Poker News / Short-Stacked Shamus / 10 September 2010 / 1 Comments

For a lot us who play poker, it's much more than just a game or hobby. It's a passion. We simply love to play. When we are not playing, we are thinking about playing. And when we are playing, we want to keep playing.

That desire to see yet another hand is there whether we are talking about individual sessions, longer sequences of play, or our poker "careers" (however defined). When we win, we want to win more. When we lose, we want to win back what we've lost. When we're breaking even, that, too, becomes a challenge that spurs us on. No matter how we are doing, we just want to keep going.

The sometimes irresistible urge to keep playing makes me want to pose a kind of thought experiment. What if a new rule were added to poker that actually made it mandatory to keep playing? That is to say, what if quitting the game were not allowed, unless, of course, you ran out of money?

Would you enjoy poker so much then?

Tales of marathon sessions -- lasting hours, days, weeks, months even -- are a significant part of poker's rich lore. Stories abound of players who willingly kept playing and playing and playing, testing (or simply ignoring) the limits of human endurance in order to remain at the table, the love of the game or competition or something harder to define making it necessary for them to continue.

When Phil Laak set a new endurance record back in early June by playing poker for 115 consecutive hours at the Bellagio, I heard many anecdotes passed back and forth at the WSOP about players having routinely logged sessions of more than 24 hours, 48 hours, and even longer. No big deal, really. It's how the game is (often) played.

In their legendary -- some say mythical -- heads-up match played back at Binion's Horseshoe some 60 years ago, Nick "the Greek" Dandalos and Johnny Moss allegedly battled for five straight months in sessions lasting three or four days at a time. One detail from the story of that match involves Dandalos, more than 20 years older than his opponent, giving Moss some good-natured grief after the younger man had taken a nap.

"What are you going to do, Johnny, sleep your life away?" asked Dandalos.

The way the story goes, Dandalos was the one who eventually had to retire from the match, not so much because of fatigue but rather because he had lost so much ($2 million or more, say some).

Dandalos' life as a gambler was apparently marked by dozens of swings from rags to riches and back again, the final stage of which saw him sitting at the five-dollar draw poker tables in Gardena, California in the mid-1960s. When asked how he could play such low-limit games after having once played for the highest stakes, his reply reconfirmed his commitment to the game -- in whatever form he could play it: "Hey, it's action, isn't it?"

I was reminded of stories like that of Dandalos -- as well as this desire to keep playing, no matter what -- when reading recently about the online woes of poker pro Gus Hansen. With three World Poker Tour titles and several other significant scores, the Dane has accumulated more than $7.5 million in tourney earnings since 2002. However, over the last couple of years Hansen has become equally known for his major losses in cash games -- both live and online -- so much so that his Wikipedia entry now lists three categories: "Tournaments," "Other ventures," and "Losses."

As Matthew Pitt reported here a few weeks ago, by mid-August Hansen apparently dropped more than $7.7 million in online cash games alone since the start of 2007, a figure that actually exceeds that of his impressive tourney winnings. And yet Hansen continues to play, in fact logging more high-stakes hands online than just about anyone other than Tom "durrrr" Dwan.

Hansen's plight was a subject of discussion on this week's episode (No. 139) of the TwoPlusTwo Pokercast, with hosts Mike Johnson and Adam Schwartz and guest Terrence Chan breaking down -- and trying to comprehend -- the extent of Hansen's downswing which has continued since Matthew's article. Indeed, apparently Hansen lost $3 million online during the month of August alone!

Johnson introduced the topic with a question: "Is he delusional that he thinks he can play with these guys [at the highest stakes]... or does he know that he's out of his league... [and] likes to play against the best of the best and doesn't care?"

Chan had a ready response to Johnson's query. "I think he just loves to gamble," said Chan. "He's a smart guy. This is guy who was like a world-class backgammon player. He's not so dumb that he doesn't realize that after years of losing seven-digit sums that he's probably a dog in the game."

I liked Chan's explanation, which goes beyond simply saying Hansen remains in the game because he's stuck and wants to recoup his losses. Like Dandalos, he loves the action, and looks as though he'll continue to seek the action as long as he can afford it. In fact, I think for a lot of folks on the rail, it would be surprising to see Hansen quit playing, even though it might be in his best interests to do so.

Because after all, when we think of professional poker players, quitting doesn't ever seem like an option. In other words -- to go back to my thought experiment -- it almost seems like there's a "rule" that forbids players from quitting the game.

Think about all of those amateur players who won the World Series of Poker Main Event during the last decade. Most stayed in the game, while others (essentially) walked away. And those who "quit" (so to speak) -- I'm thinking in particular of Robert Varkonyi and Jerry Yang -- are often looked upon unfavorably, as though they aren't "real" poker players. Both continue to play events here and there, including returning to the Main Event each year. But neither could be said to have kept his winnings "in play," so to speak.

So they can't be "real" players, argue some. They didn't abide by the rule against quitting!

Of course, there is no such rule. But really, wouldn't you say that a lot of people think of poker and play the game as if there were?

Comments (1)

1. jjones444 | 30 November 2010

   Until I started playing poker a whole lot, I never understood people who are passionate about it. I have a friend who plays professionally, and I always thought it was more of an addiction like gambling, but it's not at all. It's a real passion and something he really enjoys doing, and I learned that I do too. I'm no Nick the Greek but I can play a great game.

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