily basis, notes Peter Vorderer, Ph.D., a
leading researcher in the psychology of entertainment at the University of
Southern California's Annenberg School of Communication in Los Angeles.
"Many people now spend their days in front of a computer screen,
downloading e-mails," he explains. Our lives feel very complex, and that
can make us long for simplicity, says Vorderer. Poker may be a complex game,
but playing requires only a deck of cards and a few friends.
We are social animals. I take pleasure in bonding with friends around a
poker table. Many of the people I play with—actuaries, software
engineers, school counselors, drugstore managers, psychologists, doctors,
lawyers, and stay-at-home moms—I would never have met otherwise. The
rituals of these ring games, the winking banter, the click of the chips, and
the smell of pizza all contribute to an easy and enduring camaraderie.
Richard Nixon won $6,000 playing poker in the Navy during
World War II. It funded his successful run for Congress.
We are competitors, however. My poker buddies and I are a band of brothers
and sisters who agree that each will vie to be cleverer, gutsier, and sneakier
than the others. As Shakespeare put it, we "strive mightily, but eat and
drink as friends." How much do we play for? I'll offer you the advice
of President Harry Truman, a fair country poker player himself: "Poker
among friends and colleagues should not drive anyone to the poorhouse but
should be expensive enough to test skill and make it interesting."
Poker is a game of emotions. As soon as I sit down at the poker table, I
experience a tingling sense of anticipation. In a single night I feel the
trepidation of wagering a stack of chips on a wily bluff, the anguish of
blowing a big pot to some palooka who had no idea what he was doing, and the
exhilaration of winning after a pitched battle.
"There's something visceral about losing a hand on a bad beat and
watching your nemesis piling up the chips…your chips!" adds my son,
Howard. "And there's something equally visceral about reaching across
the table and scooping into your bosom a big stack from your worthy
opponent." Paul Newman's character Fast Eddie Felson says it best in
the film The Color of Money: "Money won is twice as sweet as money
earned."
It was not money but a love of gamesmanship that led Howard to poker. At age
18, he left for New York City to pursue his passion for chess. He soon
discovered a poker game in the back room of his favorite chess club and was
immediately hooked. Within a few years he finally won his way into that
windowless, clockless pleasure dome known as Las Vegas.
His success did not prepare me for Annie's decision, however. About a
decade after Howard left New York, Annie announced that she was walking away
from a nearly completed doctorate in cognitive psychology at the University of
Pennsylvania to pursue poker. To say the least, this sent me reeling. Having
earned my own doctorate in linguistics, I implored her to complete her degree.
But all of my protestations did nothing to stop her. Off she went with her new
husband to Montana, where she sharpened her poker teeth in $10-to-$20 games in
Billings and then joined her brother in Las Vegas. The gamble I pleaded with
her to avoid paid off: Annie is now the winningest woman in poker.
'Women are better at reading other players,' muses
Annie Duke. 'We can also gain an advantage by playing the male sense of
superiority.'
If you don't think that an island of estro-genius can survive in the
macho world of poker, consider the 2004 World Series of Poker Tournament of
Champions, aired this past fall. The only woman in the stellar field, Annie
faced a phalanx of poker legends, world champions, and seasoned cash players.
When the field was pared from 10 to three players, Annie knocked out her
brother and mentor, Howard—and wept openly that she did that. Then, after
hours of heads-up play, she defeated the brilliant and colorfully temperamental
Phil "The Brat" Hellmuth Jr. to walk away with the $2 million
prize.
The lore of poker invokes images of a men's club, but that—as
Annie and many thousands of card-playing women have proven—is no longer
true. Poker's explosion in popularity has greatly softened the outdated
image of unshaven roughnecks dealing cards amid whiskey bottles.
In fact, the argument can be made that women are better natural card players
than men are. "Women are better at reading other people's faces, body
language, and quirks," muses Annie. "We can also gain an advantage by
playing the male sense of superiority." Annie has folded some hands and
bet on others guided by nothing other than what she calls "some sort of
estrogen sixth sense."
My wife, Simone, has been inspired by Annie's success to join our home
game, even though she never held a card as a girl. She plays poker online,
where she has many peers: women now account for 20 percent of all Internet
players, compared with just 4 percent in 2003.
"When Annie became involved with an online poker site, she suggested I
try poker, using 'funny money,' " Simone explains. "I did for
about a month and had a lot of fun." When she started winning games, she
joined other sites, including Howard's.
Remember that poker—especially the common variation called Texas Hold
'Em (in which players are dealt two cards and share five table
cards)—is easily learned. The diverse traits that poker taps, such as
intuition, courage, and raw acting talent, make it accessible to first-timers.
And if you choose to improve, poker becomes more fun as its challenges become
more complex. Why? At the same table, players with differing levels of skill
and experience are using different strategies to outthink their opponents.
"When you are a beginner, you are thinking about what cards you
have," Annie observes. "At the next level, you think about what other
players are holding. At an even higher level, you know what everyone has and
you start thinking about what the other players think you have. If you're
holding the better hand, how can you bet to extract the most chips? If you have
the weaker hand, how can you still win?"
Amid the many fascinations and dividends that poker has offered my life, its
philosophical lessons have not been lost on me. Life may be like a box of
chocolates, but it's also like a poker game. We are dealt a set of cards.
Some people get dealt a good hand, and some people get dealt a bad hand. Some
people play a good hand poorly, and some play a bad hand brilliantly.
In poker, as in life itself, there's a strong element of luck. On any
given night Lady Luck can make Vanderbilts out of maniacs and thwart the best
efforts of sane, disciplined players. But over the long haul, skill will
prevail. The trick is to maximize your winnings when Luck smiles upon you and
to cut your losses when Luck turns crabby and vicious. As in life, the smarter
you play poker, the luckier you get.
Far from a temporary fad, poker is the real deal. Consider
exploring—or rediscovering—this amazing pastime. It takes only a
few minutes to become acquainted with the rules. You may play for intellectual
exercise, for the thrill of competing with spirited friends and other
interesting people, or simply for human companionship. Whatever your
motivation, poker can become a passion that you will enjoy for the rest of your
life.
It's in the cards. You can bet on it.
Richard Lederer's next book will be Comma Sense, written with John Shore (St. Martin's Press, August
2005). He cohosts A Way With Words on public radio.
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