Poker News / Short-Stacked Shamus / 26 November 2010 / Leave a Comment

A mostly silly thread emerged over in the "News, Views, and Gossip" forum on Two Plus Two this week. One of those eye-rollers that depending on your mood you might click on just for grins, though do so knowing full well the investment of time you are about to make probably won't be yielding much in the way of reward.

The title of this one announces a "view" which for most readers probably immediately provokes a derisive "you-got-to-be-kidding"-type response. "They should make the WSOP a play money tournament," says this joker.

("Yeah, ri-i-i-i-ght," you say.)

The brief post that follows doesn't clarify, though it appears the suggestion is being made in reference to the Main Event in particular. The poster believes that having the players play only for the bracelet (and the "glory") would make the tourney seem more like a sport. Also, taking money out of the equation would ensure "the game will be seen less as gambling."

As you might imagine, the thread veers off the rails mighty quickly, partly because of the naive perspective being represented by the thread-starter, but also because of some poor spelling in the original post provoking some funny retorts.

Those who are actually responding to the idea, however, appear essentially unanimous in opposing it as hopelessly unrealistic. To suggest the WSOP should be a play money tournament, they insist, is to ignore a fundamental principle of poker -- namely, that it is a game played for money.

Might as well propose we go hunting for stuffed animals, right? I mean, what's the point?

As you can probably tell, I'm with the majority on this one, firmly believing that playing for money -- real money -- is an essential characteristic of poker. The fact is, money matters in poker. In fact, it defines the game. Remove the money, and you remove a lot else from the game, too, arguably making it something else entirely.

That said, I'll admit that the idea being proposed here -- outlandish and ill-begotten as it is -- caused me to think further this week about this so-called fundamental principle of poker, wanting to articulate more specifically just how and why money does matter in poker.

I'll start with that often-repeated statement about poker that in order for one to become a successful player, one has to be able to avoid thinking about the money while playing. It's a statement that on the surface might suggest some sort of paradox with regard to poker. Sure, money matters, but you have to figure out how to make it not matter when you play.

Al Alvarez's The Biggest Game in Town (1983), that great narrative chronicling the 1981 WSOP, provides multiple examples of players articulating this very idea.

Alvarez interviews many of the game's best known, highest-stakes players in The Biggest Game in Town, among them the late Chip Reese. Reese tells the British writer that, in fact, "Money means nothing." Of course, Reese's subsequent explanation shows that money, in fact, means everything in poker. It is just that anyone who wishes to play for the highest stakes -- in the "biggest game in town" -- has to train him or herself to reduce the significance of money to nothing in order to compete at the highest level.

"If you really cared about it," says Reese to Alvarez, "you wouldn't be able to sit
at a poker table and bluff off fifty thousand dollars. If I thought what that could buy me, I could not be a good player. Money is just the yardstick by which you measure your success."

Other high-stakes players to whom Alvarez talks make similar statements about money. Jack Straus, for example, explains to him how "it took me a while to realize that if I had too much respect for the money I couldn't play properly. Chips are like a bag of beans; they have a relative value and are worthless until the game is over. That is the only attitude you can have in high-stakes poker."

If you think about it, players like Reese and Straus being able to say that "money means nothing" is itself part of the strategy they bring to the game of poker. This "attitude" (as Straus calls it) helps them play their game to the best of their abilities. And, most importantly, gives them an edge over any competitor who is less skillful than they are at reducing (or altering) money's significance in this way.

Notice what is happening, though. The money still has to matter in order for Reese and Straus to train themselves to think that it does not matter. As Straus tells Alvarez later on, "if there's no risk in losing, there's no high in winning." They can train themselves to think of chips as nothing but a "bag of beans," but there will come a time when the game ends, and those with the beans get to cash them out.

There has been a lot of talk in the poker world recently about 2008 WSOP Main Event champion Peter Eastgate's announcement during the summer that he was leaving poker and his decision to auction his WSOP ME bracelet on eBay for charity. (The auction has ended, with the winning bid coming in at $147,500.)

While no one but Eastgate knows exactly why he's making what appears to be a bold step away from the game, many have taken some of Eastgate's statements to suggest that poker no longer provides him the sort of challenge (or "high," perhaps) that makes him want to continue playing. Having won poker's biggest prize, Eastgate perhaps finds himself in a place where money actually doesn't matter any longer. And thus does poker become something else. Something not worth pursuing (for Eastgate).

Such is only more speculation, of course. Even so, it seems like Eastgate's example might further help us understand how money is significant -- and necessary -- in poker.

The fact is, in poker, we all find the stakes at which the money matters to us. And then we play. And part of the game turns out to be trying to make the money matter less.

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Remember personal info?

Comment: